Free mLearning Webinar!
CourseAvenue has written a lot about what’s holding back mobile learning…join us now to see the solution!
We want to share our vision for enabling large-scale m-Learning with you! You are invited to our webinar on June 12th. Here’s a snapshot of the topics we’ll be discussing:
- The overall state of the marketplace
- The solution we need and a description of the new technology we have in place to overcome hurdles
- Samples of platform (HTML/Flash) and device (from an iPhone to a GoogleTV) independent learning
CourseAvenue founder, CEO, and industry expert Joe Gorup will be speaking about these mLearning solutions. The webinar will be held on Tuesday, June 12th, from 10-11 am CDT.
The webinar is free, but there are limited spots! Reserve your spot now while space is available! https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/656090050
Device-Specific Solutions & Content Chunking
We are continuing our story on what’s holding mLearning back. Let’s quickly revisit where we’ve been…
We’ve dove into our thoughts on what’s holding mLearning back, examined the “people don’t want to take a two hour course on their phone” half-truth, uncovered the LMS and desktop infrastructure challenges, and discussed the reliance of SCORM dependence of JAVA.
In light of these previous posts, we have been watching the ways many are responding to the obstacles mLearning presents. Many are either creating device-specific mobile solutions or dividing their existing content into large chunks. These two supposed “solutions” prove to be a greater problem than answer to mLearning.
We see a number of tools out there whose mLearning solution boils down to using a device-specific page template. While this is one approach to doing mobile learning, it falls short in a number of areas.
For example, using this approach to build a course with the “phone-template,” the entire course is now targeted and sized solely for a phone. This begs the question…what if someone does not have a smart phone or does not want to take the course on his phone? Do you then have to create and maintain a desktop version of the course too?
Let’s take this a step further. The reality is, mobile encompasses MUCH more than the smart phone alone. What happens when a course is custom-made for the tablet, yet not all your learners own one? Do they just not have access to the content? Do they have to take the desktop version? What if someone has a Kindle Fire, a Samsung Galaxy Tablet, or a Google TV? Do we need device templates for all of these as well?
You get the point.
Device-specific templates may work well when done a) on a small scale, b) with a very homogeneous mobile environment (e.g. supporting one mobile device for all learners) and c) so that content can be well segregated into its mobile and non-mobile elements. However, this is clearly not a saleable, enterprise-wide approach.
We believe the concept of “chucking up” content for mobile delivery hinders mLearning as well. The thinking seems to be that content created for mobile devices needs to be “small” and that “people don’t want to take a 2 hour course on their phone.” As noted above, we covered this idea is an earlier post.
As far as chunking up content, let’s play out the logic: What happens to, say, 50 minutes of instructional content when it is “chunked” into any number of pieces? Fundamentally, what does this do to the instructional design? Does this concept imply that the only content worthy of an iPad or iPhone is an eight-minute chunk? That does not make sense. If that were true, I can ironically read War & Peace on my iPad but not take a 45-minute course. Moreover, how are these pieces supposed to be represented in the LMS? What happens to the one legacy desktop course? Do we keep it and maintain the content in multiple places?
What is so sad about all this is that these questions don’t have to be problems. There are companies with the technology to seamlessly transition learning content across any device. CourseAvenue is one of them.
At CourseAvenue, we promote the concept of eLearning and mLearning converging to the collective concept of “learning.” We feel the focus needs to be on a universal experience instead of just turning instructional design on its head trying to fit it into a mobile box.
Combining device-specific solutions and content chunking, the number of course versions necessary to satisfy all the different devices becomes intolerable. For example, say you have eight hours of content and end-up pulling five items per hour of content out and making it mobile ready. You now have 40 more objects to manage on top of the original desktop course. Then consider needing these 40 mobile items available on the iPad, the Android Phone, and the Kindle Fire. These 40 objects turn into 120 device-specific media items to keep updated, in sync, etc.
What’s the solution to this? Design instructionally sound content using long-accepted ISD principles, freeing the learners to decide what device they want to use. Does it sound impossible to have device and platform independence? Not with CourseAvenue’s enterprise mobile solution.
