mlearning—anytime, anywhere is the difference

Mobile learning, or mlearning, has become the must-have training strategy for 21^st century education. One of the problems with this migration to mlearning is the number of organisations who are not migrating their learning platform, but are simply migrating their learning content. Doing this misses the whole point—two points to be more accurate—of mlearning; the student can learn anytime, anywhere. 

In our lifetimes the world of learning has escaped from the classroom. Please note that by classroom I mean any place where an individual or group has to be to learn; this may be any classroom, lecture hall or place of work, where an instructor or mentor imparts knowledge, or a room where a student studies an elearning course. All of these are bound by space and often time. The mobile delivery services offered by information and communication technology now means that students can learn whenever and wherever they want. Don’t underestimate this shift. As Mike Sharples puts it in Towards a Theory of Mobile Learning (Sharples, 2005):

“Many theories of learning have been advanced over the 2500 years between Confucius and the present day, but almost all have been predicated on the assumption that learning occurs in a school classroom, mediated by a trained teacher.”

(I have stretched this to include elearning where a teacher is not present, but you get the idea.)

We now have a delivery and consumption paradigm where the student is no longer tethered by time or place; a major change to how we have become used to working. In this blog I will ignore the mechanics of mobile learning design and concentrate on how mobility means that we must change our thinking about our design of training courses and learning events. (If you want to read about mlearning design have a look at my other blogs).

Anytime Learning

Training in industry has become a bit like the summer holiday; there is a set amount of time, we go someplace, we do something, we come back…and (at the risk of stretching the analogy) the tan fades after a few weeks. Many staff regard a training course as a part of the working year. Where there is a necessity for mandatory training, many employers provide some “sheep-dip” compulsory courses, which staff must complete for regulatory compliance. 

There are advantages and disadvantages in these approaches. The idea of going on a training course can put people in the mood for learning, perhaps by changing their environment or putting them with a group of other students with whom they can network and collaborate. On the downside, it takes people out of their workplace for, perhaps, a week and trains them in lots of things that they almost certainly will not use before they have forgotten the training. There is a good deal of speculation regarding how much students retain from a training course. The estimates range from 10% to over 60%, but a lot of the “research” is anecdotal. You can look at both ends of the spectrum by looking at The Low-Hanging Fruit Is Tasty and An Investigation of Training Activities and Transfer of Training in Organizations. Based on no empirical research, I would suggest that the 80:20 rule probably applies to training, just as it does to so much else in life.

What is clear is that we retain things that are pertinent and applicable to our lives. You only stick your finger in a fire once before learning that it hurts; an extreme and very basic example, but true. On a five-day training course you are unlikely to retain all the information that is covered because it almost certainly includes content that will not occur in your working life in the few months following the training event. For example, on an accounting course you may learn lots of information about tax laws, but it is unlikely that you will have to use all of this information before you start to forget the details or they become out-of-date. 

With mlearning the whole classroom model is turned upside-down. The student decides when is the right time for them to study, rather than their having to turn up on a Monday morning at 9am…for coffee and a 9.30 start. Not only do students take control over the starting time, they also control the duration. Received wisdom it that we only concentrate for about 40 minutes on new materials. If a training lesson last for an hour, the last 20 minutes suffer from the law of diminishing returns.

In the business world, where training is regarded as a personal benefit, this empowerment leads to greater engagement for the student and enhance retention for the organisation (Have a look at Jason Silberman’s interesting article in Business News). Students can also ensure that the timing of a training event is pertinent and applicable to their working lives. Our accounting student can spend 30 minutes taking a short course on the facet of tax law that is relevant to their current workload. This can be supported by short refresher content that they can review later, ensuring that what they learned in the initial training is updated for changes or just brought back to mind. Performance Support content of this type enables a student to refresh what they may have learned previously. (It is interesting to note that the Word synonyms for “refresh” include enliven, invigorate, and energise. Isn’t this what we all—student or training designer—want in our training?). This top-up functionality is positioned to improve retention, providing an on-going top-up to avoid the dip in Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve. Although the research that underpins this theory had a questionable methodology, it is clear that memory fades over time, so refreshing learnt information is useful in creating strengthened memories.

Anywhere Learning

In addition to control over when they learn, students can also decide where they learn. With just about all smart devices there is the option to connect via Wi-Fi or across the mobile or cellular phone network to access hosted content that is delivered using Web-based communications technologies. Alternatively a training organisation can develop downloadable apps that provide full course content on the device, with no need to be linked to a central content repository. This approach means that even where there is no communications access a user can still use training materials. For organisations that need to track and manage staff training, the Tin Can API/Experience API initiative enables more flexible, asynchronous learning management.

Many staff commute to and from work on public transport. With the video and audio capabilities of smart devices, it is possible to take a 30 minute course or watch a video on the way to the office. I am not suggesting that this should be regarded as a mandatory learning time, but for users who want to do so, the flexibility of a training app on a smartphone can make this an attractive option.

Is anywhere learning something that students want? (Good question, John) It is estimated that nearly 40% of smartphone users read the news on their devices and 50% search for content or use maps (Smart Insights, Statistics on mobile usage and adoption to inform your mobile marketing strategy). This shows that many people now regard their smart devices as sources of information, rather than just a games-playing diversion.

In addition to anywhere availability of content, the majority of devices offer locale functionality, which can provide geographical context to personal training. For staff working in the health and safety environment of a global business, this means that the organisation can provide training on local H&S practices in their current location. Alternatively, the employee may review some induction training on the local company division. This means that training content can be pertinent, irrespective of location, which is a key element of developing effective and engaging learning materials.

The place of Performance Support content in anywhere learning is well known. In the 1980s staff would lug increasingly bloated Filofaxes with them, packed with the handy hints and tips that they felt might be useful while doing their work. This was particularly the case with mobile workers, like sales executives and on-site engineers. With Performance Support content delivered on mobile devices, all of this can be maintained as a centrally managed set of up-to-date resources that a “student” can use to help them on-the-job. I have put student in quotes there because this is far removed from our student/classroom archetype; this is life-long learning in action.

And in Conclusion…

There is a lot of hype about mlearning, and too often it is driven by training organisations trying to put what they already have into HTML5, so that it can be viewed on an iPhone. Like any training, mlearning needs to be designed to fit the audience and environment. Simply migrating current content can lead to a poor fit and substandard learning. Equally importantly, it misses the opportunities offered by anytime, anywhere learning.