Tag Archives: mobile learning

Key issues in mobile learning

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The drivers for adopting new technologies in learning include not only the suppliers and customers (buyers) but also the consumers (users) – in other words, everyone. Decide, design, develop and deploy is the standard four-step process relating to technology. Increasingly – since about 2006 – consumers want to use mobile devices for learning and for the less formal ‘performance support’. Initially, there can a high cost of ownership (of the latest mobile devices). So the key issue for HR and learning & development (L&D) professionals is how to get the maximum value from, and use of, this technology.

 

Mobile devices are now readily available – and we all have them. Communications, games and entertainment, business services, L&D, commerce and other business transactions, as well as business opportunities are inter-connected with mobile applications in the sense that they both influence and are influenced by these mobile applications.

 

These days, it’s not about getting content to people but, rather, using mobile devices to answer specific learning, development and/or performance needs. The learning materials’ content and its treatment are influenced by what people want and need.

 

Add to that the benefits for learners from personalised and contextualised learning – from mobile-delivered programs that can discover where the learners are; what they already know; what they need to know, and then provide the relevant learning materials – and you can see how mobile learning (m-learning) can become an ideal medium to get the right information to the right person at the right time.

 

‘M-learning’ is an area of learning technology which is developing rapidly. Today’s key issues include how can:

  • Users and their employers get maximum value from, and use of, this technology?
  • Learning materials be personalised and contextualised to make them appropriate for the user, whatever her/his need, location and delivery device?
  • The increasingly wide range of mobile devices be best used to deliver both (formal) learning and (informal) performance support materials?

This article has been adapted from the contents of chapter 11 of Bob Little’s e-book, ‘Perspectives on Learning Technologies’ (e-book; ASIN: B00A9K1VVS). This e-book is available from The Endless Bookcase and from Amazon. It contains over 200 pages of observations on issues in learning technologies, principally for learning & development professionals.

 

 

Keep taking the tablets

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It seems that the learning community – especially the learning technology community – is always ready to define another way of learning and give it a new name. For example, the last ten months or so has seen the growth in popularity and use of ‘t-learning’.

 

While some people in the UK may think that this is just a Yorkshire dialect word, it really stands for ‘tablet learning’. This is a further technological step along the evolutionary path from e-learning (learning delivered to a desktop or laptop computer) and its newer arrival, m-learning (learning delivered through a mobile device).

 

It’s often said that m-learning has different parameters to e-learning. In other words, you can’t just take e-learning materials and attempt to deliver them via m-learning. If they’re to be useful, the learning materials have to be adapted for delivery from ‘e’ to ‘m’. The same can be said when it comes to t-learning.

For one thing, a tablet’s screen size is closer to that of a laptop than a mobile phone – so learning materials made for delivery via mobile phones will probably have to be modified for delivery via tablets.

Of course, tablets are different from desk- or laptop computers and from mobile phones. They’re mobile devices but they may not be as ‘personal’ to the user as are mobile phones. This can mean, among other things, that users use them to learn in a different context from the way they would use, say, their mobile phones.

In addition, while tablets are more portable than, say, a desktop computer, they’re less easily portable than mobile phones. Their technology is impressive but it’s difficult to hold one for a long time without some form of support.

Besides the technological aspects, there are philosophical and pedagogical issues regarding the relationship between ‘e’, ‘m’ and ‘t-learning’.

Are tablets ‘mobile devices’? Yes, they are – but are they as ubiquitously mobile as mobile phones? Not really – although the story is told that one hospital in Ottawa, Canada, solved the ‘tablet mobility’ problem by redesigning their workers’ lab coats to include pockets large enough to encompass an iPad. People who’re not employed in this Ottawa hospital probably make a conscious decision whether to take their iPad with them when they go out – in a way that they wouldn’t make that decision about their mobile phone. They’d just take that with them as a matter of course.

The ‘tablet/ mobile’ argument seems to hinge on whether the device has a small display screen and, thus, is small enough to be with the user anywhere at any time. Obviously, this has implications – in terms of screen design – for those who design and develop learning materials for these devices.