Reliance on SCORM Dependence on Java
Today we are continuing our series on what is holding back large-scale mLearning deployment. Before we begin this discussion, we need to address those of you who are up on the current happenings surrounding SCORM. Some of you are aware of Project Tin Can and how it represents the “next-generation eLearning specification” (http://scorm.com/tincanoverview/) and will provide the means for tracking mLearning content. While not explicitly stated, this has apparently come to be regarded as a replacement for the SCORM model, which begs the question, what happens to SCORM 1.2 and 2004 if Tin Can is implemented? Intriguing thought, but probably not for this post.
Tin Can represents a way to track mobile learning, but it takes a long time to go from a specification to large-scale adoption, which isn’t ideal since our customers are searching for something they can do today. Swept up by the rise of iPads and smart devices, the pressure is on providing a migration path, enabling immediate online access to the content.
While there is a lot of discussion about “real” mobile learning, our customers are frantically searching for ways to provide mobile access to content stored in their LMS’s. As LMS’s enable mobile login capabilities, the question quickly turns to “Why can’t I launch the course from my iPad?”
Great question. Why can’t they launch the course, and why does the current SCORM model prevent mobile access? Let’s take a look.
The main reason the course can’t be successfully launched via a mobile device is because every LMS we have ever worked with (e.g. Plateau, Saba, SumTotal, etc.) launches a SCORM course using a Java Applet, requiring the client to install Java. Unfortunately, most mobile devices (especially iPads and iPhones) don’t support Java. Game over.
Why is this holding back mobile learning overall?
First, many eLearning developers and customers rely on content being delivered as a SCORM package; so naturally, many authoring tools publish SCORM packages to load their content into the LMS. As a result, providing mobile access can be a difficult task for both tool vendors and custom eLearning developers.
Somewhat ironically, because of this industry-wide standard, mLearning’s growth has been severely hindered, as organizations can’t simply flip a switch to enable mobile access to the content.
The second major issue is lack of education. This shows up in numerous conversations where a customer requests that a) all their content be published as a SCORM package, and b) that it is accessible using mobile devices. The conversation about Java supportability quickly follows!
What’s the solution? The most effective way to address this issue is to bundle SCORM, AICC, Flash, and HTML5 into a cohesive package. Publishing “for mobile” or “for desktop” is fine, but most customers we deal with need both and having to manage two courses in the LMS opens a new can of worms. As implied, we must figure out how to best render the course (e.g. Flash for some users, HTML5 for others) for a given user on their device. By bridging both worlds (desktop/SCORM with mobile) organizations can move ahead and fully embrace mobile…today.
LMS & Desktop Infrastructure Challenges
As we look to mLearning, we cannot ignore the two elephants in the room, one of them being the massive investments that companies have made in their Learning Management Systems and the second one being those pesky desktops. Unless the LMS providers enable efficient, secure, and well thought-out mobile access to the content or catalogs and unless we can address the existing desktop orientation for eLearning, large-scale mLearning adoption is squelched.
Recognizing this, LMS vendors lately have been adding mobile access features, which is fine for new LMS implementations. However, we know many organizations are either behind or way behind in the LMS upgrade path and simply have no way to let users login to the LMS via their mobile device.
It is understandable why organizations fall behind in their LMS upgrades. In one sample case, a customer of ours started to do an LMS upgrade but the new LMS version required a database upgrade. Upon investigation, the database upgrade required a hardware upgrade. Needless to say, this is quite a long and costly process for them and is certainly delaying mLearning support.
LMS technology aside, many organizations require a VPN access to their infrastructure. In this case, depending on the mobile device being used and its ability to connect, it either does not work (e.g. the devices does not support VPN access) or is very cumbersome. In either case, issues from minimal LMS support to simple connectivity matters inhibit mLearning.
Point: If you can’t get to or launch the content from your mobile device, mLearning is stifled.
What about desktops?
