mobile Archives - Page 9 of 23

Beyond eBooks

1 October 2012 by Clark 5 Comments

Among the things I’ve been doing lately is talking to folks who’ve got content and are thinking about the opportunities beyond books. This is a good thing, but I think it’s time to think even further. Because, frankly, the ebook formats are still too limited.

It’s no longer about the content, it’s about the experience. Just putting your content onto the web or digital devices isn’t a learning solution, it’s an information solution. So I’m suggesting transcending putting your content online for digital, and starting to think about the opportunities to leverage what technology can do. It started with those companion sites, with digital images, videos, audios, and interactives that accompany textbooks, but the opportunities go further.

We can now embed the digital media within ebooks. Why ebooks, not on the web? I think it’s primarily about the ergonomics. I just find it challenging to read on screen. I want to curl up with a book, getting comfortable.

However, we can’t quite do what I want with ebooks. Yes, we can put in richer images, digital audio, and video. The interactives part is still a barrier, however. The ebook standards don’t yet support it, though they could. Apple’s expanded the ePub format with the ability to do quick knowledge checks (e.g. true/false or multiple choice questions). There’s nothing wrong with this, as far as it goes, but I want to go further.

I know a few, and sure that there are more than a few, organizations that are experimenting with a new specification for ePub that supports richer interaction, more specifically pretty much anything you can do with HTML 5. This is cool, and potentially really important.

Let me give you a mental vision of what could be on tap. There’s an app for iOS and Android called Imaginary Range. It’s an interesting hybrid between a graphic novel and a game. You read through several pages of story, and then there’s an embedded game you play that’s tied to, and advances, the story.

Imagine putting that into play for learning: you read a graphic novel that’s about something interesting and/or important, and then there’s a simulation game embedded where you have to practice the skills. While there’s still the problem with a limited interpretation of what’s presented (ala the non-connectionist MOOCs), in well-defined domains these could be rich. Wrapping a dialog capability around the ebook, which is another interesting opportunity, only adds to the learning opportunity.

I’ll admit that I think this is not really mobile in the sense of running on a pocketable, but instead it’s a tablet proposition. Still, I think there’s real value to be found.

Mobile tradeoffs

12 September 2012 by Clark Leave a Comment

A mobile solution is not about the right answer, it’s about the right answer for you. You need to understand the tradeoffs involved in deciding how you’re going to go about creating a mobile solution. Case in point: what’s your development platform?

It’s easy to say “we need to develop an app” (aka ‘there’s an app for that’). And there are reasons to develop an app, such as speed and elegance.

You could also say: “we’ll do mobile web”. Again, there are reasons to go this way, too: it’ll work on more devices.

But there are tradeoffs. Apps can be expensive. Mobile web may be slow and clunky on any particular device. You can’t just choose one without determining your needs: who’s the audience, what are they trying to do, what do you control, and what’s a given.

You should also be aware of a middle ground, so called hybrid apps. They minimize some of the extremes of both, though they’re no panacea either. You have to know the space, and your own context, to make an informed decision.

Triggered by an apparent knee-jerk reaction.

mLearning signs of growth: now Asia

7 September 2012 by Clark Leave a Comment

As I mentioned in my bit on the general stage at mLearnCon, mobile is the fastest-growing giant industry in history (quoting Tomi Ahonen), reaching a billion dollars in the shortest time ever. This growth has been paralleled for mlearning as well. I’m seeing signs everywhere…

The eLearning Guild’s excellent mLearnCon mlearning conference has grown every year since it’s start 3 years ago. There are more vendors, more attendees, more interest. It’s been a very valuable conference for mlearning. And my mobile learning strategy workshop was so popular at mLearnCon that we’re running it again at DevLearn!

More people are contributing (and not just the bandwagon folks). Complementing pioneers like Judy Brown, David Metcalf, Jason Haag, Robert Gadd, Kris Rockwell, etc. are new folks with valuable perspectives like RJ Jacquez and Mayra Aixa Villar. (See the Designing mLearning resources page for twitter handles.)

