Future of mobile learning

The closing session of the eLearning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning session was presented by Brent Schlenker, a research and emerging technologies evangelist for the eLearning Guild. His topic was the Trends and the Future of m-Learning. Rather than focusing on individual elements of mobile learning Brent looked at the bigger picture and had the participants thinking about the implications of information transfer to mobile devices.

Hinging his talk on the appreciation that technology does not stand still, Brent noted that "yesterday" technology (i.e. the internet) was about consuming – the read-only internet. Today we can interact with our cellphones by sending messages, sending images and video, etc. In the future a server will send information that it thinks we need.

This last concept is one that was touched upon in one of yesterday's sessions, a new "push" learning concept. I suppose the one area that scared me came from the chat pod where people were suggesting a workaround to the small screen in most mobile devices would be projection technology. The question is will businesses want their people to project their information in public? Does that then defeat the purpose of mobile technology? do we want to risk projecting the wrong kind of information in public? Do we want to be inflicted with other peoples videos? Its bad enough that we have to listen to their cellphone conversations.

Selling the Value of Mobile Learning

The second session of today's e-Learning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning today was titled Selling the Value of Mobile Learning presented by Joshua Byrne of Adayana. The main message that Joshua delivered was twofold: 1) make sure that the learning opportunity you are proposing to address with mobile learning is an appropriate venue for mobile learning, and 2) It's easier to implement if you are only creating for a consistent (which I take to mean a single) platform.

He talked more about the shortcomings of m-learning, such as:

• the difficulty of deploying to multiple platforms because of their inconsistency in how they render the end product
• need to keep visual elements to a minimum and time to interact with the learning short because of the difficulty of staring at the small smart phone screen for a long time.

The key to selling m-learning is to identify the "killer app" that will make learners migrate to using mobile learning. He defined killer app as that element of a technology that people will adopt because of its convenience. Examples he offered included spreadsheets within the desktop computer environment and the ability to make phone calls anywhere drove people to quickly adopting cell phones.

And when you recognize that killer app you have to be sure it solves an important problem; and then you explain the solution using an anecdote that will make it understood. He also recommended having a proof of concept so that the person you selling the idea to can actually try it. Not only does this demonstrate the usability of the m-learning tool, but it allows the customer to see the hardware that would deliver the learning in action.

Day 2 of eLearning Guild's m-learning forum

I started the second day of the eLearning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning forum by sitting in on the Anita Rosen's of ReadyGo, Inc., session on "Effective Mobiel Learning User Interface Design" and it was an intriguing cold shower in the warm glow of mobile learning juggernaut. Anita put it in perspective by noting that m-learning is the "bleeding edge" of learning. She noted that her success story revolved around her customer "Telefónica" which is a telephone provider and so they had the technology in place.

She cautioned that you really have to be sure of what you want to do and what your goals are because there are a number of limitations that must be overcome especially if you want to send your learning engagement out to a range of smart phones. Limitations include:

• Different operating systems support different levels of html and streaming animation
• Consider the environment that the learner will be taking the course it will be probably in a public area where there are distractions. Will the learner be able to stay focused

What she said works best is limited graphics and the graphics you do use should not have any embedded text because it will not be possible to read it. She cautioned against embedding too much audio or animations because of download speeds which she argued was around 19kbps. I found that a bit dubious and googled smartphone data transfer speeds and discovered that newer smartphone networks now boast of data transfer speeds equal to low-cost DSL connections.

Session 3: Learning at large: Mobile e-Learning Design

The final session for the day: Learning at Large: Mobile e-Learning Design presented by Clark Quinn. Clark was encouraging us to think outside the traditional learning paradigm and think about m-learning as performance support.

Things that he said that struck me as important:

M-learning is all about Learner's rights

• The right information
• to the right person
• at the right time
• in the right place
• in the right way
• on the right device

This was not original Clark Quinn, he was quoting Wayne Hodgins. He did offer some good advice when approaching m-learning beginning with "It's not about learning" it's about performance improvement; it should be brief and delivered in incremental amounts not a brain dump.

He also offered a new view of "push vs. pull" in that push is an intelligent learning engine supplying just-in-time information pro-actively to a learner in the field. He offered the example of a sales person who would automatically receive information on his cell phone or blackberry concerning the client he or she is visiting and the services they may already be buying or may be interested in buying.

