Three Essential Workstreams for Deploying Mobile Learning

For years, corporate learning has been ramping up to go mobile.   At conferences such as ATD ICE, mLearnCon, DevLearn, and others, the concurrent sessions that feature mobile topics fill up with learning professionals anxiously awaiting a session leader who they hope will unlock the mysteries of mobile learning and show them the way to make it happen for their companies.   I’ve spent plenty of time sitting in those sessions myself.

Where has it gotten us?   Not very far.  According to the ATD 2014 State of the Industry Report, only 1.47% of learning content is made available to learners through mobile technology.   Yet we all carry around our mobile devices trying to puzzle this out like Rubik’s cube.

In 2013, my company decided to get serious about developing a mobile learning program.  We did some research, worked out our plan, and selected a vendor partner to help us run a pilot.  (You can read about our pilot here.)  Two years later, we are up and running but it has been a long journey.  Getting an experienced vendor with a ready-to-go platform and a track record of success in setting up mobile learning with other companies was critical for us.

As I think about it now, there were three key workstreams that we had to move through to get our mobile learning program up and running.

Learning Strategy workstream – This is the most important workstream.  We had to flesh out how we wanted to use mobile learning in my company and build a communication plan to manage expectations.   Our plan focuses on using mobile technology for supplemental learning and performance support.   At this stage of the game, we don’t see our mobile program as the way to address primary learning needs, but rather a way to reinforce and support what people are learning in the classroom or through self-paced eLearning.

Information Technology workstream – This is the most challenging workstream.  We had to establish a feed from our Human Resources database to the mobile platform and establish single sign-on to ensure a positive user experience.   Partnering with the IT team was critical for our mobile launch.   At first, our IT team didn’t understand what we were trying to do. We lost a lot of time on our implementation trying to get the right level of support, but once we finally did things went smoothly.

Content workstream – This is the most fun workstream.   I have a good team of Instructional Designers.   They are passionate about learning and they understand what it takes to create a meaningful, engaging and effective learning experience.  Once we were clear on our strategy and got over the IT hurdles, I was able to let my team do what they do best – build great learning solutions.   Although I must admit, there has been a learning curve.   Most of our mobile learning objects run about 1 to 4 minutes in duration.  Creating short burst learning nuggets and mini-courses that are being deployed over a hand-held device or tablet requires different thinking when it comes to design.   Our learning objects are continuing to evolve as we gain more experience and gather feedback from our learners.

I’m glad I can now count my Learning and Development team among the few who are actually offering mobile learning to their workforce.   It is so powerful for learners to be able to get what they need, right in their hands, right when they need it.

Five Themes Heard Loudly and Clearly at #ASTD2013

This week was the learning industry’s premiere event:  The ASTD International Conference and Exposition (aka ICE) in Dallas.   Estimated attendance was upwards of 9000 learning geeks from over 70 countries.  I was proud to be among them.

At an event this large, it is impossible to experience it all.  It is like visiting the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is just too much to see and do.  The best way to approach it is to focus on a theme or a track, and create your own personal conference experience.  Two colleagues from my company attended the conference this year along with me.  One of them followed the Sales Enablement track and the other followed the Measurement, Evaluation and ROI track.  My approach was different.  Our company is a member of the ASTD Forum (a benchmarking group of about 50 companies that help each other out on workplace learning issues and share best practices).   The Forum members put on a series of workshops at ICE each year.  This year we offered four sessions.  I volunteered to co-facilitate one of them and I decided to attend the other three to support my colleagues during their facilitation.   It made for a great experience but it limited the number of sessions outside of the Forum offerings that I could attend.

Despite not getting around as much as I have at previous conferences, several themes reached me through the sessions I did attend, through the twitterverse, and through casual conversations with other conference goers in the expo, at lunch, and during my favorite event: the ice cream social!

Here are five themes I heard repeatedly during my conference experience:

Passion – Sir Ken Robinson kicked of the passion craze during his keynote address on Monday morning.  In discussing his new book, Finding Your Element, he reminded us all that we are happiest and most successful in our careers when we are able to perform work that marries up our aptitudes with our passions.   This seemingly simple point, made quite an impact.  It was cited during several other sessions during the week and was often part of the conversation in between sessions.

