Is Mobile Learning Too Shallow?

Conversations about mobile learning are happening all over. One community asking questions about mLearning is the community of instructional designers who are wrestling with how to approach mobile learning. As ISD’s, our tendency is to provide the learner with the most information we can as long as we can find it to be relevant to the learning need. However, the prevailing knowledge we have about mLearning suggests that we provide less content, not more. But is that really the right way to approach it? Is the reality that we have to provide less content, or is it more a matter of structuring and access to the information that should drive our design decisions?

We make a lot of assumptions about mobile learners and their behaviors (i.e. they are traveling on a bus/train, they don’t have any time, and they’re not looking for a vast body of information just an answer to a simple question), but are those assumptions right? And even if they are right, do we know that users will always be in those situations and unable or unwilling to access more content and add to their depth of knowledge about the subject.

I don’t know all the answers to those questions, but I am of the mind that we can provide deeper knowledge to meet the needs of our “typical” mobile learner, AND support their possible desire to learn more about a topic.

I do think we should focus most on addressing the learner’s perceived immediate need. But I also think that we can provide more knowledge to deepen the experience if we think critically about the navigation and media we provide.

One example I can think of is a simple mobile learning application about driving a car. You could structure your navigation to make the basic, most immediately necessary content about steering, speed and how to use the turn signals available as the storefront to the application. You could also provide a set of short videos demonstrating how to do each of those activities.  However, beyond that you could provide additional links and navigational components on each video page to give the learner an opportunity to see the inner workings of a steering mechanism or a link demonstrating how speed ratios effect braking.

My example is very basic and we know that a lot of complex content will have to be covered in mobile format. But I don’t think we should hold back on content that can provide depth, we simply need to think of how to allow the user to get to it without bogging them down with too many distracting choices that will inhibit the effectiveness of your learning product.

Any ideas about how you could structure your content for easy access to the most necessary information, while maintaining the learner’s ability to dive deeper?

The Concept of Immediacy in Mobile Learning

 

Harris Interactive recently did a poll for Ask.com (article provided by Mobile Marketer) to reveal answers to questions about how mobile users really use their devices to find information. One thing that stuck out was that users really want their information fast and they are often searching for specific answers to specific questions rather than large macro-level topics.

Some interesting facts from the poll:

• “66 percent of mobile users said they are more likely to ask timely questions when they are not in front of their computer”
• 81% of 1500 respondents said they expect information immediately
• “30 percent—of smartphone users leverage their mobile phones to access the Web more than they use their computer to access the same information”

• “Forty percent of smartphone users indicated that they are more influenced by users’ opinions given within the last day than users’ opinions that were given a month or so ago.” – That number goes to 67% for 18-24 year olds

Polls like this indicate that we are dealing with a very different learner in many cases than the learner we educate on the desktop or in the classroom. This learner is often not looking to learn “how to ride a bicycle”, rather the learner wants to know “how to push the pedals” (I know the analogy could be better, but I hope you get the point).

It’s tempting for us as instructional designers and developers to want to provide more context to our learners so they have a broader and deeper understanding of subject matter. I think that we are taking the right approach by leaning toward giving our learners knowledge and depth rather than tiny granular pieces. However, if we do that we may also show a lack of respect for our learner’s needs at the time. Mobile learning should be about giving the learner the content they need in a timely fashion so they can get the job done, we should not be making decisions for our learners.

BUT… we also know that learners often want to learn more about a subject if that information is easily accessible. We can give them what they need, while also providing them with what they want in the form of greater context. Think about how the immediacy of information can drive your learners to your learning application, but also how you can take advantage of the fact they are there. Take a look at a few mobile sites on your device and see how they do it.  Some recent mobile learning sites recommended to me are:

Target: http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile.jsp

Toyota: http://touch.toyota.com/index.html

American Express: https://online.americanexpress.com/myca/mobl/us/login.do

These sites are not perfect by any means and they are not learning sites, but they may lend some ideas to you for your next mobile learning application. A

How m-Learning Can Effect Net Neutrality

I haven’t posted in awhile,  but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been paying attention to the mobile world. And one thing I’ve noticed is the nervousness building in the mobile community regarding net neutrality and what some companies are accused of wanting to do to block net neutrality. This post from engadget attempts to explain how Google and Verizon are trying to deal with net neutrality. Overall, one major fear is that companies will try to limit access to certain content by providing a tiered system of access to the networks, charging higher prices for faster Internet access, network speed, and access to content. Companies could block certain content and allow favorable exposure to consumers if a company pays to have that exposure. Some liken this to the television world, where companies pay to advertise and gain exposure to a consumer base and content is censored.

You may be asking yourself, how does this effect mobile learning? Well, I can see it playing out in several different ways. First of all, learning content is something that we all want and learning content can really help to level the playing field for those who may normally lack access to good educational content in their local communities. And educational content can come in many forms, i.e. tutorials, manuals, courseware, web-based college courses, standard operating procedures, videos, forum/blog posts, etc.