Session 2: Investigating and Proposing Mobile Learning

So for the second session Investigating and Proposing Mobile Learning was ok, I guess you always have a little let down after the first session. The presenters – Andy Petroski and Sandy Hack from Highmark – were handicapped early on by audio problems. There presentation focused on their efforts to introduce m-learning capabilities into their company.

They seemed to be approaching m-learning from a traditional training view in which you have to make the learning interactive. As I noted in my posting after the first session, my observation is that if learning content is less than 10 minutes (and granted that is an arbitrary number not based on any research that I know of) it can be a passive presentation.

That said they provided a great laundry list of areas ripe for m-learning:

• Current company or product announcements (video, audio, or email)
• Product and inventory updates
• Just-in-time training or practice
• Any location-based and contextual learning
• Text-based (or simple animation) simulations and games
• Social learning
• Spaced practice
• Coaching or mentoring
• Case studies
• Job aids
• Audio or video
• Decision Support
• Tests and quizzes
• Charts and graphs

They used the phrase mobile learning library as a name for the repository for their m-learning content. It's a catchy name, that could catch on, although I think most content will end up residing in a LCMS so that it is accessible by both portable devices and computers.

They did note that challenges of initiating an m-learning initiative, starting with security. How do you deliver proprietary information to mobile devices in the field? If devices are distributed to employees preloaded with content how do you ensure they are not lost or stolen? While this is a problem with laptop computers as well as mobile devices, mobile devices being smaller can be more easily forgotten.

The other key issue is usability. Not everyone has great vision and the tiny screens on some multimedia cell phones could be a problem for people to view streaming video or text content. The duo did not have all the answers, but what they offered us was rough map of the terrain that the rest of us can use to explore m-learning in our environment.

eLearning Guild's Mobile Learning Forum

We just finished the opening session of the eLearning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning forum and I wanted to record my thoughts before I enter session 2. The first presenter was David Metcalf from the University of Central Florida.

Dr. Metcalf provided a broad overview of the environment that m-learning inhabits with examples of how m-learning is being applied. There was a whole lot of information delivered in 75 minutes. The big concepts I came away with are:

Content is still king. Metcalf built his whole proposal around the concept that mlearning for learning purposes is an integral part of performance support. Knowledge needs to sit separate from learning modules and performance support systems so that both can pick and choose from that knowledge base.

Long and short of it. My thoughts during elearning sessions is that long learning interactions (more than 10 minutes) need to be interactive while shorter sessions (10 minutes or less) can be more passive because you are not asking learners to sit still for a long time.

Topics to follow up on. Transcoder as a device to send content to a variety of mobile devices in fashion that the device can read; and vXML as a programming tool to deliver mLearning.

Learning Must be Set Free!

Leave it to Larry Lessig to re-awaken (if only for a moment - I'm over 50 you know) my revolutionary zeal. But I challenge any corporate training organization to watch this video and still endorse the idea that training (and learning) be delivered via a learning management system.

LMS's represent the pinnacle of push training vs. pull learning. The learner can only access the material by registering for a course and getting permission. They cannot add or revise the materials that exist in the LMS, but must go underground and spread their ideas and concepts unofficially until they are either squelched or finally come to the attention of a management suit who likes the concept and adopts it as his or her own. That management type then takes the glory for an idea that was germinated by someone further down the organizational chart.

Second Life/Real Life

I know the learning world is slowly going ga-ga over the possibility of migrating learning to a Second Life environment, but I have to confess that I have my doubts that the environment is ready for prime time. But it is ready for lampooning. This video I think really hits upon what most people experience when they first enter Second Life.


via videosift.com

Whither Goes eLearning?

This article by AP (PCs Losing Their Relevance in Japan) may bear watching and considering its impact on the future of learning via technology. We have already begun the discussion about how to position elearning for mobile systems, but perhaps we should accelerate the discussion.

I wonder if anyone has explored how the learning management systems that corporations use to track learner progress will play with these devices.

Information R Us

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Kansas State University – the same man who provided us with the thought-provoking video "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us" – is back with a new video about how the Web is changing how to archive and find information.


This piece has given me a lot to think about on a Sunday morning. Since I received my primary schooling before the public received access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, I recognize that I am still partially constrained by the concepts that Mr. Wesch presents in this new video.

Sure, I have made inroads into using the break-out concepts he records in this video, but I still find myself being pulled back to my roots and the need for some form of hierarchy. The need for organization, for structure, and for some form of expert to monitor and control information still exists. Not so much to tell us what to do or what to think, but to try and control the flow of information. Something like a traffic cop.

