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Another indicator of just how massive mobile learning is going to be, is the MIT Media Lab announcing on 16 August that they are creating the MIT Center for Mobile Learning, with funding gifted from Google Education. The press release says it will be ‘dedicated to transforming education and learning through innovation in mobile computing’.
The Media Lab’s new director Joichi Ito says “The Media Lab has always been about creativity – not only developing new technologies, but getting them out to the world in ways that positively impact people’s lives.[..] Our new Center for Mobile Learning continues this tradition, empowering people everywhere to create, invent, and learn with their mobile devices.”
Being a college there is a big focus on educational technology, and considering Google’s involvement in the funding side it follows they will start with a focus on App Inventor for Android. That and one of the three co-directors of the mobile learning center is Hal Abelson, the guy who sparked the idea for App Inventor.
Exciting times in the mobile learning space! If you’re looking for an LMS with mobile accessibility check out the Litmos mobile learning page to find out more.
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Well, here I am sitting at my desk really wishing I was at mLearnCon again this year. It has moved from San Diego up to San Jose for it’s second year and I’m banking on it being a whole lot bigger with the ever-increasing popularity of mobile learning.
Seeing as I can’t be there in person, I’m glued to the backchannel and am once again amazed at the people that can live blog a session and not only does it makes sense, but it has no spelling mistakes! Now that’s real skill.
Right now mLearnCon is wrapping up the first day of the conference, which means that the many attendees will be having some drinks and moving on out to find their dinner. I would even hazard a guess that there might be some karaoke going down later on.
If like me, you can’t be there this year, then make sure to tune in to the backchannel on Twitter by following the#mlearncon hashtag.
Here are just a few of the awesome tweets coming out of today’s sessions:
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‘Wireless Health’ including mobile technology, medical and healthcare data collected at the recent Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance (WLSA) 6th Annual Convergence Summit in San Diego, indicates 4 out of 5 US doctors plan to buy an iPad in the next year. This makes it pretty clear that the medical health revolution is well on it’s mobile way!
Here’s a pretty infographic from Karten Design detailing the information:
Another interesting stat in there is that 5 billion people have access to a mobile phone, which represents 72% of the world’s population. Now that is accessibility!
If you’re currently considering purchasing a content authoring tool, a learning management system or another online software product, it makes it all the more important to ask the vendor questions about their current and future plans for mobile. With the mobile learning industry having grown $326M in 2010 over 2009, it would be a mistake not to consider how your content is going to perform on mobile devices.
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Well if you ever had any doubts about the growing popularity of mobile learning, this report should put those to rest. Ambient Insight have published a revision of last year’s US Mobile Learning industry report which covered 2009-2014, this time covering 2010-2015.
Back last year I wrote this post covering the stats from their August 2010 report. But now due to ‘favorable market conditions’, Ambient Insight have revised their predictions upwards and it’s definitely worth re-visiting the numbers.
Introductory points
The US market for Mobile Learning Products and Services reached $958.7M in 2010 (this figure was $632.2M in 2009).
Top buyers of mobile learning remain to be the same:
USA
Japan
South Korea
the UK
Taiwan
Highest growth rates are in China, India, Indonesia and Brazil
By the end of 2015 China will be the second largest buying country after the US
The current US Mobile learning market is being driven by:
Consumers and healthcare were early adopters and still dominate
Corporations have been late adopters until recently. The growth rate for this sector is now 29.3%.
The second highest growth rate at 26.1% belongs to NGO, non-profit, and association segment
The content distribution channel is expanding rapidly:
As of February 2011 there were over hundred app stores across the globe, growing by 1-2 stores a month
There are over 650 telecom operations in the world and there are now “white-label” app store platforms that allow them to launch branded pre-stocked app stores quickly
In October 2010 Apple introduced a new Special Education sector in their app store. At launch it had 85 apps in five categories. This expands the reach of mLearning to over 5 million US school children that need specialized content to mitigate cognitive and physical impairments
Networks are getting faster and devices smarter
As of 2010, 28% of US phones in use were smartphones. By early 2012, 34% will be smartphones.
In 2010 and 2011 tablet device makers launched products specifically designed for eLearning tending to target early childhood, PreK-12 and higher education.