Millennials – It was fascinating to me to see how many times the millennial generation was discussed during this conference.  But what truly surprised me was the way it was discussed: “Millenials are coming!”  “They are going to be in leadership positions!”   “We must prepare!”  It was as if a plague or a hostile army was descending on us.   In my humble opinion, we were going a little overboard on this one.  Yes, every generation has different life experiences that shape their expectations, but isn’t that just part of diversity?  Embrace it and let it enrich us.   Let’s focus more on what we can learn from them and less about how they might react to “old school training approaches” that we should be retiring anyway.

Brain Science – I haven’t heard this much talk about the brain since the educational psychology courses I attended in graduate school.   But it is a welcome line of conversation.   Brain research is about memory and recall.  It confirms all of the things we know we should be doing to enable effective learning:  get people’s attention, stimulate their thinking, appeal to their emotions, and give them time to digest and reflect on what they have learned.   The latest research is being presented in easily digestible formats.   That is good news.  It gives us something to work with when we are trying to convince our business partners why we are advocating short bursts of learning spaced out over time instead of cramming everything into a three-day event.

Mobile as Performance Support - As it was with last year’s conference, Mobile Learning was a very hot topic.  But whereas last year’s discussion centered on how to get mobile learning off the ground, this year’s theme was how to do it right: getting mobile learning into the workflow and using it for just-in-time performance support.  Shame on anyone who still thinks they might be able to take an existing e-learning course and reconfigure it for a mobile device.   That is not the way to go.

Curation – As the learning industry embraces mobile, social, and self-managed learning as opportunities, we find ourselves needing to play a new role in relation to our learners: content curator.  With the overwhelming amount of information our learners have at their disposal, and the wide variety of sources from which to get that information, we can help them by sorting it out in ways that makes it easier for them to get their hands on content that will be most useful to them.  This year the ASTD published a conference backchannel resource page.   And of course, David Kelly, who has become one of the most influential leaders on this topic, posts his own curated resources from the conference.

Mobile Pilot Scorecard




As described in my March 9 blog entry, Yes, You Can Deliver Mobile Learning, we recently completed our first mobile learning pilot with the gracious assistance of our vendor partner OnPoint Digital, using their CellCast platform.   The results are in:   as is typical of pilots we had some successes (hooray!) and we learned a few things (which always reminds us why we do pilots in the first place).

In terms of our success criteria, we fully achieved three out of four goals. Not too bad for a pilot.  We were even partially successful with our fourth goal.   So here is a look at our mlearning pilot scorecard:

1. Producing and converting content for mobile delivery: Success! - we were able to successfully deploy audio, video, .pdf documents, tests and surveys, and an interactive product placement map to our pilot audience.  Producing the learning content was the easy part.  After all, that is what my team is already good at.  For the pilot, we relied on OnPoint to convert the content to the format required mlearning.
2. Deploying content using a mobile platform - Success! - as previously stated, we used the CellCast app from OnPoint Digital.   It worked very well for us.  We had a few technical glitches that required some troubleshooting in the first few days of the pilot.  But doesn't that happen with all roll-outs that involve technology?   Once we got those glitches ironed out, it was pretty smooth sailing for the rest of the way.
3. Deploying content to a variety of mobile devices - Partial Success - We were able to successfully deploy to Android and iOS devices.  However, the majority of our pilot audience was equipped with older model Blackberries.  We knew going into the pilot that we were likely to hear grumblings from this group about the user experience. We were prepared to get that feedback, but there were two communication issues that made this a bigger challenge than I would have liked:  (1) Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) software - this had to be unlocked so our users could download the app to their devices.  Nothing like this was required for either the Android or iOS devices.  (2) Lack of SD Cards - many of the users had never installed SD cards in their devices, so there was no place for their downloads to land.  This effectively put a good chunk of the pilot audience out of the game.   Many of the users without the SD cards, used personal devices to complete their training.  A handful of people went out and bought new SD cards and installed them so they could participate, but most just missed the opportunity.
4. Testing and recording participant completion results - Success! - one of the advantages of mobile devices that should not be overlooked is that they can be used for two-way communication.  Since this was our first pass at mlearning, we didn't go beyond receiving test scores and survey data back from our participants through their mobile devices, but it was encouraging to see the amount and type of data we could capture.   For example,  the image accompanying this blog entry is of a data processing unit.  It is a still capture from one of our videos that was viewed on average over six times by the pilot participants.  Most of the other videos averaged slightly less than three views each.  I'm interpreting that as telling us we need to beef up the DPU segment of our initial classroom training.  Great information, don't you think?