Furthermore, tablets are more acceptable – to both learners and tutors – in a ‘group learning’ context since, unlike mobile phones, they don’t have a tendency to ring at odd times. Learners using tablets can’t be distracted by, for example, receiving or sending texts on them. In addition, tablet screens have been designed to make it easy to share their displays with others. This helps when it comes to collaborative learning in an office or classroom. Mobile phones, on the other hand, aren’t helpful in this respect.

While screen size may give the tablet more in common with the desktop and laptop computer than with the mobile phone, the touchscreen capabilities of both the tablet and the phone mean that learning materials designers and developers need to do their work differently when producing materials for delivery via tablets and mobile phones compared with ‘traditional’ computers.

 

So, although simplicity argues for reducing the number of learning technology appellations, ‘t-learning’ probably deserves it’s growing niche in today’s online learning world.

‘E’ gets the elbow

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Elliott Masie.

According to a report from Elliott Masie, the world renowned e-learning guru, the ‘e’ in e-learning seems to be vanishing. Masie’s The Masie Center, in Saratoga Springs, New York state, has noticed that:

  • There’s been a 20 per cent decrease this year in advertised ‘e-learning’ job vacancies. Apparently, ‘e-learning developers’ are now more likely to be called ‘learning developers’ or ‘designers’.
  • Fewer organisations are labelling their digital learning programmes or modules as ‘e-learning’. There’s been a slight increase in the use of the word ‘online’, a decrease in the use of  the word ‘virtual’ and many people are just using the words ‘learning’ or ‘training programs’, with reference to the delivery being via webinar or learning portal.
  • Webinars are growing in numbers but they’re not being classified as ‘e-learning’.
  • Almost all of the more engaged, social or collaborative learning formats have drifted away from using the term ‘e-learning’ as their primary category.
  • Video segments, also known as ‘Knowledge YouTube elements’, are growing in popularity but are rarely called ‘e-learning’.
  • ‘User supplied content’ is also rarely called ‘e-learning’ now although, more often than not, it’s presented in digital format.
  • Mixed and blended learning providers are also using the phrase ‘e-learning’ less frequently.
  • Mobile and device-friendly learning programmes are more likely to refer to the mobility platform rather than ‘e-learning’.
  • In many organisations, e-learning seems to have become associated with compulsory, compliance-based ‘check’ off programmes. Many learners don’t specifically associate ‘e-learning’ with performance outcomes.

 

Moreover, terms such as ‘e-commerce’ and ‘e-business’ have dropped out of common usage as the ‘e’ has been dropped. When people order a book on Amazon, for example, they don’t talk about it as an ‘e-commerce experience’. They just order it.

 

Comment: Elliott Masie’s first point – the 20 per cent decrease in overtly ‘e-learning’ job vacancies could be because there are fewer jobs about, courtesy of the current economic conditions, tightened budgets and so on. However all of the nine points he makes have the ring of truth – and could be equally applicable to both sides of the Atlantic, as well as elsewhere in the world.

 

Way back in the final years of the last century, when the term ‘e-learning’ was in its infancy, there was general agreement that the term wouldn’t last. It was said, then, that either e-learning would be subsumed into the general corporate learning tools armoury and, thus, would lose its ‘special’ nomenclature to just become part of ‘learning’ (which appears to be the case) or it would be superseded by other, more advanced means of technology-delivered learning. This could also be true, as mobile learning grows both in popularity and technological capabilities.

 

Faced with this situation, the key issues appear to be:

  • Can e-learning specialists reinvent themselves to become specialists in several – or all – forms of corporate learning delivery?
  • Can technology-delivered learning continue to maintain its own separate sub-sector of the corporate learning world?
  • Will it be completely subsumed into ‘corporate learning’ – itself a sub-set of the HR/ training function – or will it ally itself with technology specialists, perhaps becoming a sub-set of the gaming/ virtual reality sector or even the web-delivered applications sector?
  • What will the UK’s eLearning Network (eLN) – known as The Association for Computer Based Training (TACT) until 2000 – rename itself now?

No formal learning please, we’re managers

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Nigel Paine, Strategic Advisor to GoodPractice on Leadership and Talent Development.

Research (available from http://goodpractice.com/blog/resources/discover-the-learn…), carried out by GoodPractice, has revealed leaders’ and managers’ preference for informal or social learning. The study found that the biggest challenge faced by leaders and managers relates to having difficult conversations with team members. This ranked far ahead of all other issues discussed in the research, with over half the participants citing it as a challenging area. Managing underperforming teams and dealing with resistance to change were also highlighted as key challenges.