By the end of 2015 the US will have the largest 4G coverage in the world (Lightsquared)
Explosion of new mobile learning content:
The twelve types of packaged applications and content purchased by the eight buying segments included in the report are:
Language learning
Travel and tourism
Academia test prep
General education, study guides, and reference
How-to-manuals and guides
Simulation and game-based learning
Location-based learning
Medical, health, nutrition, and fitness
Business, sales, and finance
Handheld decision support and performance support
Professional licensure, continuing education (CE), and continuing medical education (CME)
Professional training and development
It’s interesting to note down their definition of mobile learning too:
‘Ambient Insight defines Mobile Learning as knowledge transfer events, content, tools, and applications accessed on handheld computing devices.’
You can red the report summary here or purchase the full report on their website.
And speaking of mobile learning, don’t forget about the eLearning Guild’s mLearnCon conference coming up June 21-23 in San Jose, California. I went along last year – it was the first time it was held – and I can personally vouch for the huge value in attending. Whether you’re looking for advice on designing mobile content, deploying to mobile devices, the right tools to use or learning management systems with mobile delivery, this is the place to go.
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In August 2010, Ambient Insight released a new report called “The US Market for Mobile Products and Learning: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis” with the subheading ‘US Takes the Lead in the Global Mobile Learning Market: Consumers and Healthcare Buyers Drive the Market.’ It is a US-centric report and there are some seriously good stats in it, so I’ve gathered together my favorites and quoted/paraphrased them below.
Introductory Points:
The US market for Mobile Learning products and services reached $632.2 million in 2009. The demand is growing by a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.3% and revenues will reach $14 billion by 2014.
US was a late adopter of mobile learning compared with Japan and South Korea (this was also brought up in Tomi Ahonen’s keynote speech at #mLearnCon. Click here to see his slidedeck)
In 2009 the US passed Japan to become the top Mobile Learning buying country in the world.
Biggest adopters of mobile learning technology:
US
Japan
South Korea
UK
Popular US & Japanese Trends
Consumers top the buyers list
Mobile brain trainer games are popular and the top selling edugame category
Device-embedded learning products for young children very common (This is when the primary purpose of a hand-held computing device is to enhance learning, access educational content and assess and support performance. Very common in the consumer and PreK-6 academic segments.)
The current US mobile learning market is being driven by:
Consumers
Healthcare buyers
And here’s a thoroughly interesting fact – since the recession began healthcare has added more than 730,000 jobs! The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) say healthcare has added an average of 19,7000 jobs per month over last 2yrs.
Primary inhibitors in the buying segments are:
Rapidly-evolving devices
Competing mobile operating systems
Incompatible development platforms
Non-standard mobile Web browsers
Primary catalysts that are accelerating adoption of mobile learning across buying segments
General market conditions:
Roll out of 4G networks in the US and incredible rate of innovation in device tech
Plus:
Increase in VC and Private investment flowing from suppliers
Custom content service suppliers landing new deals with educational publishers
New devices coming to the market that are designed specifically for educational purposes
Demand for new types of Location-based learning using new mobile augmented reality technology
A few facts:
Mobile app stores – as of July 2010 these are growing at 1-2 per month
18% of Audible‘s 50,000 audio books are tagged as ‘Educational’.
In the US the ratio of feature phones to smartphones is still 4 to 1, but it’s changing fast in all developed regions
In developing regions it is higher, more like 8 or 9 to 1 and not evolving so quickly
Traffic
As of early 2010, 65-70% of all mobile device Web traffic is going to social networking sites
Most recent mobile learning innovations are around:
Location-based learning enabled by mobile augmented reality – GPS chips, RFID chips, and 2D and 3D bar codes are often used in this type of learning, particularly in clinical healthcare environments, first responder situations, museums, consumer education and int he tourist industry.
For the downlow on the 2009 Ambient report “The US Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services: 2009-2014 Forecast and Analysis.” check out my post US eLearning Market Booming.
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Session 601 at mLearnCon was called ‘mLearning Myths and Misconceptions’ and hosted by Robert Gadd (@robgadd4), Co Founder and President of OnPoint Digital. Here’s a little intro from the mLearnCon website:
“Every enterprise Training & Development team currently considering its options for the design and distribution of mLearning efforts for their organization needs to make sure they avoid the most common mistakes that can delay, impair, or irreparably damage project success.[..]By recognizing the mistakes of others and the solutions that resolved these problems, you’ll be able to avoid the time-consuming and expensive detours others have taken.”
Once again from my somewhat scribbled notes comes this list of myths and misconceptions, some of which I have patched together as I must have become so engrossed in the discussion I actually missed which number we were up to! Here goes:
10 mLearning Myths & Misconceptions
Rich media files are compelling but hard to prepare and distribute
Truth – rich media files are some of the most compelling types of content that you can put on a mobile device. But Trainers / Course admins will need to know how to transcode the technology i.e. turn video and PowerPoint in to mobile friendly formats (Gadd mentioned Cellcast an OnPoint Learning product.).