New books are coming out too. Chad Udell’s new Learning Everywhere is a valuable addition to the canon, complementing Gary Woodill’s analyst take on the space in the Mobile Learning Edge and my own two books on design. It goes deeper into development as well as having a nice business perspective.

And Inge “Ignatia” de Waard is hosting a MOOC on mobile learning. All this is exciting stuff.

The capstone, to me, is that the first mobile learning conference in Asia is being launched this fall. In full disclosure, I’m honored to be keynoting (it’s becoming real, with my travel planned, and schedule set), but it looks like a great launch to what will hopefully be a continuing event. If you’re in the Asia Pacific region, and are interested in mLearning, it’s the place to be. There are a number of names I recognize and more to meet. If you do go, say hi!

The Tablet Proposition

28 August 2012 by Clark 12 Comments

RJ Jacquez asks the question “is elearning on tablets really mlearning“. And, of course, the answer is no, elearning on tablets is just elearning, and mlearning is something different. But it got me to thinking about where tablets do fit in the mlearning picture, in ways that go beyond what I’ve said in the past.

I wasn’t going to bother to say why I answered no before I get to the point of my post, but then I noticed that more than half of the respondents say it is, (quelle horreur), so I’ll get that out of the way first. If your mobile solution isn’t doing something unique because of where (or when) you are, if it’s not doing something unique to the context, it’s not mlearning. Using a tablet like a laptop is not mlearning. If you’re using it to solve problems in your location, to access information you need here and now, it’s mobile, whether pocketable or not. That’s what mlearning is, and it’s mostly about performance support, or contextualized learning augmentation, it’s not about just info access in convenience.

Which actually segues nicely into my main point. So let’s ask, when would you want a tablet instead of a pocketable when you’re on the go? I think the answer is pretty clear: when you need more information or interactivity than a pocketable can handle, and you’re not as concerned about space.

Taking the first situation: there are times when a pocketable device just can’t cope with the amount of screen real estate you need. If you need a rich interaction to establish information: numerous related fields or a broad picture of context, you’re going to be hard pressed to use a pocketable device. You can do it if you need to, with some complicated interface design, but if you’ve the leeway, a tablet’s better.

And that leeway is the second point: if it’s not running around from cars to planes, but instead either on a floor you’re traversing in a more leisurely or systematic way, or in a relatively confined space, a tablet is going to work out fine. The obvious places in use are hospitals or airplane cockpits, but this is true of factory floors, restaurants, and more.

There is a caveat: if large amounts of text need to be captured, neither a pocketable nor a tablet are going to be particularly great. Handwriting capture is still problematic, and touchscreen keyboards aren’t industrial strength text entry solutions. Audio capture is a possibility, but the transcription may need editing. So, if it’s keyboard input, use something with a real keyboard: netbook or laptop.

So, that’s my pragmatic take on when tablets take over from pocketables. I take tablets to meetings and when seated for longer periods of time, but it’s packed when I’m hopping from car to plane, on a short shopping trip, etc. It’s about tradeoffs, and your tradeoff, if you’re targeting one device, will be mobility versus information. Well, and text.

The point is to be systematic and strategic about your choice of devices. Opportunism is ok, but unexamined decisions can bite you. Make sense?

Quinnovation online and on the go

1 August 2012 by Clark Leave a Comment

First, I have to tout that my article on content systems has been published in Learning Solutions magazine. It complements my recent post on content and data.

Second, I’ll be presenting on mobile at the eLearning Guild’s Performance Support Symposium in September in Boston. Would welcome seeing you there. Also will be doing a deeper ID session for Mass. ISPI while I’m there.

Third, I’ll be keynoting the MobilearnAsia conference in Singapore at the end of October. It’s the first in the region, and if you’re in the neighborhood it should be a great way to get steeped in mobile.

Finally, I’ll be at the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn in November, presenting my mobile learning strategy workshop, among other things.

If you’re at one of these events, say “hi”!

You know you’re mobile when…

26 July 2012 by Clark 3 Comments

I was thinking about the different ways you can be mobile, and I think it’s broader than most people think. So I tried to capture it in a diagram. For once, I’m not particularly happy with it, but in the spirit of ‘thinking out loud’…

When are you mobile?

