Mobile Learning: e-learningnext

Why Mobile Learning 

The strongest Value Proposition for mobile learning comes from connecting people with ideas, information, and each other—anytime, anywhere! 

Ten years back, Clark Quinn’s statement about mobile learning seemed wishful thinking. Today, mobile learning is no longer a buzzword. It has arrived.

Clark Quinn, a thought leader in technology-mediated learning, said in 2000:

mLearning is the intersection of mobile computing and elearning: accessible resources wherever you are, strong search capabilities, rich interaction, powerful support for effective learning, and performance-based assessment. It is elearning independent of location in time or space…

Now, 10 years after this prophetic statement, several interesting trends are converging to create a perfect melting pot for mLearning. Some of these include:

1.    Rapid and unforeseen increase of mobile device adoption from Blackberry to iPad

2.    Growth of location-based services and location-aware networks

3.    Surge in social media adoption and participation

4.    Growth in cloud computing

5.    Increase in awareness among globally spread companies that  eLearning, mLearning and online training is a way to save on training costs, provide just-in-time performance support, and improve productivity

Certain key reasons why “mobile learning” via PDAs, mobile phones, MP3 players, iPod, Kindle, E-paper eReaders, and anything besides that is amenable to being carried around, will increasingly become business necessities are:

1.    Growing complexity of the work environment

2.    Distributed workforce as a result of globalization

3.    Rapidly decreasing shelf-life of knowledge

4.    Information explosion across all spheres and domains

5.   Need for instant access to “useful” information to stay ahead of competition (The increasing importance given to speed and accessibility.)

6.    Need to collaborate and tap collective intelligence to solve complex problems

7.    Importance of being connected to networks (both the hyperlinked and the human kind) to have access to information at the point-of-need

8.    Effectiveness of the mobile device as a PPI (Personal Productivity Improvement) tool

The three key functions that emerge as the core of mobile learning then are: CONNECTION, COMMUNICATION, and COLLABORATION.

The concept map below depicts mobile affordances at three levels. The emergent ones are those that are likely to have the greatest impact on Human Performance Improvement and Personal Knowledge Management.

Source: Mobile Affordances by Clark Quinn

Industry Facts and Figures

This brings us to the business feasibility of including mobile learning as a service in our solution portfolio. 
Fast forward to 2009: The result of a research conducted by RBC Capital Market speaks for itself (Smartphone sales to beat PC sales by 2011).

A recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project predicts that by 2020, most people across the world will be using a mobile device as their primary means for connecting to the Internet (http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/270/report_display.asp). Mobiles are already well on the way to becoming a universal tool for communication of all kinds.

Source: 2009-Horizon-Report

This prediction is reinforced by the growth of the worldwide-converged mobile device market (commonly referred to as smartphones) that more than doubled that of the overall mobile phone market in the first quarter of 2010—a sign the segment is in high-growth mode again. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped  54.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010 (1Q10), up 56.7% from the same quarter a year ago. In contrast, the overall mobile phone market grew 21.7%.

Source: mLearning: The Latest Trends and Why You Should Care

A study of Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle for emerging technologies reveals the following:

For mobile learning, it is interesting to note that e-Book Readers have reached the Peak of Inflated Expectations while Tablet PC is climbing the Slope of Enlightenment. These, in conjunction with the rise of Web2.0 and other collaboration tools like Wikis and blogging, will ensure that the need for “always-connected” mobile devices will continue to grow.

And a year has passed since this Hype Cycle was created. It can be assumed that Tablet PC (being the latest in mobile devices that offers larger screen area and better view-ability) is sealing the arrival and acceptance of mobile devices as a tool for learning and collaboration.

What will give mobile learning a further boost is that some of the mobile devices now come with Operating Systems that allow for installation and removal of applications on the device. In the past, mobile devices came with fixed features, and a user perforce had to make do with the appliances that shipped with the device. In future, all phones will have sophisticated operating systems, sensors, and connectivity.

In ten years, mobile learning moved from being a “buzz word” and “yet-another-technology-hype” to a medium of learning and performance support that is here to stay.