When presented with these and other difficult situations, leaders have access to a variety of resources to support them. Increasingly these resources are technology-delivered learning materials but many respondents criticised these as poorly structured, with ‘dry, uninspiring content’.

More than half the leaders surveyed revealed a strong preference for informal learning and support. Activities such as face-to-face or telephone discussions with peers, senior management and subject matter experts were popular choices in times of need. Participants rated social learning methods highly. These included peer-to-peer coaching, on-the-job learning and tapping into informal hubs of expertise to share experiences and highlight best practice.

“This strong tendency to opt for informal learning is at odds with the perceptions of learning and development (L&D) professionals,” commented GoodPractice CEO, Peter Casebow.

Nigel Paine, a well-known voice in the learning technologies world and who is Strategic Advisor to GoodPractice on Leadership and Talent Development, said: “GoodPractice has done a great service by confronting us with what managers actually do to develop themselves and what they like best and get the most out of. This is the age of informal learning and that can happen face-to-face, inside or outside an organisation or in myriad ways online.”

Comment: As with many pieces of research, this study confirms commonsense intuition: executives prefer to discuss their problems with their peers rather than undergo formal ‘L&D activities’ – be they via a classroom or a computer.

Of course they do! Given the choice between having to follow a prescribed programme of study and chatting over your problems with your friends – perhaps in quite congenial surroundings – which option would you choose?

But which would be the correct choice – from several points of view, including moral and ethical ones?

Friends and colleagues can give you popular but inappropriate advice. It seems that much of the world’s current banking crisis has been caused by those in the financial services industry doing just what they and their friends in that sector wanted. The contents of the – admittedly often ‘dry and uninspiring’ – regulatory, compliance-orientated formal learning materials, even those delivered by state-of-the-art mobile learning technology, seem, at best, to have been politely ignored.

Of course, it’s easy to allocate the blame.  It’s all the fault of the L&D professionals.

GoodPractice’s Peter Casebow explained: “L&D provision still often relies on traditional methods of workplace learning such as formal courses and classroom instruction. This implies an imbalance between what learners want and what L&D is currently providing which needs to be addressed. We need to nurture internal networks and communities of practice and develop high quality resources to support more informal ways of learning.”

No wonder that L&D professionals don’t have much status in their organisations. They’re always getting it wrong. They commission ‘dry and uninspiring’ online learning materials and they schedule classroom-delivered training courses when all the learners really want to chat with their colleagues, either face-to-face or online.
So, if you’re an executive – perhaps in the banking industry – does that mean that ‘dry and uninspiring’ L&D is fine, so long as it’s for someone else? Are you above the discipline of having to continue to learn to do things properly? And, just because you think that, are you necessarily correct?

Implementing mobile learning

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Christophe Ferrandou, of goFLUENT.

‘How to Implement Mobile Learning in Global Organisations’ is the title of a whitepaper recently published by goFLUENT, the provider of Business English training. Christophe Ferrandou, CEO of goFLUENT, believes that: “Growth rates for mobile products, including the iPad, iPhone, Android’s smartphones and tablets, have increased so quickly that they’re surpassing desktop computers in some countries. So, it is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ an organisation should deploy mobile learning – and how it delivers that mobile learning.”

 

“Selecting an e-learning solution that offers mobile delivery in addition to a computer delivered application puts the choice of accessing the training in the hands of the learner,” he said. “Learners are then empowered to decide how they will learn, which delivery model best fits their learning style and, perhaps, overcome any learning constraints – geographical, technological and so on – with which they are dealing.”

 

goFLUENT reports that, in its experience of the distance learning market, as organisations look to expand their global footprint and reduce costs, they seek a common business language – which, in almost every case, is English. It believes that teaching non-native speakers to speak business English unites them, boosts their confidence and enables them to be more productive, thus improving their organisation’s results.

 

After discussing the needs of workforces in global organisations and assessing how they are using mobile learning, the whitepaper also explains how organisations can determine the return on investment (ROI) from mobile learning materials. When using mobile learning, goFLUENT recommends that you should:

  • Identify business challenges and define strategy. Common business challenges that mobile learning addresses can include:

• Enabling access to business English training content and services across a global workforce.
• Offering learning to a workforce that is already mobile.
• Delivering ‘just-in-time’ and ‘just-enough’ learning.