The notion is there that you’re mobile when you’re not at your desk with your desktop or even laptop. Now, sometimes you have a laptop with you, but increasingly I think it’ll be tablet or just a pocketable device (and see my earlier distinctions around those, particularly that laptops don’t typically count). When you’re at your desk, you’re clearly using your desktop or laptop for work, and you’re not mobile.

With the caveat that if the organization is blocking access to some sites (e.g. any search term like ‘game’ or social media site like Facebook and Twitter), you’re highly likely to use your mobile device to get around this. Rightly so, I must say. Increasingly your network is part of your brain and your solution set, and anyone who’d block it is keeping you from being as effective as possible. If they’re worried about, or you really aren’t using it for work purposes, the problem is not the network.

Now, you can be out of your particular workspace but still in either your own office, a satellite office, or even in someone else’s office (e.g. client or partner’s office), but you’re in an office. You may be having meetings, making a site visit, whatever. I reckon attending a conference or a workshop is similar. There you are mobile, unless you’ve lugged your desktop with you (umm, no). Again, increasingly it’ll be a tablet or a pocketable.

And there’s the particular situation of being ‘on the go’, when you’re actually in motion, in a way station (in a shop, restaurant, coffeeshop, or pub), or even some place where there’s no real seating (factory floor, for example). There you’re far more likely to be using your pocketable device in opposition to the laptop or tablet.

You’ll still be accessing your social network, too. More so; you’ll not only getting answers and assistance, but updating people as well.

There are a couple of unique situations. One is attending a virtual meeting. At your desktop, you’d use it. When in another context, you can use your laptop or your tablet. It’s not quite as feasible with a pocketable device (though that will change). Your mobile, but your part of an out-of-context or virtual context event, so it’s conceptually distinct, though practically it may not be.

The other is context-specificity. If the device is doing something unique because of where or when you are, it’s really a different situation than accessing just any content or capability you need. Particularly if the interaction is context-specific. And capturing your context, with media, really is a different category.

The point I’m trying to make is that, particularly in the middle category, mobile is more ubiquitous than you think. You know you’re mobile when you’re not at your desk. And that’s an increasing amount of the time for most people. Which is healthier anyway.

mLearning 3.0

18 July 2012 by Clark 2 Comments

Robert Scoble has written about Qualcomm’s announcement of a new level of mobile device awareness. He characterizes the phone transitions from voice (mobile 1.0) to tapping (2.0) to the device knowing what to do (3.0). While I’d characterize it differently, he’s spot on about the importance of this new capability.

I’ve written before about how the missed opportunity is context awareness, specifically not just location but time. What Qualcomm has created is a system that combines location awareness, time awareness, and the ability to build and leverage a rich user profile. Supposedly, according to Robert, it’s also tapped into the accelerometer, altimeter, whatever sensors there are. It’ll be able to know in pretty fine detail a lot more about where you are and doing.

Gimbal is mostly focused on marketing (of course, sigh), but imagine what we could do for learning and performance support!

We can now know who you are and what you’re doing, so:

a sales team member visiting a client would get specialized information different than what a field service tech would get at the same location.
a student of history would get different information at a particular location such as Boston than an architecture student would
a person learning how to manage meetings more efficiently would get different support than a person working on making better presentations

I’m sure you can see where this is going. It may well be that we can coopt the Gimbal platform for learning as well. We’ve had the capability before, but now it may be much easier by having an SDK available. Writing rules to take advantage of all the sensors is going to be a big chore, ultimately, but if they do the hard yards for their needs, we may be able to ride on the their coattails for ours. It may be an instance when marketing does our work for us!

Mobile really is a game changer, and this is just another facet taking it much further along the digital human augmentation that’s making us much more effective in the moment, and ultimately more capable over time. Maybe even wiser. Think about that.

An integrating design?