I could accept his suggestion that the hierarchy is no longer needed – that links and search engines are all that is required (or expected) – if I had some confidence that our schools are teaching our children how to search the web. There is a science (or maybe its an artform) to composing a finely-tuned search phrase. A means of getting around the commercial clutter that is returned on many search requests for information.

Maybe that needs to become the next phase in making our children computer literate. With computers common and freely available in schools and public libraries, the next big push in our schools must be teaching our children the language of the search engine so that they can find the information they need without being bombarded with useless information or commercial websites.

Halloween is just around the corner

Okay, it's a Saturday and I haven't posted anything in a while, but this is just too creepy for words. But it is perfect for Halloween!

I be' Mad Davy Kidd, Arrr!!!!

Ahoy me mateys! "Talk Like a Pirate Day"be next Wednesday. And since I be a land-lubber salty-dog wannabe, I be gettin' into the spirit of things. I decided to find out what my Pirate name would be. According to this quiz I be:

Mad Davy Kidd

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

If ye be wondering how to talk like a pirate, ye be needin' to watch this video:

Textbooks, are they needed?

And so the debate continues to rage. Stephen Downes responds to my position on the question of whether schools should buy textbooks or laptops.

School Textbooks, Yes or No ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes

I don't think it's radical at all. The money we spend on textbooks is wasted. We could put the same content onto websites, we could do it for free (because it's not like our academics are paid much of anything by publishers as it is) and the kids would be more comfortable with it.

In rereading my comments I believe I need to further elaborate on my position. I really agree that buying textbooks is a waste of money. They represent second source materials that, especially with social studies books, are watered down so as to be unoffensive to anyone. Does that mean the government should buy laptops for every student, or even require that parents buy them for their school-age children? No, being the father of three children I know how children unknowingly can be irresponsible. Let's face it, you drop a book on the ground you can pick it up and it still works. You drop a laptop on the ground and the chances it will still work diminish.

Please note, though, I said "if you drop a book on the ground...". I didn't say "textbook." There is a wealth of first source books that teachers can now draw upon to use in their lesson plans. And I am not precluding the use of technology in the classroom and at home, but don't go pouring money into buying laptops for students.

UPDATE:
Wow! I'm getting it from both sides, and once again I think its because I didn't express myself well. So here goes again.

To Manish's point, I am not against reading. In fact I argued that perhaps instead of textbooks teachers should use first-source books that were written by individuals who are tackling a particular topic and not trying to cover the spectrum of a curriculum. Now there are instances where, I think, textbooks are the way to go, specifically mathematics.

To Stephen's point, no technology is full-proof and while the OLPC computer is relatively inexpensive I can foresee a world of trouble when parents decide that it is not "good enough" for their child and have to buy something better. Thus, just like the sneakers wars, you see kids and their parents get into an ever escalating computer wars requiring kids to have the best laptop possible. Unfortunately, I tend to view government bureaucracies with disdain (having worked in one for three years) and I can envision school districts deciding that the OLPC computer is not enough and the budget for their purchases balloon ever upward. There is already a simmering taxpayer revolt against the money spent by school districts, I fear this would add to that revolt.

Now, I will say that flash memory drives maybe a useful alternative. I've written previously about their value as an alternative to participant guides in the corporate learning world. I could envision buying these and loading them with wiki software preloaded with links to images, video, audio, and yes, reading material that the child could use in school on classroom computers, study hall computers, and home computers.

By God, I love a lively debate!

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School textbooks, yes or no

There is a tremor within the blogosphere over the issue of school textbooks or to be more precise whether schools should continue to purchase them or re-channel the money to purchase "laptops and digital curriculum materials for students and teachers." Wesley Freyer appears to have fired the first shot with his post A call for a textbook purchasing moratorium. I'm looking at this from several different angles and I'm at a loss on where I stand on this.

As an instructional designer who creates training for corporations and government entities I see the textbooks we create--politely called "participant guides"--as close to useless. The standard approach is to take the PowerPoint slides used by the facilitator and output it with lines underneath for notetaking. I've always considered these as a waste of paper. I have advocated in the past that if we are going to go this route, then we should create them electronically and place them on an inexpensive jump drive. At least we are not overtly damaging the environment.

As a parent of three school-age children I would not want to think about the number of laptops the schools would have had to buy my children over the years. Being a proponent of technology, albeit a frugal one, I have obtained four previously-owned laptops for my children to use and only one is still working. Children are tough on laptops, just as they are tough on everything they own. A book can survive being dropped off the side of a bed a whole lot better than a computer.