All in all, I would call our pilot a success.  We learned a few things about how to present our content, how to make downloading easier, and about what will work and what won't in terms of mobile learning.   And as far as our Blackberry device issue, well that has now been solved.  Reporting the results of our pilot to senior leaders gave them the last piece of information they needed to justify a device upgrade for our users.   How is that for a nice unintended outcome?

Yes, You Can Deliver Mobile Learning

After sitting through so many mobile learning sessions at industry events, I got tired of being among the puzzled masses who couldn't figure out how to launch a mobile learning solution. I was determined to unravel this mystery and begin offering mobile learning in my company.   I started by asking myself, "What makes this so hard to do?"  I'm a reasonably intelligent guy.  I've got an iPad and an Android Smartphone.   I download apps.  I play Words with Friends on occasion.  This shouldn't be so hard for me and my team to figure out.  Then it hit me.   My team is made up of highly talented instructional designers.   We understand how to build learning solutions, but we aren't programmers or app developers.  We could design and develop learning content for mobile delivery, but we needed some help on the technology side.   Rather than try to create our own apps, we decided to find a partner that had a ready made platform we could use to help us get started.    Now, we are just finishing up our first mobile learning pilot.   We will be summarizing the completion and evaluation data next week.    It took a lot of research, self-education, and just plain work for us to get to this point.   But if I were to simplify it down to the key things that helped us move forward, it would be these five things:

1. Read Designing mLearning by Clark Quinn - If you do a literature search on mobile learning, all roads lead back to this book, so you might as well start here.   It covers mobile learning in a very comprehensive way.    As you read it, think about it in the context of your own situation so you can identify and plan how to overcome your own hurdles.
2. Form a Mobile Team - This is clearly a case where more heads are better than one.  The easy part of the work for us was designing and developing the content, but there are a lot of decisions to be made regarding network protocols, mobile security, audience analysis, and interface design before you can get to that point.
3. Partner with Your Information Technology Team -  You cannot do this without having IT support at the right level in your organization.   There are device, policy, security and protocol issues that have to be addressed.  These cannot be resolved by Learning & Development alone. 
4. Choose a Vendor Partner - This is the real jump starter.   We will likely get to a point where we are developing our own learning app, but that day is not here yet.  We chose to start by using a mobile platform that already exists and a partner who has done this before.  OnPoint Digital helped us conduct our pilot using their Cellcast App.  We also got great support and advice from the folks at Float Learning.
5. Choose the Right Pilot Project - Keep in mind, this is about learning, not just using a new medium.   It is important to choose a project that matters.  In our mobile learning pilot,  we delivered update training to a group of service technicians who had previously attended an installation  and repair class on a piece of equipment they must service.  There have been some hardware updates and changes to electrical specs on that equipment since the technicians completed their initial training.   Rather than bring them back into the classroom, or have them interrupt their work day to take time out for eLearning, we chose to prepare them to handle the differences they would encounter on service calls using mobile learning.  Their training consisted of twelve brief video segments focusing on the hardware differences (only the introductory video clip ran longer than one minute), three electrical diagrams for review, and an interactive map showing where the newer models had been placed.   We included a brief quiz asking a few key questions to check knowledge of the differences, but for the most part, what we really supplied them with were some brief, handy performance support tools they could use at the point of need.

This is just the beginning for us, but I feel great having done this pilot. Our goal was to test the end-to-end process.  Having done this, I feel I'm in a better position to garner stakeholder support for a longer term mobile learning strategy.   Best of all, the next time I attend a mobile session at a learning conference, and the speaker asks the audience, "How many of you are using mobile learning?"  I can raise my hand.   