27 June 2012 by Clark 8 Comments

In a panel at #mlearncon, we were asked how instructional designers could accommodate mobile. Now, I believe that we really haven’t got our minds around a learning experience distributed across time, which our minds really require. I also think we still mistakenly think about performance support as separate from formal learning, but we don’t have a good way to integrate them.

I’ve advocated that we consider learning experience design, but increasingly I think we need performance experience design, where we look at the overall performance, and figure out what needs to be in the head, what needs to be in the world, and design them concurrently. That is, we look at what the person knows how to do, and what should be in their head, and what can be designed as support. ADDIE designs courses. HPT determines whether to do a job aid (the gap is knowledge), or training (the gap is a skill). I’m not convinced that either really looks at the total integration (and willing to be wrong).

What was triggered in my brain, however, was that social constructivism might be a framework within which we could accomplish this. By thinking of what activities the learners would be engaged in, and how we’d support that performance with resources and other learners and performers as collaborators when appropriate, we might have a framework. My take on social constructivism has it looking at what can and should be co-owned by the learner, and how to get the learner there, and it naturally involves resources, other people, and skill development.

So, you’d look at what needs to be done, and think through the performance, and ask what resources (digital and human) would be there with the performer, the gap between your current learner and the performer you’d need, and how to develop an experience to achieve that end state. The notion is what mental design process designers may need going forward, and what framework provides the overarching framework to support that design process.

It’s very related to my activity framework, which nicely resonates as it very much focuses on what you can do, and resourcing that, but that framework is focused on reframing education to make it skills focused and developing self learning. This would require some additions that I’ll have to ponder further. But, as always, it’s about getting ideas out there to collect feedback. So, what say you?

5 Phrases to Make Mobile Work

20 June 2012 by Clark 2 Comments

Today I was part of a session at the eLearning Guild’s mLearnCon mlearning conference on Making Mobile Work. For my session I put my tongue slightly in cheek and suggested that there were 5 phrases you need to master to Make mLearning Work. Here they are, for your contemplation.

The first one is focused on addressing either or both of yourself or any other folks who aren’t yet behind the movement to mobile:

How does your mobile device make you smarter?

The point being that there are lots of ways we’re all already using mobile to help us perform. We look up product info while shopping, use calculators to split up the bill, we call folks for information in problem-solving like what to bring home from the grocery store, and we take photos of things we need to remember like hotel room numbers or parking spots. If you aren’t pushing this envelope, you should be. And if folks aren’t recognizing the connection between how they help themselves and what the organization could be doing for employees or customers, you should be helping them.

The second one focuses on looking beyond the initial inference from the phrase “mlearning”:

Anything but a course!

Here we’re trying to help our stakeholders (and designers) think beyond the course and think about performance support, informal learning, collaboration, and more. While it might be about augmenting a course, it’s more likely to be access to information and people, as well as computational support. Mobile learning is really mobile performance support and mobile social.

The third key phrase emphasizes taking a strategic approach:

Where’s the business need?

Here we’re emphasizing the ‘where’ and the ‘business’. What’s important is thinking about meeting real business needs, with metrics and everything. What do the folks who are performing away from their desks need? What small thing could you be doing that would make that activity have a much more positive impact on the bottom line?

The fourth phrase is specifically focused on design:

What’s the least I can do for you?

It’s not about doing everything you can, but instead focusing on the minimal impact to get folks back into the workflow. Mobile is about the 20% of the features that will meet 80% of the need. It’s about the least assistance principle. It’s about elegance and relevance.

From there, we finish by focusing on our providers:

Do you have a mobile solution?

Look, mobile is more than just a tactic, it’s a platform, and you need to recognize it as such. Frankly, if a vendor of an enterprise solution (except, perhaps, for computationally intensive work like 3D rendering and so on) doesn’t have a mobile solution, I reckon it’s a deal-breaker. This is where mobile is really the catalyst for change: it’s bringing a full suite of technology support whenever and wherever needed, so we need to start thinking about what a full suite of support is. What is a full performance ecosystem?

So there you have it, the gist of the presentation. If you master the concepts behind these phrases and employ them judiciously, I do believe you’ll have a better chance of making mlearning work.

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