Of course what makes a revolutionary, a revolutionary is his or her unbending resolution to the cause. So we have Stephen Downes disagreeing with Vicki Davis who argues that "I personally have to underline, write, rewrite, take notes in the margin and work with the text."

Stephen responds:

Now I use a computer to do this - and it's an important skill to have. Yes, some people still do it the old way. They shouldn't. And some people today just cut and paste from electronic texts. They shouldn't do that either - they are robbing themselves of their own learning if they do that.

That's a bit too radical for me. But I understand his viewpoint there needs to be a concerted effort to break old habits and I think Vicki is making that effort. I tend to agree with George Sieman who states:

I'm not convinced that technology is deterministic - i.e. that we must inexorably trudge the path down which it leads. The real call is one of systemic change - what needs to change to better prepare our students for tomorrow's world? Technology will no doubt play a part, but I'm not convinced that it must correspondingly be the tool through which the change is enacted.

Frankly, I would like to see schools stop spending money on textbooks simply because they are bland beyond compare, watered down so as not to offend anyone. Often control over what to purchase is not in the hands of the teacher, where it should lie, and instead is controlled by state boards of education who are often pressured by special interest groups.

Often the textbooks are so bad, teachers are forced to improvise and at times they improvise well. You go "electronic" as Wesley proposes will not resolve the problem. Textbooks will just migrate to e-books, the costs will probably remain the same, but the textbook publishers will just pocket the savings from not having to buy ink or paper.

The answer is not easy, but at the risk of sounding like someone who has been left on the wrong side of the digital divide, I think pencils, pens, paper, and books need to remain a piece of the overall educational puzzle. Let's not forget, these items were the first technologies introduced into the learning environment.

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Cosmos revisited

I forgot just how great the Carl Sagan documentary Cosmos was until I watched this 8 minute clip about evolution that I found at the blog Neatorama.

I haven't seen it since its first airing back in 1980, but ithis short clip makes me want to watch the whole thing again.

On Forgetting What We Learned

Quick blog item in response to a posting by Jay Cross. Jay was in Seattle last week for the 7th annual Gnomedex, a conference of "the world's leading bloggers, podcasters, and tech-savvy enthusiasts. On commenting about staying over for the unconference, Jay had this to say:

Internet Time Blog :: Forgetful in Seattle

tomorrow, raines cohen and kaliya hamlin are convening an unconference to process the official event. i just rearranged my flights so i can attend. instant replay may become de rigueur if people understand the mechanics of the forgetting curve. if you don’t reinforce what you learn, more than half of it will be gone a day or two later.


(Image from Jay Cross's Internet Time Blog)

This leaves me to wonder about learning retention rates in elearning courses. Let's face it, most entities that are investing in elearning are doing it on the cheap. By going the elearning route it saves them from having to a) send learners away to a classroom; b) feed them at the class; c) pay for trainers to appear; d) take SMEs away from their main productive job to deliver training, etc., etc.


Unfortunately, when they do go the elearning route, they often want to do that on the cheap, creating simple page-turners, possibly with narration and images, and a set of 10 or 20 multiple-choice questions at the end to validate that learning occurred.

Don't get me wrong I'm alright with that, it helps pay my bills, but it got me wondering how it would be possible to re-enforce learning from elearning courses. I figure there is a couple ways.

1. The first way might be to require the learner to retake the full course the next day to re-enforce what has been learned. This would be the simplest course, although it kind of smacks of brainwashing rather than facilitating learning.
   
2. Require the learner to retake the post-test to see how much of the previous day's learning stuck and then send the learner back to review the content that has been lost overnight, and only that content. This is technologically feasible, but I'm not sure all LMS's are up to the task.
3. The unconference approach seems to be the best bet, although I'm not convinced that higher-ups would buy into this.

The concept of elearning has been sold as an anytime, anywhere learning experience, which means every learner is entering and exiting the "classroom" at different times never even knowing if anyone else is in the classroom at the same time. But suppose you add a concept of an annual unconference on the topic is scheduled (either virtually or real-time) for everyone who has attended a specific elearning session. Let them discuss existing gaps and misunderstandings in their knowledge base amongst one another and generally support one another in filling those gaps and resolving those misunderstandings. Rather than sitting and listening to a facilitator they are building their own knowledge bases with the assistance of SMEs who only sit and listen, speaking up only to redirect conversations that appear to be going astray.