DevLearn 2012 Resources

Sadly,  I was not able to make it to DevLearn this year.   Like many others, I was sidelined by Hurricane Sandy.   Fortunately for me, I was able to send several of my team members, so we had good coverage at the conference.   When they returned they were excited by the greater understanding they gained on issues such as HTML5, Mobile Learning, Tin Can API and the latest trends in learning analytics.  They also met some great people through networking.   Now they face the daunting task of educating me!

But to aid in the process, once again we have the great treasure trove of resources from conference curator David Kelly aka @LnDDave.

The Perfect Storm: HTML5, Tin Can API and Mobile

Having just endured the powerful forces of Hurricane Sandy here in the northeastern United States, my heart goes out to the people who lost homes and loved ones during the storm. Meanwhile in the learning industry, another storm is brewing. If you haven’t been paying attention to topics such as HTML5, Tin Can API, Learning Records Stores, and developments on the mobile front, then you better batten down the hatches. These things are upon us now. They represent a climate change that can create super storms, ones that have ability to disrupt daily life for those of us in the workplace learning industry if we aren't prepared for them.

I work in a corporate learning department for a relatively large global company. We have been providing high quality learning services to our employees for years. I’m proud of the work my team does and the impact we have had on our organization’s success, particularly during the tough economic times of the last few years. We have never been what I would consider “cutting edge” but we have always managed to be creative and innovative in our approaches to learning. We have not only embraced change, but we have driven it through our organization. We are doing this once again as we have launched a project to introduce mobile learning as part of our mix. While I am excited by the possibilities, I feel like I’m walking through a storm. We seem to be in a time and place where so many things are swirling around us at once, so it is hard to know where to step next. Here are some of the challenges that we need to weather over the next few months:

Everybody’s Going Mobile – Smartphones and tablets are wonderful productivity tools, aren’t they? These days everyone has one…or two… or three. But they are all different. Yes, we have some company issued devices, but our learners are going to expect to be able to access learning content from their device of choice. This means designing and publishing multiple ways.

Gone in a Flash – I’m talking about Flash output. Up until now, all of the e-learning content we have produced has been published as Flash output. Of course we all know that that is coming to an end. To be able to publish engaging learning that can be accessed on a mobile device, we are going to have to produce HTML5 output now. Of course HTML5 Standards aren’t finalized yet, and none of our current course development software tools publish to HTML5, so there are those little things to deal with.

I’ll trade you an “M” for an “R” - That is as in LMS vs. LRS. We have thousands of learning objects on our Learning Management System (LMS). But of course, our LMS can’t handle content published for mobile devices (Yeah, I know that capability will be coming out in a future release of our LMS software… Q1 of 20xx). Our LMS is looking for SCORM standards, whereas mobile learning will mean using Tin Can API. (Yes, we are all learning about Tin Can.) If we want to record and track mobile learning, we’ll need a Learning Record Store (LRS).

As I said, I’m excited by this new direction we are taking. Mobile learning will be a real game changer for us. But I have to admit, figuring out how to fit all these things together is keeping me up at night almost as much as Hurricane Sandy did.

Capitalizing on 7 Learning Modalities

Last week I had the opportunity to get into a dialog with my company's learning council about the future direction of our approach to workplace learning.  My goal was to get them to support the idea of using tools and technologies to foster more informal learning opportunities. Our learning council is made up of a group of senior leaders from each of our business units and some key functional areas.  They are all savvy, successful business men and women in their areas of expertise, but their knowledge of what makes learning effective is uneven.   My approach was to write and present a white paper to them on how to capitalize on the learning modalities that are currently available for use in our organization - including mobile learning and learning through social media.

I wasn't sure how they would react to this.  Like many companies, our approach to workplace learning has mainly been focused on using traditional delivery methods such as classroom training, webinars, and self-paced elearning. To set the stage in the paper and in our discussion, I started by talking about the 70:20:10 Learning Framework.   This was a good choice as it comes across as rational, logical, and easy to understand.  Next, we talked about the proliferation of mobile devices and the explosion social media usage over the last few years, drawing the conclusion that our employees are already engaged in these arenas and that to provide effective learning support, we need to be in there with them.