  • Define the solution. Think particularly in terms of technology/ infrastructure; culture; content.
  • Pilot the mobile learning solution. Limit risk and cost by using new learning materials on a sample group first.
  • Measure, analyse and refine. Measure effectiveness – such as performance improvement, course completion and skill mastery results – to gauge success.

 

The whitepaper also discusses evaluating the hardware used to deliver mobile learning – including the challenge presented by Apple products not supporting Flash. The whitepaper is available on goFLUENT’s website: http://www.gofluent.com/web/us/download-white-paper-mobile-learning.

 

Comment: It’s said that many workers rarely find themselves in front of a traditional desktop computer – and their work patterns prevent them from adhering to ‘traditional’ working hours. Workers at all levels in an organisation are increasingly comfortable with technology and so they are looking to that technology to help them – wherever they are – whenever they need support, or have some spare time to  develop  their professional skills.

 

Initially mobile learning was a minor but complementary technology to other forms of online learning. Increasingly – prompted by the rapid growth in mobile devices – it’s becoming a major delivery mechanism for learning and performance support materials. No self-respecting training/ learning professional can afford to ignore mobile learning these days – so, with that in mind, the goFLUENT whitepaper is probably worth a read.

Mobile learning conference is already living up to its name

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North America’s premier mobile learning conference and expo – mLearnCon 2012 – is due to be held in San Jose, California, from 19th to 21st June this year. The event focuses on the management, design, delivery, and practical use of mobile technologies for learning in corporate, government, military, academic, and other settings.

And already – in keeping with the ‘mobile’ nature of the presentations being sought for this event – the organisers have moved the deadline for submissions from would-be speakers (initially to Monday 6th February). Hopefully, by then there will be enough speaker proposals for this new leading edge of the learning technologies sector.

Early doors

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The once well-known Video Arts – originally a maker of training videos under the direction of ‘greats’ from the entertainment world including Sir Antony Jay and John Cleese and now a supplier of video, e-learning and m-learning courses – has produced an online Advent Calendar.

 

The Video Arts Advent Calendar (http://www.videoarts.com/2011/adventcalendar/) offers small clips from Video Arts’ library of titles – perhaps to offer viewers almost a month of performance-enhancing tips and techniques, or at least to advertise these products to an audience brimming with indiscriminate seasonal goodwill.

 

However, although Video Arts is keen to get everyone learning, enhancing their knowledge bases and skill sets, even it draws the line when it comes to Christmas time. Unlike other Advent Calendars, Video Arts’ only has 23 doors – not the 24 doors of a ‘secular’ Advent Calendar or the 25 doors of a ‘Christian’ Advent Calendar. This leaves devotees of the Video Arts’ Advent Calendar the whole of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day on which to merely contemplate the free but, paradoxically, valuable lessons they will have learnt during this coming month.

Sex, Italians, the US military, Barack Obama – and mobile learning

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Here’s a story of mobile learning being put to use to help alleviate the effects of an age-old human tragedy: human trafficking.

 

The Italy-based learning content management and digital repository solution provider, eXact learning solutions, along with other companies, is providing mobile learning materials to US Department of Defense (DoD) personnel to help them combat human trafficking.

 

In a proclamation made at the end of December last year, Barack Obama, the President of the USA, named January 2011 as ‘National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.’ President Obama said: “Around the world and even within the United States, victims of modern slavery are deprived of the most basic right of freedom… We cannot strengthen global efforts to end modern slavery without first accepting the responsibility to prevent, identify, and aggressively combat this crime at home…”

 

To help in the campaign against ‘trafficking in persons’ (TIP), ADL, the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative, organised a pilot learning programme – known as the ‘Mobile TIP course’ – a general awareness course delivered via mobile devices to showcase the efficiency of mobile learning in targeting just in time and on the field training needs for US DoD staff around the world.

 

eXact learning solutions produced two versions of the mobile content, using its new eXact Mobile 2.0 platform to produce, store and distribute learning packages  conforming to SCORM 1.2 ‘lite sequencing’, with GEO location capability and a built-in interface to third party LMSs.