Institutions are now opening up to mlearning and corporate organizations are asking for it, as the examples below will illustrate.

Examples of mobile learning implementation:

1.    Recently, underscoring its commitment to education, AT&T made a three-year, $1.8 million contribution to Abilene Christian University to support the expansion of the university’s mobile learning initiative.

2.    Duke University made headlines when it provided all incoming freshmen with their own 20-gigabyte iPods.

3.    The Virginia Tech College of Engineering became the first public institution to require all students to purchase a tablet PC beginning with incoming freshmen in fall 2006.

I would like to specially thank the Upside Learning team for their blog posts and resource links to mobile learning. Those have been immensely helpful in the development of my understanding about mlearning.I have also shamelessly quoted from their various posts. Acknowledgment given below.

1. Five Mobile Learning Implementation Tips
2. Mobile Learning Roundup: 10 Top Posts From Our Blog 
3. General Considerations for Mobile Learning (mLearning)
4. The Advent of Mobile Learning Technology

Related articles:

1. 8 reasons to focus on informal and social learning (janeknight.typepad.com)
2. Integrate the Web with your next Elearning Course (learninggeneralist.com)
3. New Amazon CloudFront Feature: Default Root Object (aws.typepad.com)
4. Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day: Understanding "learning" - some more thoughts (internettime.posterous.com)
5. Workplace Learning: Beyond Training (janeknight.typepad.com)
6. A unified performer-facing environment (jarche.com)
7. A Transition Path to the Future (janeknight.typepad.com)

What is Performance Support?

Reading a post on Performance Support from my co-blogger and colleague triggered of the following response:

Read on:

Performance Support (PS) is, says Tony Karrer, “Making information available to workers instead of forcing them to memorize it. That’s how we use Google and corporate wikis and instant messenger.”

What makes PS effective is the targeted learning that it provides and the “pull” approach inherent in its definition. PS, by definition, is access to information and knowledge as we need it, when we need it. It does not “push” information at learners in a pre-defined package but instead allows for selective learning. And this works best for adult learners. Remember, adults learn best if they learn in context, can apply their learning to their immediate work, and feel the need for that learning from within.

Thus, our programs based firmly on these tenets of PS are created after careful and thorough learner analysis, performance gap study and situational/contextual investigation. The programs are so designed as to allow learners to “pull” the information they need to execute their work better.

The programs follow minimalist design approach—that is, there is no redundancy which can easily put off adult learners, who anyways have busy work schedules and are pressed for time.

To summarize, how does the Performance Support Solutions as we design them facilitate productivity and growth and innovation?

Performance Support facilitates all of the above by empowering employees to:
– Execute better
– Deliver higher quality; thus lesser rework
– Demonstrate greater productivity
– Improve customer experience
– Display confidence by reducing dependencies on others
– Reduce time to deliver thus freeing up time for skill building, brainstorming, innovative thinking

The core idea is to reduce the need for training by providing information, aids, and learning on-demand tools at the moment of need.

When is Performance Support needed? Conrad Gottfredson aptly describes five moments of need when PS is required. He calls them "Learning at the moment of need."

1. When learning for the first time
2. When learning more
3. When applying what was learned or trying to remember
4. When things go wrong
5. When things change -- and there is now a new way to perform

Our industry has focused on the first two, it's now time for us to figure out how to address needs three through five as well. In today's scenario change management is going to be the biggest challenge and will call for innovative measures--in business processes and training deliveries.

Our easy-to-use performance-support solutions for software applications are principally designed to help learners during those five moments to:

– Understand the various features of the application
– Be aware of the purpose and the business need of the application (business process guidance)
– Understand the different roles and processes the application may support
– Get up to speed with the application
– Practice using it in a safe environment
– Understand the benefits of optimal usage
– See the consequences of making errors and learn from the mistakes
– Work independently and accurately

Please add to the thoughts and provide inputs.

Here's a link to a video that shows the difference in attitude between "hands on learning" and "you shove it down my throat" information, or "pull" vs. "push" as mentioned earlier on...
http://www.learningtown.com/video/2039019:Video:20878