I’ve had my head down on a couple of projects, but I can now announce one of them: the eLearning Guild’s Mobile Learning Research Report is now available. This is a timely release to help set the context for their upcoming mLearnCon mlearning conference.  (And, yes, I’m speaking, running a pre-conference workshop, all the usual. :)

In it, I review the latest trends in the mobile market, and then synthesize the results of the Guild’s member surveys.  Here’s the marketing blurb:

Mobile learning is not just a fad. It is instead a transformative opportunity both for learning, and the learning organization. Mobile learning means both augmenting formal learning, and moving to performance support, informal, and social learning as well. If you have not yet done so, it is now both possible and desirable to put in place a mobile experiment to create an mLearning strategy articulated with the overall learning, performance, and technology strategy.

The actual implementation of mLearning is growing faster in some capabilities than others. According to eLearning Guild research data collected from thousands of members worldwide, the use of mLearning for social networking and communication is more prevalent than it is for the development of custom applications, with 38.1% of organizations either implementing, designing, or building the business case for social networking and only 25.7% for custom application development.   Of those who have conducted an mLearning implementation, 50% are seeing positive returns.

In this report, author Clark Quinn begins his examination of mobile learning by establishing a foundation with some context and a discussion of devices and major categories of application. Clark then analyzes eLearning Guild research data about how people are currently using mobile, and discusses implementation issues, before taking a look to the future.

The report is free for all paid members of the eLearning Guild, with plenty of other benefits.  Check it out.

As part of an initiative for ASTD’s upcoming International Conference and Exposition, I was filmed as I responded to 10 questions around mobile (if you’re there, hope to hear how it goes) from Tony Bingham (he came in via conference call). Here is what I wrote up as thoughts before the filming (and then answered spontaneously, but mindful of what I’d written).

1. How do you define mobile learning?

I really think mobile learning is about augmenting the brain wherever and whenever you are, or, as I say “accessorize your brain“.  Yes, you can get into elegant definitions (I like how Judy Brown mentions size, familiarity, and omnipresence), but really it’s about how it’s used.  I advocate not thinking about courses on a phone, but instead about augmenting formal learning and augmenting performance.

2. Why mobile / why now?

I think the reason mobile is becoming ‘hot’ is that the devices are converging and offering powerful capabilities in a small factor, and that mobile devices are now ubiquitous (at least in the developed world, and are at surprising levels in the developing world.  But perhaps most importantly, as I think about it now (and not what I said or wrote originally), is that the space is maturing. We have workable app stores and easy usage.  The power is now out there, and the mechanisms are now there to take advantage of it. When a small company like Google is saying they’re developing for mobile first, something significant is happening.

3. Where is mobile learning having the biggest impact today – how do you see that changing in the future?

Right now, I think the biggest impact is in quick access to needed problem-solutions, whether it’s content, computation, or the right person.  In the future, I expect to see more context sensitivity (e.g. augmented reality).  The opportunity already exists to get information based upon where you are, and I hope we’ll see more, but also support for ‘when’ you are (that is, what you are doing regardless of where it is), and of course the combination of both.

4. How does mobile learning support other types of learning at the organizations with whom you work (e.g., formal learning / social learning)? Has it replaced any other learning modes?

I see mobile learning as providing a way to extend the formal learning in time and space, and while the time one is important, again I think the space one will be come important.  I don’t see mobile learning as a replacement though I think it can spark a useful shift to consider performance support in addition to or in place of formal learning.

5. What impact has mobile learning had on instructional design?

I think that mlearning has had a beneficial impact on instructional design in several ways. For one, it requires minimalism, and that’s good for elearning in general from the perspective of the learner experience.  Second, I think it has emphasized more granularity in design, separating out concepts from examples from practice activities, and that’s beneficial in terms of looking forward to adaptive and personalized systems. Overall, I think it has helped foment a greater emphasis on separating out the content itself from how it’s delivered.

6. From a development perspective – do you think the industry should be focused on apps or the web for mobile learning – do you see this changing in the future?

I don’t think there’s one answer, it’s horses for courses, as they say.  Mobile web currently has a greater reach across platforms, and is easier to develop.  On the other hand, it can have limitations in terms of taking advantage of device-specific capabilities.  And, of course, there is still such dynamism that whatever answer you give now might change between when I write this and you read it.  In the longer term, I hope for a cross-platform development environment that allows production of highly interactive experiences and the delivery can be platform-specific for most devices and then have a web option for other devices.

7. How do you recommend dealing with the various platforms that are currently available – and, what do you consider in making those decisions?