 

Comment: America’s military personnel have had access to e-learning materials on TIP for some years but only 60% of these people ever completed the course. So far, there is evidence that the Mobile TIP course is proving popular with DoD personnel, meaning that the anti-trafficking message – and guidance on how to prevent human trafficking – is getting to more American servicemen.

The ‘iPad era’ ten commandments of learning content management

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Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO of eXact learning solutions has identified ‘ten commandments of enterprise learning content management in the iPad tablet era’ (http://www.exact-learning.com/en/resources/whitepapers).

 

“The iPad not only makes a ‘mobile learning machine’ affordable and accessible but it also removes the previous limits and frustration of poor visualisation and connectivity,” believes Cardinali. “The iPad is both effective and efficient in terms of pedagogic soundness and semantic richness.

 

“I don’t know or think it’s going be the iPad – most likely Android based alternatives – but I am sure that the use of tablet-based learning will explode in the next months with a host of location and identity management features being built in to the hardware,” said Cardinali who, in addition to his role at eXact learning solutions, sits on the Board of Directors of the IMS Global Learning Consortium (http://www.imsglobal.org) and is chair of the European Learning Industry Group (http://www.elig.org/). “This will make location based, context aware, learning content personalisation available and affordable – overcoming the costs or hurdles involved in ‘mobile learning 1.0’.

 

“Today, learners are able to take a personal learning machine from their pocket and that machine understands where they are, who they are and what they’re good at or interested in – interworking location based learning, personal digital identity and portfolio management within mobile learning solutions. The machine may hook up to publishers, web and narrowcasters’ stores offering just the right content the learners need, wherever they are and at whatever time slot they’re able to use it – on demand – with learners paying ‘just-in-time’.”

 

Cardinali’s ‘ten commandments of learning content management’ are grouped under four headings: discover and focus (the first three ‘commandments’), design and implementation (the next three), train and transfer (the next two) and envision and guide (the final two). They are:

  1. Learning content production methodology and workflow. You need to identify and define processes, stakeholders, roles, steps and deliverables.
  2. Learning content classification methodology. You need to define learning objects’ metadata, vocabularies and classification standards.
  3. Learning content templating. You need to define corporate learning contents, and produce XML templates, considering the learning materials’ multi-layout, format, language and channel publishing needs.
  4. Pre-existing content ingestion. You need to take account of legacy import and third party content management systems, learning management systems/ virtual learning environment (VLE) integration and cross publishing strategies and protocols.
  5. Pan-European 24/7 multi-language and multi-format production and indexing services are now a pre-requisite.
  6. Learning content management system (LCMS) /learning management system (LMS) selection, set-up, integration and deployment. You need to customise the ‘look and feel’ of the learning materials; the workflow, metadata, vocabularies, taxonomies and templates, as well as third party LMS/ VLE, skills and portfolio integration.
  7. Training and up-skilling of internal managers and stakeholders.
  8. Training and up-skilling of third party stakeholders’ content developers.
  9. Future trends: media-based personalisation (the definition of multi-channel production and location-based, context-aware delivery of learning materials).
  10. Future trends: skills and portfolio based personalisation (the interoperability of skills maps, personal development plans, skills gap analysis and competency management).

 

Comment: Regardless of your views about the iPad and its likely use in delivering learning materials, Cardinali’s point is well made: advances in technology are enabling ‘e-learning’ to actually do the things it only claimed it could do a few years ago. From a delivery point of view, these are exciting times for the e-learning world. Hopefully, the quality of the learning content is going to keep pace with these advances.

Breadcrumb of comfort for mobile learning developers

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Google Labs has released a beta version of a new mobile learning creation tool, called Breadcrumb. This tool enables users to create mobile simulations and branched content – making their application work with only three additions to plain text. Its developers claim that Breadcrumb is ‘infinitely scalable, easy to create and readable on internet-enabled smart-phones or computers’.

 

Comment: Another authoring tool comes on the market – this time for the state-of-the-art ‘e-learning via mobile phone market’. It’s interesting to note that the people behind this tool are from the ‘digital industries’ stable rather than the traditional LMS/authoring tools developers that the e-learning world has known for many years.

Could e-learning be changing into something other than e-learning? Or is it merely becoming ‘mainstream’ (whatever that might be)? Discuss…