Mobile Learning: An Emerging Learning Trend With the increase in the globalization of business, service providers are adopting a working model where the focus is on customer interaction and on-the-spot solution modeling. This has resulted in increase in the mobile workforce. With the changed scenarios, smart companies are competing to arrive at a learning approach that can meet varied expectations of their employees and present them information as and when required. This clearly indicates that with the increase in mobility of learners, mlearning solution will complement elearning in a big way. This paper focuses on the upcoming learning trend, mobile learning. An attempt has been made to present various dimensions of mobile learning.
About the Authors Madhuri Kumari Madhuri Kumari is a Project Lead with 10 years of experience at Tata Consultancy Services. She holds a post-graduation (M.Tech) from Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. She has been involved in end-to-end solution delivery in areas including Education, Messaging, and elearning. Vikram Singh Vikram Singh is a Project Lead with 9 years of experience at Tata Consultancy Services. He is an Engineering graduate from Bhavnagar University. His specializations are in Education and Logistics domains. 1
Table of Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Impact of Mobile Technologies on the Learning Domain 3 3. Target Users of mlearning 5 4. Advantages of mlearning 6 5. mlearning Technologies 7 Devices 7 Mobile Software 7 Mobile Operating Systems 7 6. Challenges of mlearning for Scope Expansion 8 7. Future Potential of mlearning 8 8. Conclusion 9 2
Introduction Improved internet bandwidth and advances in technology is revolutionizing the delivery of technology-enabled services. This coupled with lack of time leads to enormous potential and demand for instantaneous services. The evaluation of a service is now based on its immediate accessibility and ability to adapt to emerging trends. Undoubtedly, learning management services also conform to this trend. With the onset of elearning, a new dimension was tagged to distance learning (dlearning). Learning over the internet provides learners the freedom to learn at a self-defined pace from anywhere at any time. However, with the increase in workforce mobility, the requirement has shifted to providing learning on the move. This demand has shaped the need for mobile learning, also known as mlearning. Impact of Mobile Technologies on the Learning Domain Findings from recent surveys and reports indicate considerable increase in the subscriber base of mobile phones and smartphones with highly capable mobile browsers. As per a research paper of Brandon Hall, based on United Nations prediction that the global human population will reach about 6.3 billion by the end of 2009, approximately 41 percent of this population will use mobile 1 phones. As per a report from ehealth-connection.org, there is a considerable increase in the mobile phone subscriber 2 base from developing nations; it has grown from 24 percent to 76 percent between 1998 and 2008. A report from ABI Research predicts that the number of smartphones with highly capable mobile browsers will 3 increase from 130 million at present to more than 530 million by 2013. According to the NPD Group, Apple's iphone was named the most popular phone during the third quarter of 4 2008, surpassing sales of Motorola's Razr. Fuelled by the growth of high-end mobiles, mlearning is positioned for rapid growth. The concept of 'learning on the move' marks a turning point in the learning sphere, which until recently had the limitation of being accessible only over the internet. 1 http://www.brandon-hall.com/publications/mobilelearning/mobilelearning-comesofage.shtml 2 http://ehealth-connection.org/files/conf-materials/mobile%20services%20evolution.pdf 3 http://www.abiresearch.com/press/1299-as+mobile+web+usage+explodes%2c+full-featured+browsers+on+smartphones+see+strongest+growths 4 http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_081110.html 3
With the advent of laptops, learners were able to avail the facility of learning on the move and were relieved from dependency on their desktops. Further evolution led to mlearning where learners can use smaller devices that enable learning on the move. The increasing penetration of mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and smartphones has redefined and accelerated the growth of mlearning. A learner can opt for a learning medium and content based on personal requirements, interests, and constraints. Therefore, easy accessibility and availability of learning content acts as a catalyst for the learning process. Mobile devices being a truly portable communication media, the availability of learning content through mobile medium will definitely expedite the learning process. With the increase in globalization, businesses are adopting a working model where the focus is on customer interaction and on-the-spot solution modeling. This has resulted in an increase in the mobile workforce. In such changing scenarios, companies are competing to arrive at a learning approach that can meet the varied expectations of their employees and render information as and when required. This clearly indicates that with the increase in mobility of the workforce, mlearning solution will complement elearning in a big way. dlearning mlearning elearning Figure 1: Conglomeration of various modes of learning 4
Target Users of mlearning The scope of mobile learning extends across various sectors such as corporate, education, defense, NGOs, rural, and so on. Organization-wide policies, procedures, Compliance trainings Sales Material Corporate Education Collaborative projects and fieldwork Podcasting New weapons training Defense NGO/Rural Literacy initiatives Figure 2: Target users of mlearning The differently abled will also benefit with this advancement. There are several ongoing researches on the accessibility of mlearning. There are few case studies highlighting innovative practices in colleges and universities 5 across the UK, which provides substantial evidence supporting the benefits to these learners. 5 http://www.springerlink.com/content/r72184173t15757v/ 5