The platform solution depends mightily on many factors: who the audience is, what devices they have, what the need is, and what resources are available all can play a factor in deciding what platform to choose.  Increasingly, you also have to ask what the context of the individual is, and the task as well.

8. Please talk about the importance (or not) of senior executive and organization support for mobile learning.

Like all organizational initiatives, top-down support is really beneficial.  While stealth operations, bottom-up grassroots initiatives can succeed and have done so, in the long term you want executives to ‘get’ the value. Increasingly, we’re seeing that executives are using smartphones and tablets, so the opportunity is there.

9. What advice would you give to someone thinking about implementing mobile learning in their organization?

Think strategically.  And, at the same time, get your hands dirty with a first experiment. That may seem contradictory, but you want to be developing both your experience with it as you start incorporating mobile into your long-term thinking.  Naturally all the pre-existing wisdom holds true: start small, find something easy that will have a big impact, etc.

As I think of it now, I think you should do several things:

1. make sure all the content you generate (and post-hoc do this for legacy content) is mobile-accessible and mobile deliverable.
2. find mobile solutions for all your internal communication channels: phone, text messages, email, but also access to social networks, wikis, etc.
3. create a place for mobile-generated content – images, videos, etc – to be stored and shared

10.   What do you see in the future for mobile learning?

I naturally mentioned my interest in slow learning, beginning to move away from the event model and start thinking about a more mentor-like relationship in developing individuals over time, in ways that more naturally mimic the way our brains learn.  Also, of course, I think alternate reality games will combine the best of simulation game learning and mobile learning, making learning closer to the real task, more engaging, more distributed, and consequently more effective.

Those are my answers, what are yours?

 

I had a conversation today where I was asked about the difference with a tablet versus a smartphone (or pad versus pod :).  This is something I’ve been thinking about, and some thoughts coalesced as I answered. I don’t think this is my definitive answer, but it’s worth wrestling with (learning out loud and all that).

The must-read for mobile designers, The Zen of Palm, shows data collected from years ago on the early Palm devices (Figure 1.3) which showed the difference between usage of desktops versus handhelds. The general pattern is that folks access desktops a few times a day for long periods, while handheld devices were accessed many times a day for very short periods.

I believe this is still largely true: we tend to use our smartphones and similar devices as learning/performance support as quick access to information.  While we might listen to music, that’s a different thing.   Yes, there will be times we access a video or read a document or even listen to a podcast, but the usual use is as quick access.

And I think we use tablets more like desktops.  We settle down with them for longer periods of time, and engage more deeply. They’re often about content consumption, and they may also be for content creation, in both cases more so than the smaller devices.  And I think it’s more than a quantitative difference, I really do feel it’s qualitative.  Yes, this blurs when we’re talking about 7.1″ tablets instead of 10″, but overall I think it holds.

Which naturally leads to the question of what’s the difference between a tablet and a desktop?  And here I’m on stranger ground.  I think one of the interesting phenomena of the tablet experience is the ‘intimacy’ of the experience. You’re holding the device and touching it.  It’s in your arms, instead of at arms-length.  And I believe, without having come up with empirical ways to document, that’ it’s a more personal engagement. It helps that the first successful instance, the iPad, has an overall aesthetic that’s elegant, so media look good and the user experience feels natural.  I hate the over-used phrase ‘intuitive’, but many inferences about how to use the device play out.

So, in a sense is the tablet a mobile device?  When it’s acting like a desktop: being used to take notes, for instance, I don’t really consider it a truly mobile device, but when it can be with you to meet needs that you’re unlikely to consider meeting with a laptop, and it can deliver some meaningful interaction that’s more immediate than you’d accomplish with even a netbook, a tablet definitely is a mobile device.  And there are plenty of those times.

Fundamentally, though they can share apps, I think a pad serves a different need than a pod.  I think the pod is more performance support and learning augmentation, while the pad is more full learning.  There is overlap, and each can act as the other, but if you’ve got both, I reckon you’ll find this to be the case.

Naturally, I’m still thinking that a real learning opportunity for the pad will be when they can be more than content consumption, and actually do meaningful interaction. Not just quizzes, which can be done now via mobile web, but immersive simulations and serious games.  And you can do that now, but  not in a cross-platform way. We need a standard, like ePub for ebooks, but one that supports simulation-driven interaction.  Flash could’ve been it, but the performance problems have been a barrier.  It’s not clear whether HTML5 will meet my desires, but otherwise we need something else.  When we’ve got that capability, we have a market to provide more meaningful experiences to learners.

The implications for design are to not be exclusive to either, but if you’re designing performance support, you might be thinking more pod, and if you are thinking more full task and full learning, you might be thinking more pad.  That’s what I think, what do you think?