Some net neutrality advocates (and I think we all are advocates of freedom and access, at least to some extent) fear that mobile access to content of all kinds will be the first to go if the battle for net neutrality takes a turn for the worse. The worry is that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will apply the lessons learned from the wired Internet (i.e. they just provide all access at a standard price and speed, but they could make more money if they had multiple tiered systems like they do for cable television) to the mobile and wireless Internet and the services that go along with that. They worry that ISPs will find a way to selectively provide content to consumers based on the price those consumers pay and the plans they choose. This means that my wireless Internet provider, Verizon Wireless, could charge me the highest monthly price to receive the fastest access with the most content. If I paid less, I would get less access to content or slower connection speeds or both.

It seems to me that we as consumers could combat the possible move to restrict access and speed by insisting that the mobile/wireless Internet allow for learning content to be accessed by all consumers at all price levels. As I stated earlier, learning content comes in all sorts of forms and sorting those forms out from other forms of content would be extremely difficult service providers. Learning content can come from academic institutions, corporate knowledge bases, consumers etc. So insisting that all learning content be accessible to all could allow for a fairly large classification of content to be free and unrestricted for all consumers.

This may seem like a stretch or may even seem irrelevant to some, but I would love to live in a world where all those who have a connection to the mobile Web also have unrestricted access to learning content of all kinds. To limit the access of any learning content to only those who pay high prices for unrestricted access would be a real step backwards and a disservice to all.

This is probably one of the more opinion oriented posts I’ve written, but it seems important to a lot of people that we have access to learning content on the mobile web. I think that if we can convince the powers that be that we should allow learning content to be a special unrestricted category for all subscribers to the mobile/wireless Internet, we will continue a tradition where the Web provides a real service to all who consume information from it. Otherwise, it may just become another commodity where the haves are separated from the have-nots, and it could also prevent learning content providers from serving their audience.

iBreathe, An Innovative Application to Allow Military Men and Women to Relax

Reading about iBreathe at Information Week gets me thinking about the combination of real-time performance support and learning and how it integrates so well on the mobile device. I’ve never used this application of course, but the idea of it is very cool. This is the type of application offers video to teach learners about breathing techniques to help them relax when confronted with a stressful situation. The application also provides the learners with a number of ways to catalog their behavior and emotions in addition to enabling the learner to practice effective techniques for relaxation. The impact of an app like this can’t be measured simply with app download counts, this is the type of thing that can help someone live a better life.

My mobile video blog

Well, I haven’t posted in awhile, so I’m happy to be back writing again. I am currently teaching a one month course on mobile learning at George Mason University and it’s a real privilege to do so. I’m so happy to see a university taking mobile learning seriously enough to offer a class on it. Of course, teaching is a new thing for me and it’s got me pretty busy so that explains the lack of posting. However, it’s also given me a rich new learning resource… the students. The students in the class are really showing some great ideas about mobile learning. And because most of them are learning professionals (Instructional designers and trainers), they have a great understanding of how to build and deploy a training program. I’m hoping I can help them in their efforts to add mobile learning to their learning tool set, they are certainly helping me expand my knowledge of mobile learning.

I’m very interested in the idea of mobile video blogging. This is nothing new, but I think what is needed (and maybe it’s out there and I just haven’t found it yet) is a mobile video blogging tool for learning professionals to create content for mobile devices. What I’m getting at is the idea that we can use regular commercial blogs now, but these tools are largely developed for social purposes.

What I would like to see is a tool specifically for use by learning content developers. I think this tool should allow all the same functionality of a regular mobile blogging tool, but have some additional features for instructional designers and subject matter experts to created structured learning content. So here’s my initial list of these capabilities, feel free to add some of your own. And by all means, please let me know if there’s a tool out there that does all these things.

• post video from your mobile device
• post images
• post audio
• add flash and other rich content creation products
• create rich text from your mobile device – i.e. lists, bold, italic, hyperlinks, etc.
• create a sequential list of items in a single post from your mobile device
• annotate each content item with the associated objectives (for designer reference purposes and student purposes)
• create a custom navigation between chunks of content

Basically, I’m looking for the ability to create a learning module with a mobile device. I know this is coming, but I haven’t seen anything that does this yet. That type of tool could really empower learning content developers to create great mobile learning content from a mobile device. And of course, placing a tool like this in the hands of a well trained subject matter expert could yield some great results and allow us to add quality training to our learning content networks, ultimately benefiting the learner by leveraging the contextual aspect of mobile learning – training created in context and consumed in context.

Until we have that, I will do my best with current blogging tools and their limited mobile development options. Most of the mobile blogging tools only allow you to add an image or video and don’t allow you to format text from your mobile device.