After setting the stage, we moved the dialog into discussing how we would use each of the seven learning modalities I included in the paper.  I arranged them along a continuum from most formal to least formal (as shown in the image above).  You could argue with my sequencing, but this worked for the purposes of my discussion.  In the paper, I covered each modality by describing its current use, benefits, drawbacks, and recommendations for usage in our future learning offerings.

Here are the seven modalities we discussed, with a brief line about how we plan to optimize each:

Instructor-led training (ILT) - to optimize ILT we need to make sure our courses are learner-centered and discussion-oriented, offering ample opportunities for practice and feedback.

Virtual Instructor-led training (VILT) - to optimize VILT we need to design full, facilitated learning experiences that may include multiple sessions, pre-work, assessments, interactive exercises and post work (not just have a subject matter expert talking over PowerPoint slides).

eLearning (CBT or WBT) - to optimize elearning we need to use story-based, character-driven, and game-based approaches that are interactive and engaging to motivate our learners to stay with them through to completion.

Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) - to optimize EPSS we need to provide relevant tools and place them (physically and contextually) where our learners are most likely going to look for them.

Podcasts and Videos - to optimize our use of podcasts and video we need to create short burst learning objects that address a single topic or specific objective.

Mobile Learning - to optimize mobile learning in the short term we need to post .pdf, audio and video files and take advantage of two-way communication opportunities; longer term we will work with an external partner and our IT team to create and support a mobile learning app.

Social Learning - to optimize social learning we need to create groups and/or topic archives based on areas of interest to our learners, focusing on information sharing, collaboration, and content co-creation.

All-in-all we had a great dialog.  Our learning council members were excited about the possibilities of mobile and social learning.   They recognize the power of embedding learning directly into the workstream: minimizing disruptions to productivity while our employees grow and develop their skills.

Horizon Report: Technologies to Watch

In my last blog entry, I wrote about the trends described in The Horizon Report (2010 Edition) that are driving the technology adoptions that are anticipated to rapidly increase over the next five years.  In this post, I'd like to share a few thoughts about the six emerging technologies that, according to the report, will be entering the mainstream in that timeframe.

The report places the six technologies along three adoption horizons:  near-term horizon (within one year), second-adoption horizon (within two to three years), and far-term horizon (within four to five years).

Technologies to Watch over the Next Year

Mobile Computing - Oh, those smart phones!  The masses can now connect to the internet wirelessly from virtually anywhere.  They are cheaper and easier to carry around than laptops.   These portable devices have tremendous implications for workplace learning.   I know people have been talking about them for a few years now, but I truly believe the report is on the money by predicting this is the year we will start to see mobile learning move beyond a handful of trendsetters and into common usage by training departments.  And of course, within a few days we will start to see people who don't mind shelling out $500 toting around the new heavily hyped iPad.

Open Content - I would think this trend has probably made many college administrators very nervous.  Why enroll in an expensive university program when information is everywhere for the taking?  But since many prestigious institutions are fostering this trend, they must know what they are doing.  The Horizon Report lists this as one of its less-than-one-year-to-adoption technologies, but I don't think it will impact the workplace so quickly.   I think it will take corporate learning departments a little bit longer to figure out how to harness and repackage of all the free content that is out there in ways that will make sense for their workers.

Technologies to Watch over the Next Two to Three Years

Electronic Books How about these things? I'm a train commuter. I used to love to read over people's shoulders. Books and newspapers articles always seem more interesting when someone else is reading them. But every day more of the train crowd is switching to Kindle readers and the like.  It's just not the same.  You have to be at just the right angle to see the screen.  So, there goes one of my hobbies! But seriously, what a great tool for workers to use to carry around reference material, policy information and anything else they might need for just-in-time performance support.

Simple Augmented Reality - Simple, huh?   A few years ago, I had a training vendor come in to demonstrate their capabilities with augmented reality.  They had done a lot of work creating training programs for the Navy to help people learn various functions on nuclear submarines.  Very impressive stuff!  I was thinking we could use the same approach to create virtual models of our products to train our service department on installation and equipment repair.  It seemed pretty advanced for its time.  Since the Horizon Report lists mainstream use of augmented reality as two to three years away, I guess it was.