Learners are excited about mobile learning. They love their gadgets, so learning is natural right?
Truth: This is not always the case
All phones are built equal
Truth
Mobile learning is not as effective as ILT or online
Truth: Although mobile may not be the ideal method of delivery, many case studies coming out show measurable proof that a well designed and implemented mobile learning program can be just as effective as its ILT or online learning equivalent.
It works on the web – why not mobile? Especially with flash-based content.
Truth: Until authoring tools accommodate for how things turn out on mobile we are going to have trouble. Flash-based content will not work on all devices.
Mobile devices can all handle SCORM SCOs
Truth – are your mobile users connected or disconnected?
Is your content Flash-based?
Mobile learning lacks enterprise security
Truth – It’s true that mobile security is a bigger concern because your mobile goes everywhere with you. However, there are ways to lock-down access by timecard plus, content can be encrypted.
Integrating Results is difficult
Truth: There are many ways to get the results from mobile content back in to an LMS. Some options include importing templates to more sophisticated platform-to-platform interactions, including Web services/REST, API tool kits and even single sign-on connection. (As a side note, the new mobile version of the Litmos Learning Management System has these reporting capabilities via a RESTful API.)
Mainstream LMS platforms are mobile ready
Truth – Only Blackboard, GeoLearning, Meridian, OutStart, OnPoint and SumTotal have all distribution and security features
All mLearning tools are created equal
* I just noticed that Robert Gadd has written an article in the Learning Solutions Magazine which expands on / adds to these myths, available for your reading pleasure here:
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Session 502 at #mLearnCon lead by Richard Clark (@rdclark) was focused on ‘mLearning on Multiple Devices: A Practical Guide’. From the mLearnCon website the session guide reads:
“Unlike e-Learning on the desktop, where a couple of platforms predominate (Windows and Mac OS X), mobile platforms come in many different forms with differing programming requirements and user interfaces. Unless a developer is going to go for a simplistic “lowest common denominator” approach, he or she will have to find a way to create, test, and maintain the same application on multiple platforms.”
On revisiting my notes for this session they are a little jumbled and scrappy, but here’s the best of what I can transcribe in what appears to be doctor-like handwriting:
Key Questions to think about before diving in to mLearning:
Comfort level with technology
You?
The learners?
You will need to provide some kind of introduction and/or a concierge service to coach users
Approach
Direct instruction, performance support, gateway to existing, intro docs then link out to videos
On-line vs. off-line (+ sync issues)
Range of devices
You may find you have to knock plans back to the lowest device you know you’ll encounter
Fidelity to device convention
Richard mentioned checking out Instapaper - online / offline reading app for iPhone and iPad
Development Options 1:
Front-end / Back-end
common data, built-in viewer
common data, custom viewer
Cross Platform
lowest common denominator
no common denominator
If you develop on Mac and test with iPhone / iPad simulators you’re probably 90% towards working on all devices.
If you are going to go with cross platform be sure not to favor the logic of one OS over another.
Development Options 2:
html5 + javascript
html + graphics + javascript.
Tools:
Appcelerator: great analytics embedded in the framework, lots of data on use / access of your users
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Scott McCormick (@scottfloat) from Float Learning, took session 401 at mLearnCon which covered “The First 10 Questions Your Company Needs to Ask Before You Adopt mLearning”. So yes, there were ten questions, but look out because then there are all the sub-questions!
Here are my session notes:
Why the heck are we doing this? (i.e. know your end goal)
Because everything’s going mobile
Build a business case
Identify learning gaps
The investment must = benefits (time saving, cost saving)
Do you have a champion?
Do you have someone with a passion?
Do you have someone who will be an evangelist?
Do you have someone who can assemble a team?
Do you have someone who knows and understands your culture?
Bonus: have someone who will take a thought leadership role and start a blog or other initiative
Are you prepared to not be prepared?
Do you have the technical architecture – network, mobile devices, support team
Do you have development capabilities? The skill sets?
You will have to look at learning in a whole new way.
What makes a rich mobile experience? *Ubiquity *Access *Richness *Efficiency *Flexibility *Security *Reliability *Integrity *Interactivity (collaboration, geolocation, gyroscope, mediated reality)
What is the current state of your learning?
Can you take a complete inventory of your curriculum?
Can you assess it objectively?