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Clicking through the lecture

Is this a piece of technology that the corporate world might want to consider for those lengthy lecture-driven presentations that often pass as training?

University of Delaware Responds to Classroom Clickers

Clickers are small wireless keypads that allow students to respond electronically to instructor questions at various points during class. They're generally especially useful in large lecture classes, where keeping all students engaged and at a similar level of understanding can be challenging.

According to the the article, students respond to prepared questions. I could foresee this as an opportunity for learners who would not normally wish to admit that they are not totally clear on a point, to "speak up" anonymously and let the presenter know that they need to focus some more time on the topic. If the presenter does not have the time to slow down on their presentation, the clicker device employed at the University of Delaware provides an opportunity for follow-up afterward.

Clicker responses are anonymous in class but are tracked by a device number, which is linked to a particular student. Some faculty members, for example, give a small amount of course credit to students for clicker responses.

Further review:

• Clickers in the Classroom by Douglas Duncan
• Educause Podcast: Clickers

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eLearning: More Than Just Page Turners

Curse you Stephen Downes! (he says tongue-in-cheek.) Every day I plan to start my day by browsing my learning blogs in Google Reader and I never seem to be able to get past Stephen's posts. Today he pointed me to Mark Bethelemy's post: The King is Dead – Long Live the King

For most (corporate) consumers of elearning, content means self-study modules, that sit in some sort of delivery system. In academic and formal education settings e-learning has a completely different connotation – involving collaboration, assessment, eportfolios etc – which is beginning to filter into the corporate space, but very slowly.

I've often thought about this and how page-turning elearning that resides inside the LMS firewall may not be conducive to facilitating lasting change. (I hate the term "change," but I use it for lack of a better word at this time.) As Mark points out, there is not freedom to branch, no ability to search, and unless specifically requested (and paid for) no ability to output the learning materials for later learning.

In an earlier post in May I had opined that

The LMS will function only as a registrant and as an assesor; all learning content will be housed on a separate server that can be accessed at any time without prior registration. The employee will be able to customize his or her PLE anyway they wish by dragging and dropping video, audio, whatever on to their page. Like Netvibes or Google, they can have multiple tabs on their PLE to divy up content.

This is very similar, but more limited then, Mark's comments:

6. Allowing users to connect with other people who are using the materials – perhaps creating reviews, adding ratings or making recommendations – is more a function of the delivery system rather than the content (unless the content is totally embedded into the delivery system pages). We do need an alternative model for learning management systems (as proposed by Tony Karrer a while back) I've long argued for a model based on that of the successful ecommerce providers such as Amazon, where the learning content is the product. The reviews and ratings would provide critical metadata for the learners.
   
   
7. Allowing materials to be targeted to particular users based on prior history, on stated preferences or on management requirements is exactly the Amazon model. It would provide a combined performance support and knowledge provision system. If combined with user generated content and a means of finding other people in the organisation with similar interests you then have an extremely powerful and effective learning marketing system – where learning can become an integral part of the organisational culture, rather than just an add-on.

In hind sight I might have read Tony's post on the future of LMS back in January and it subconsciously influenced my May post (belated hat tip to Tony!).

I could go on and on, but I have already budgeted 45 minutes to reading Mark's post, posting a replay at his site, and then drafting this post. Which means I will have to delay any further blog reading until this evening. But it was well worth it.

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Solid tips for Synchronous 3T

This article on 10 tips to facilitate Online Training for Online Faculty. My favorite:

Provide multiple ways of learning for multiple learning styles. Faculty going through training to teach online will come from a variety of academic disciplines and will have predilections in their thought processes reflective of their fields. So, have training modules produced as full text descriptions, narrated animations, step-by-step graphics, and quick checklists so that learners can use whichever one resonates with them.

In training, I think the corporate and government world all too often forget about providing performance support tools. We figure, "Hey, they got a participant's guide. What else do they want?"

Trends in the Living Networks: Launching the Web 2.0 Framework

Once again, Jay Cross points me to a blog post that totally blows me out of the water with its clarity of purpose. He pointed me to Ross Dawson's Trends in the Living Networks: Launching the Web 2.0 Framework. (Just follow the link above to read Ross's description and to download the full four-slide presentation.)

It truly does summarize the role and elements of the Web 2.0 phase of the Internet better then I could ever achieve. Ross captures it all in three slides. It took me 15 slides. I am humbled by greatness.