Most of the organizations we work with are budget conscious and are searching for ways to reduce expenses. The notion of implementing a “net new” learning delivery technology (e.g. mobile) that does not work in the desktop environment is a no-go. The simple fact is that Mobile Learning is/will be held back if it requires organizations to double or triple their content development efforts.
Why won’t a mobile course work on the desktop? Consider that, as of this post, Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 has about 35% of the desktop market share and that these versions of IE basically do not support HTML5 (the language used for building mobile ready courses). Given this, even a simple mobile course that has a video on it just won’t work on the desktop that uses IE 6, 7, or 8.
Browser Market share
Adding to this issue, we face the reality that moving beyond IE8 requires a move to the Windows 7 Operating System, and there is no indication that Microsoft is going to “back port” HTML5 support to XP-based machines. Currently, XP has 47% of the desktop market share, meaning that until organizations make significant inroads into changing their operating systems, mobile will be hampered unless it has a desktop component.
Desktop Market share:
Compounding this desktop dilemma, most mobile solutions out there have people creating content using “device templates”. Using this device template approach, authors build content using fixed screen sizes (e.g. “size your buttons for use on a phone”) for the learning. So, even if the course somehow dodges the IE/HTML5 issue, who wants to take a 300×240 course on a 1680×1150 screen?
Enabling a “new learning modality” such as mobile learning is great, but for large scale or enterprise deployment, failure to address the realities of the desktop world certainly inhibits embracing a new paradigm.
While CourseAvenue cannot upgrade people’s current LMS’s, desktop operating, or dictate a specific corporate standard for a browser, we can help by providing a “light LMS” for mobile delivery and, most importantly, for the ability to publish one course that will support both desktop and mobile browsers simultaneously.
We cannot ignore the existence of the LMS and desktop orientation. Therefore, to capitalize on mLearning, we need to accommodate it on all devices.
Mobile Learning: The “people don’t want to take a 2-hour course on their phone” half-truth
Picture this…
In Chicago there is a 5:04pm express train that goes directly from the train station at Canal & Madison to the western suburbs about 30 miles away. It arrives at 5:38, which given the traffic in the Chicago-land area, seems like something out of the Jetsons. This train is highly coveted and at 5:01pm, the intersection of Canal & Madison is a dangerous place as hordes of briefcase toting commuters vie for a spot on that train.
Miss the 5:04 and you will be a) stuck on an hour long ride that seems to stop every 4 minutes, b) probably be late for dinner, c) likely to miss your child’s practice or game, and d) almost assuredly have to answer your “significant other.”
This post is dedicated to those “5:04 Warriors” who, while not wanting to finish a continuing education course on their phone, will do so in a heartbeat to make that train.
There is a difference between wanting to take a course and needing to take a course. The mobile device makes the need more accessible and convenient.
The end justifies the means
The “people don’t want to take a 2-hour course on their phone” statement, or something like this, circulates in many discussions around mLearning. When reading or discussing it, there is usually a nodding of heads and a “…yeah, who would want to be forced to do that!”
This truism is then followed by a list of alternative solutions, such as “chunk your content into mobile-sized pieces” and “have an instructional design that fits this new mobile reality.”
This statement is formed as a negative. It says what people don’t is the dictating concern. It leads down a number of dark alleys of how to avoid giving people what they don’t want instead of focusing on what they do desire.
As an analogy, it is like saying “…people don’t want to spend 11 hours on an airplane.” You say that and there will generally be nodding of heads while people conjure up an image of sitting on a runway, for hours, getting de-iced…again.
What’s obviously missing is stating what people DO want. Following the airplane analogy, what people DO want is to leave frigid cold, noise, and congestion for a beach on a lush tropical island. Oh, by the way, the flight time from New York to Maui is 11 hours.
Applying this to mLearning, people DO want access to the 2-hour course from wherever they want to be, from whatever device they have handy. In other words, don’t force me to take the 2-hour course on my phone. Instead, let me decide what parts I can/want to take on my desktop, on my tablet, or on my phone.