Can you determine what is successful and effective?
Can you re-design it so it can be delivered in a mobile context?
Do you know your audience?
Do you know their needs?
Do you know what they want? Use surveys.
Can you anticipate their reactions? Spend time in their world and identify ways mobile can help.
Culture (heart) – economics, religion, social structure, law
Who are the stakeholders?
Can you identify all of the silos?
Why do they have an interest?
Do you know what their interests (their ‘hot buttons’)?
Learners / IT / Legal / Leadership / Marketing / Stockholders / Unions: You’re going to raise a lot of interest and you need to know how to win hearts and know the answers before the questions are asked
What does success look like?
Have you established metrics?
Have you made any gains / savings in productivity, costs, scope, etc?
Set up analytics for usage and audience activity
Finally, you have to know how to celebrate!
The best idea is to keep replicating and refining the process as you move forward and hopefully, now that you’ve answered these questions, you will be much better prepared for what lies ahead!
Thanks Scott, this definitely gave everyone in the session a lot to think about.
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Clark Quinn (@Quinnovator) and Richard Clark (@rdclark) presented session 201 at mLearnCon on “Context, Content and Collaboration: Keys to Successful mLearning”.
There was a lot of information covered in this session, but here are just a few of the takeaways:
63% of mobile workers prefer to use a smart phone for work-related tasks (iPass report on mobile workforces – Robert Gadd)
We ‘learn’ in order to accomplish things, it’s not about learning but performance
Sales people are the most mobile but least collaborative due to the competitive environment they are in. In this case they may need an external contact or concierge.
It’s always good to put together a formal introduction to any new tool, skills or tasks
MockApp has a free ppt / Keynote template for mobile course development
Mobile games are a powerful learning tool
My notes from this session: Devices – what do they all have in common?
Input
Connectivity – bluetooth, wifi, GSM/CDMA, cable
Sensing – GPS, camera, audio, gyroscopes
Output
Cognitive augmentation
How do these support learning?
Role Cognitive Mobile Intro Activate Motivating example Concept Reconceptualize New model Example Recontextualize Another example Practice Reapply A new problem Feedback Reflect Evaluation rubrics
Clark Quinn’s idealized model for supporting formal/informal learning:
Quinn and Clark suggested systematically filling out this matrix as relevant to the audience:
Better User experience – PC vs. mobile
A point made here was that in the second diagram for hand-held, the word ‘features’ on the x-axis could be replaced by the word ‘content’ and still ring very true.
The final diagram in the session depicted the graph of Technical Elegance vs. Design Depth and instead of re-creating this time it is pictured above in the photo above with Clark Quinn.
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I first met the presenter of this session, Michelle Lentz (@writetechnology), at DevLearn in 2009 and now again at mLearnCon, plus she has become a good friend in the Twittersphere. Michelle is a technology evangelist and she is a wealth of knowledge blogging on everything elearning, social media and technology related on one hand while maintaining a popular wine blog on the other.
This session was all about the pros/cons of Googlefying your life with Google apps. As with anything hosted in the cloud she covered privacy issues and security, plus support, mobile accessibility and all sorts of other insights in to how she uses the various apps. (Click here for the session description.)
In light of security, privacy and the reliancy on the Internet when you utilize Google Apps, Michelle talked about ‘trust’. She has accepted that she’s given up her privacy to use all the Google Apps she loves and said for her it’s about trusting in the fact that ‘my external hard drive may fail but Google Servers will not’. Here are some of the apps she mentioned in her session:
Google Mobile Apps – great for voice search / localized search
Google Goggles – search visually on Android, access to blog search and book search
Google Docs – collaboration with many people and accessible from mobile
Google Talk – on your iPhone
Gmail – native app on Android or sets up as normal email on iPhone
Reasons to go with Gmail: 7GB free storage, email labeling system, no permanent deleting
Google Calendar - run multiple calendars, share and color code, easy to add events
Google Reader – has a mobile version
Google Video for business
Google Mobile
Google Talk
Google Translate - one of my personal favorites
Google Earth
Google Voice – direct all calls to one number (US only)
Google Maps and Navigation
One good thing to know is that Google’s privacy policy differs for every app so it’s worth reading the fine print. She ended with a hilarious video parody from the Onion News Network which describes an ‘opt-out’ feature offered by Google:
Media Lab announcing on 16 August that they are creating the MIT Center for Mobile Learning, with funding gifted from Google Education. The press release says it will be ‘dedicated to transforming education and learning through innovation in mobile computing’.
