Preparing for Mobile Learning – Part I
What is Mobile Learning? When I think about mobile learning,
m-Learning, and what my clients within the organization mean when they talk
about it can really be broke down into 3 categories of thought. The first two seem to be the most common when
working with clients outside of the L&D environment.
Visible via mobile platform: These clients are typically driven by the
platform being used and not necessarily the “Mobile” approach. In cutting costs on having multiple devices
some groups are moving to tablets to reduce overhead, lifecycle management and
meet the demands of their users. The
main concern when is comes to learning is that the content previously accessible
to the associates is still usable via their mobile device.
Same content but taken outside of normal workspace: The next group is trying to utilize all
available time an associate has and allow for learning to occur during those
downtimes to be as effective as possible.
There is a lot of value to this approach, especially if your intended
audience is not typically sitting behind a computer all day. I recently redeveloped some senior leadership
training that was focused around learners who managed multiple locations and
was on the road the majority of the time.
I wanted to have training available to them that they could pull down to
their device and take when/where they wanted.
I went even further with this group and designed the content to be
pulled down when they had external access to information and allowed them to
take the training offline and push back the status the next time they were
“online”. Now our learners can pull
their learning down, take their training while on that long flight and push
back to the system their progress the next time they connect to the
network. We now have hours of downtime
turned into uptime.
Both Quinn (2000) and Pinkwart, et al. (2003) defined
m-learning as “e-learning that uses mobile devices”. This is the mindset that we are challenged
with on a daily basis. I like to use an
example I personally had one day while brewing craft beer at home. I was modifying an IIPA recipe when I needed
to know how many ounces there was in a gallon.
I didn’t go online and begin a course on unit conversion or a cooking
course on modifying quantities to increase or decrease quantities, I simply
picked up my mobile device and asked Google how many ounce in a gallon. In less than a second I knew there was 128
ounces in a gallon and I was able to quickly go back to the task at hand. This is what I consider “Performance
Support”.
Performance support: Here is where I get really excited about the
possibility of Mobile Learning. We
already have our e-Learning content and our facilitator led training, but what
happens post learning. We no longer need
to carry cheat sheets of unit conversion with us to brew beer, we just need to
know where to go and get the information.
Performance support isn’t designed to teach entirely new concepts to
learners but to support the knowledge they already have and to add to it. I see a lot of examples online about
performance support and sales. You are
sitting in your car outside a client’s office and you know this sale is going
to be hard to close. You pull up your
sales training performance support designed content and quickly find “5 quick
closing pitches for a tough client”, you review the companies recommended
pitches and head into your meeting.
Notice I said “quickly”!
Performance support is very dependent on speed to information. Just look at the apps on your phone right
now. Are any of the apps you use on a
regular basis complicated to use? Do you
need to spend several minutes to get the information you are trying to
find? Most likely not, or you would have
deleted that app and found another one that does it better.
There is a lot more involved with the types of mobile
learning and things to consider when determining what your needs are, but there
are plenty of books out there that cover this.
My goal is to get you thinking about the bigger picture. Below are two links to books I would
recommend reading on Mobile Learning.
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