Technologies to Watch over the Next Four to Five Years

Gesture-based Computing - Imagine what version 7.0 of the Nintendo Wii will be like.  Imagine us doing away with keyboards and mouses (mice?) as input devices for our computers.   Interfacing with our personal computers will probably be very much like Tom Cruise's experiences in Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report.  The computers will respond to our natural movements and facial expressions.   It gives whole new meaning to the idea of a workplace training simulation.

Visual Data Analysis - According to the Horizon Report, visual data analysis is characterized by "its focus on making use of pattern matching skills that seem to be hard-wired into the human brain" and by the way in which it "facilitates the work of teams working in concert to tease out meaning from complex sets of information."    And,  "it allows for the interactive manipulation of variables in real time."  - Nuff said.  Call me in five years on this one!

A Look to the Horizon (Report)

I recently picked up a link to The Horizon Report (2010 Edition) from one of the people I follow on Twitter.  Each year the report identifies and describes six emerging technologies that are predicted to have an impact on the academic world and/or the learning industry within the next five years.   The report further divides this adoption period into three phases: near-term horizon (within one year), second adoption horizon (within two to three years), and far-term horizon (within four to five years).   It also identifies key trends that drive adoption of the emerging technologies that are predicted go mainstream in the five-year period.  I found this section of the report interesting.  Clearly, the trends they describe are upon us now.  In this blog entry,  I'd like to share those trends, and some thoughts on their impact.

Key Trends Driving Technology Adoption over the Next Five Years

The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialling.

This statement was obviously written with the context of academic institutions in mind, particularly when thinking about credentialling.  Getting a college degree has been the baseline requirement for any career-minded individual for decades.  Yet, when graduates arrive in the workplace, they are often in need of additional training.  In the world of instructional design, there is an ongoing debate that pops up from time-to-time about the value or necessity of having a degree in the field.  I wrote about this issue back in December.  A year earlier in her wonderful blog Learning Visions, Cammie Bean, speaking about a gathering of instructional designers at DevLearn '09 wrote:   "Of the 25 plus IDs in the room, only two had advanced degrees in ID.  Most people found themselves in the role of ID somewhat by accident – by 'discovering that I had a knack,' demonstrating an affinity for ID, by being a good teacher, etc."  Many people who support the position that a degree in instructional design is not necessary make the argument that a motivated individual can learn everything they need through hands-on experience coupled with an informal education provided by books, articles, blogs and other internet sources.  The ability to get that kind of education in almost any field is rapidly increasing.  In the workplace,  employees no longer look for a company training catalog when they have knowledge gaps.  They turn to Google or Wikipedia as a jumping off point to quickly find the resources they need.

People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.

Telecommuting, virtual teams, and agile worker programs are becoming commonplace. My company has had telecommuters for a long time.  I have been managing a virtual team for a few years now.     Last year, my company began piloting an agile worker program in several places.  This program is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years.  It is only logical that employees who work virtually will expect to learn virtually.  Our focus has to be on creating virtual learning environments to support this need.

The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.

A few years ago, there was great concern in the corporate world over hackers getting behind our firewalls.  Now, with cloud computing,  we don't seem to care where our information is stored as long as it is protected and it is accessible when we need it.  This drives more people to access information from mobile devices, which in turn drives our need in the learning industry to be able to capitalize on mobile learning.  While this has been talked about for some time, there have only been a handful of "wow" examples of mobile learning in wide use.  I believe this is the year we will move beyond those few "wow" examples and start to see some mainstream usage which will accelarate this trend.

The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative by nature, and there is more cross-campus collaboration between departments.

I think everyone can agree that the synergy created by collaborative efforts is a great payoff of working in teams.   However, I personally find this trend maddening in the academic world.   When I started my distance learning graduate program a few years ago, I would occasionally have group activities or projects as part of my classes.  Now it seems that each class is one long group project from beginning to end.  I feel like a victim of this trend.  I don't have the flexibility in my life for this type of commitment.  The reason I chose to be a part-time, distance learning student in the first place was so that I could fit in my classwork according to my schedule and availability.  It is a nightmare trying to coordinate schedules with other working professionals who like myself have jobs that involve travel and are trying to balance that with school and family obligations.   On the plus side, this has made me more sensitive as to how we construct and conduct collaborative learning in our training programs.