What we DO want: a choice
An observation: My 20-year-old son just read the entire Hunger Games trilogy – on his iPhone. I watched the 2-minute movie trailer on my phone – that was enough for me. When I asked him why he was reading it on his phone, he said, “It’s handy.”
The point is this…trying to determine what pieces of a course should be accessible and where they should be accessed is a losing proposition. What a 20-something may deem appropriate content for his phone is vastly different than what a 40-something does.
So how is following this “what people don’t want” philosophy holding back mLearning? For one, it introduces an entire level of complexity to instructional design. The reality is that many topics take more than 8 minutes to explain (the estimated size of a “chunk” of a course). How then does one divide up the learning into bite-sized pieces that might be accessed at completely different times? What about addressing learners that don’t have a mobile device? Do you build 1-hour course for everyone, then a chunked-up version for those with mobile devices? How does this get represented in a transcript or in the LMS?
Another lingering question still stands: What is the learning impact of taking an hour of content and dividing it into different pieces running in different platforms? Put another way, how will the learner receive/remember the context of the 8-minute mobile piece of an hour-long piece of content?
Answers
The answer, of course, is to focus on providing all of the content on every device, letting instructional designers to focus on a cohesive, sound design, be it a 15-minute refresher or a 2-hour module. This allows the learner to decide what content and how much content is right for them.
The answer to giving people what they want is found in the technology that enables cross-device access. This is where CourseAvenue comes in.
What’s holding mLearning back?
Why mLearning is the answer, not the problem
There is no denying that mobile learning (aka mLearning) is in the spotlight. The sheer number of conferences, webinars, industry experts, and general buzz around mLearning testifies to this attention. Companies like Apple, Samsung, and Amazon have driven learning to turn mobile.
Yet there seems to be a disconnect between the hype of mobile technology and the traditional eLearning that resides on a desktop. Despite all this momentum around mLearning, many corporate and federal eLearning markets are at a loss as to how to hop on the mLearning train.
Although mLearning is just now exploding, CourseAvenue has seen it as the future of eLearning for some time now. We have been monitoring the mLearning marketplace for years. We remember when mLearning focused on fitting content on a postage-stamp-size Nokia screen. We stayed away from this movement. It just didn’t make sense to us. Now, thanks to the development of tablets and smart-device technology, we believe the answer to mLearning has arrived.
Tablets (and by that, we mainly mean the iPad) changed everything. There has been a lot written about the iPad’s form, features, price, and trendiness. In our eyes, this makes it the perfect fit for education material. Add in the many other, largely Android-based, tablets and the improvements made in the size and media support in smart phones, and the buzz around mLearning has never been higher!
Despite the hype, it is easier to see mLearning as a problem for many than as the solution that it is. It is not a simple task to morph desktop-centric eLearning to mobile-friendly device (No, you can’t just do a “SaveAs” to go from desktop to mobile.) So the conversation often turns to pointing out the obstacles, in which people bemoan the tension between flash and HTML or the difficulty in making the same program work on every device. The problems are not difficult to highlight. 
Yet where are the solutions? We don’t see a large-scale rollout of mLearning, especially at the corporate or enterprise level. While we have seen some successful mLearning, what we have seen has largely been program-specific. In some respects, successful mLearning has been the exception rather than the rule. Put another way, we have not seen a complete enterprise level transformation.
Mobile learning is not a problem to be overcome. If we work with it, it is the perfect answer to everything we are trying to do in the industry! It is a gift from heaven for usability and accessibility of learning. It’s our job to figure out how to capitalize on this solution for others.
Consider how the majority of eLearning is accessed today across an enterprise:
A learner logs on the LMS and then selects and launches a given course title. Their progress is tracked and potentially scored, their completion status is noted, and their transcript records are updated accordingly.
Mobile learning needs to fit into this model. Attempting to change this model to fit the current state of mobile learning technology is an extremely steep hill to climb. While mobile devices enable a number of interesting new options (e.g. proximity learning,), without addressing the existing infrastructure and providing a reasonable transition, mLearning will struggle.