Advantages of mlearning Although mlearning is at a nascent stage, increased adoption of mobile devices will help mlearning to gain popularity in the learning sphere. mlearning through a mobile device makes learning truly personalized. The learners have the option to choose learning content based on their interest, thus making mlearning very learner-centric. The flexibility to access immediate job-specific information using mobile devices helps to increase the productivity of an individual. Self-paced learning and instant availability of content on demand are the salient features of mlearning. It provides users the option to undergo training during non-work hours and encourages collaborative learning, peer interaction, and Podcasting. Learning can be disseminated in various ways, ranging from traditional classroom to distance learning, virtual instructor-led training, elearning, mlearning, and so on. The recent trend in learning delivery is blended learning, which combines different modes of learning, to make learning more effective and engaging. Blended learning combines the strengths of different learning modes and helps to best fit the learning context in an interactive learning environment. Mobile learning can also be combined with other modes of learning to provide an interactive learning environment to the learner. Content consistency Collaborative learning Personalized learning On-demand content Advantages of mlearning Learner-centric Self-paced learning Increased productivity Figure 3: Advantages of mlearning 6
mlearning Technologies Devices There are several devices that support mobile learning camera phones, smartphones, and personal audio players the most popular being PDAs, which are wallet-sized computers designed as a combination of digital calendars and address books. These are also generically known as Palm computers. Mobile Software 6 Sun Microsystems designed the Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), an Application Programming Interface (API) to develop software for small and resource-constrained devices. The key element of J2ME is Mobile Information Device Profile 7 (MIDP) which provides a standard Java runtime environment for popular mobile information devices, such as cell phones and PDAs. Designed for cell phones, MIDP includes a GUI API, and MIDP 2.0 includes a basic 2D gaming API. MIDP is a widely adopted platform of choice for mobile applications, deployed on millions of cell phones and PDAs globally, and is also supported by leading integrated development environments (IDEs). Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5 include support for working with XML and creating mobile Web applications. ASP.NET mobile Web pages contain ASP.NET mobile controls, which are server-side controls that send device-specific markup to the client browser. Mobile Operating Systems There are many players in the area of mobile device operating systems (OS) such as Symbian OS, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Mac OS X, Linux, iphone OS, and Android. Many operating system providers have also developed SDK platform compliant to their operating system. According to a survey report conducted by Gartner in 2008, 8 Symbian OS is the most popular choice for mobile device OS and it has a market share of 57 percent. 6 http://java.sun.com/javame 7 http://java.sun.com/products/midp/ 8 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=754112 7
Challenges of mlearning for Scope Expansion Lack of standardization in screen size, key size, and operating systems: Though the reports confirm that there are many mobile users, there is a lot of variation in the screen size and color schemes used in the mobile devices. The challenge lies in packaging content for multiple screen sizes and multiple OS platform of mobile devices. Small screen size of mobile device: With the wide range of elearning content around, a technology is required to repackage content for mobile platforms. The complexity of mobile learning increases when it comes to the display of large content. Lack of rich graphical and interactive features: Currently, very few users possess mobile devices with very rich graphical and interactive features. This fragmentation poses a challenge for the developers of mobile learning technology. Limited computational capabilities: The physical characteristics of mobile devices such as, dimension and weight pose a restriction in terms of computational capabilities and support for very rich content. Limited battery life of mobile device: The battery life of these devices is limited and is vulnerable to run out in limited time. Future Potential of mlearning Many reputed organizations have begun incorporating mlearning for their mobile workforce. Some of the trend 9 setters in this area are : Canadian Armed Forces, uses NGRAIN for mlearning Eastern Washington University, uses Questionmark for mlearning St. George Bank, uses SumTotal for mlearning American Power Conversion, uses SpotLight Mobile for mlearning The future scope of mobile learning calls for combined effort from mobile vendors, mobile service providers, and experts from the learning industry. Mobile manufacturers need to focus on the production of affordable mobiles with enhanced features to make mlearning an engaging and user-friendly experience. Some of the features that would be important in the production of mobile devices aimed to support mlearning are screen size, color, processing power, key navigation, and battery life. Mobile service providers should provide seamless integration with the elearning solution providers so that learning content is made easily available to the learners over mobile devices. They should be able to host WAP/SMS servers to support the delivery of learning content and enable the accelerated interaction between the learner and the educator. 9 http://www.brandon-hall.com/publications/mobilelearning/mobilelearning-comesofage.shtml 8
The experts from the learning industry need to work on the content design and packaging for mobile learning. The content for mobile learning should be concise, crisp, and easily accessible. The content design should focus on developing job-aids, short information capsules targeting corporate, and readily available assessment question papers, preparatory tests for academicians. The challenge lies in ensuring that the content is clear, concise, and compelling to the learner. Mobile vendors Mobile service providers mlearning Experts from the learning industry Figure 4: Future scope of mlearning Conclusion Mobile learning is all set to redefine the learning experience. With the power of anytime, anywhere computation and communication through mobile devices, it is imperative to adopt mlearning as a medium for learning dissemination. Modeling the learning content to fit the mobile devices calls for integrated efforts from mobile vendors, mobile service providers, and the learning management industry. With the features that mobile learning has to offer, it is evident in the near future, mobile learning will complement elearning in a big way. 9
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