It is somewhat surprising to us that we have read so much about what mLearning isn’t or what one should NOT do with mobile-delivered content. Without delving into what it is not or what it might not be, we have surmised what people DO want based on discussions with our customers, friends, family, and industry leaders. And that is…
The ability to breakaway from the desktop and use their mobile devices for learning. With years and years of content built up in LMS’s, piles of CE credits to attain, and super powerful devices in their hands, the practical reality is people want to take their eLearning wherever they are, on whatever device they happen to have at the moment.
We have built CourseAvenue’s Enterprise Mobile Solution around this principal – enabling a mobile workforce with cross-device, seamless access to content. As we are readying our product for release, we thought we should share our thought on the gap between buzz and practicality. To make learning most usable and accessible in our world today, we need to rid our industry of this gap. So given this all this, what is holding mLearning back, and what can we do about it?
In the coming posts, we will outline the following:
- The “people don’t want to take a 2-hour long course on their phone” half-truth
- LMS infrastructure challenges
- Reliance on SCORM/dependence on Java
- Device-specific solution “templates”
- The Flash issue…
- Cross-device complexity
We want your feedback on our thoughts on mLearning! Please respond to these polls. They will only take you a moment.
8th Annual Innovations in eLearning Symposium!
A very informative and timely symposium in being held June 5th through 7th this year. Our very own Joe Gorup from CourseAvenue will be speaking as well! Here is a snapshot of what the symposium will highlight:
The success of e-learning professionals is critical on their ability to function in an increasingly global world. Challenges of global competition require the development of methods to improve both organizational performance and individual development through rapid technology innovation. This year’s Innovations in e-Learning symposium (IEL12) will harness the power of informal learning and social media; learning and performance analytics; and competitive edge through innovation to help learning organizations foster the new global workforce skill set needed to expand e-learning strategies and systems.
- Connect with industry leaders
- Apply successful best practices of other e-Learning professionals
- Advance your understanding of emerging e-Learning technologies
- Collaborate with peers to help define the future of the e-Learning profession
It’s sponsored by the Defense Acquistition University and the George Mason University, Division Learning Technologies. Visit the symposium website to find out more: http://innovationsinelearning.gmu.edu/
Case Study #17: e-Learning Development at the USDA
Here it is! The final part to the USDA Case Study blog post series…
Update
Since the initial 60-day snapshot, the USDA’s use of CourseAvenue Studio has exploded. Now, eight months later, the USDA has built more than 125 e-Learning courses with more than 12,000 pages of custom content and over 4,700 unique graphics and media items. Team AgLearn’s ROI is now more than 533%.
Team AgLearn plans to move beyond this Pilot Project to a full enterprise rollout. This will allow each USDA business unit to create its own virtual team of e-Learning developers and move the content development even closer to those who are best at it: the subject- matter experts. This should increase the USDA’s ROI even further.
By first reviewing its entire e-Learning development process, and then leveraging CourseAvenue’s Cloud- based technology and Player Skin to improve its development process, Team AgLearn has found a way to produce more e-Learning courses in less time with fewer people and less money. They have clearly become a model of true enterprise e-Learning development.
Case Study #17: e-Learning Development at the USDA
(3rd out of 4 blog posts on this Case Study! Follow tomorrow to read the final part…)
The Results
In January and February of 2011, approximately 50 USDA professionals with various skill levels from several different business units completed either a one-day “Beginner” or a two-day “Beginner and Advanced” CourseAvenue training. With just this small amount of training – and by using the USDA Player Skin – this team was able to start building e-Learning that met all of USDA’s standards. Because CourseAvenue is Cloud-based, everyone could use it without installing any other software. Because of CourseAvenue’s built-in collaboration features, everyone was able to work in virtual teams to build and review their courses. And only 60 days later, here’s what they had accomplished: 14 complete e-Learning courses were built, tested, approved and loaded on the LMS. Those 14 courses included: 5,127 pages of completely custom content, including: 3,454 content pages; 1,581 assessment questions; and over 2,700 unique graphics and media items.
Almost as impressive is that Team AgLearn significantly cut its costly “test-fix-retest” process. Because of the CourseAvenue Player Skin, Team AgLearn reduced this process for each of these 14 courses from 35 days to an average of only 3. This 32-day savings, by itself and without including any other benefits, earned Team AgLearn an initial ROI (in just the first 60 days) of more than 150%.
Part of how Team AgLearn is able to do more with less is by enabling everyone to focus on what they do best. By using CourseAvenue’s Player Skin, content developers can focus on what they do best (developing great content), while Team AgLearn can focus on what it does best (answering technical questions). This change has allowed Team AgLearn to move from the 1:1 model it had before where each professional was focused on only one e-Learning course at a time, to a 10:1 model where each person helps develop ten times as many courses. The following is just one example of this:
Spotlight on Success: A Real-Life Example of the 10:1 Model
Dr. Zina Sutch is the USDA’s Chief Training Officer. To deploy a new On-Boarding program, she wanted to do much more than just send out an e-mail. She wanted to educate people about the new program and leverage the reach and sophistication of the USDA’s LMS.
Dr. Sutch faced a severe time crunch and didn’t have the time to hire a contractor to build the e-Learning she needed. Instead, her team took part in Team AgLearn’s Pilot Project.
After taking a four-hour, Web-based training session in CourseAvenue Studio, Dr. Sutch’s team started building their course. They used CourseAvenue’s PowerPoint import tool to quickly and easily import content into CourseAvenue Studio and then edited it into the finished course. By using the USDA’s Player Skin, their course automatically met all of the USDA’s standards, was fully SCORM conformant, and fully 508 compliant. This produced huge productivity gains for Dr. Sutch’s team, and allowed them to focus their time on what they were best at: building great content.
Before publishing the course, a consultant from Team AgLearn helped Dr. Sutch’s team with a few media and page layout details. Once done, Team AgLearn published the course, did a quick test to confirm compliance, and loaded it on the LMS. In the end, Dr. Sutch built and launched her course in a fraction of the time, helping her deploy the USDA’s new On-Boarding program that much faster.
Tomorrow will wrap up this Case Study with an update on how the USDA is doing with this eLearning technology…
Case Study #17: e-Learning Development at the USDA
(Part 2 in the USDA Case Study…keep following tomorrow!)
The Solution
Team AgLearn needed a solution. They realized that the best solution would allow more people to work together to build courses, while also allowing them to meet the USDA’s standards faster and easier. Developing a course “template” or “style guide” was one option, but Team AgLearn quickly saw that tools like that still depend on each developer applying the “style guide” correctly and don’t help the developers build more courses in less time with less money. Those tools might help the courses meet the USDA’s standards, but they wouldn’t solve the other problems. Team AgLearn also wanted to identify a solution that would work across the entire USDA. As Davin put it, “We were looking to alleviate a bottleneck across the Agency. Therefore, we needed the pilot project to truly test enterprise- wide scalability and applicability.”
After a formal solicitation process, Team AgLearn chose CourseAvenue Studio©. Team AgLearn chose CourseAvenue for several reasons. One is CourseAvenue’s unique “player skin” technology.
More than a simple “template,” CourseAvenue’s Player Skin builds in all of the USDA’s use and graphics standards. This includes everything from the use and location of media controls to when and where an audio script is displayed to the overall screen size and navigation elements (the “help,” “glossary,” “back” and “next” buttons). Team AgLearn and CourseAvenue also designed the USDA’s Player Skin to have the same color scheme and branding for every course.
Another benefit to CourseAvenue is its built-in LMS communication – both SCORM 1.2 and 2004 – and its built-in Section 508 standards. “CourseAvenue’s handling of 508 compliance was an important factor in our decision to use their product,” says Davin. As opposed to relying on each developer to make each course 508-compliant, CourseAvenue builds 508 compliance into the Player Skin and the course itself. This allows people to focus on building content – not trying to learn and meet the USDA’s standards – which allows them to build more courses in less time.
Read more tomorrow to see the results to this case study!
