Flash For Learning

Inspired a bit by Tom King’s article on authoring tools, I started playing with Google Trends and was a little interested in how E-Learning is faring against the notion of Performance Support — my idea being that E-Learning is stuff we have to evaluate, manage and track the learner’s interaction with — and performance support being, perhaps, not so rigid.

Here’s my not-so-scientific report:

E-Learning is by far more popular in searches, though the volume of searches definitely has dropped from 2004 (which we can discuss by itself ad nauseum as far as reasons why people are searching less for E-Learning). But in 2007, in particular, the notion of “Performance Support” has gained much more buzz in news references. Now, this can mean a lot of things, but the fact that E-Learning never makes a blip in the news probably says something, too.

As we make E-Learning smaller and more granular… are we naturally evolving a model of instruction to something more like Performance Support?

By the way — as an interesting post-script to this, the top 10 regions, in order, who are literally looking for Performance Support, are…

1. South Korea
2. India
3. Singapore
4. Australia
5. Taiwan
6. United Kingdom
7. Canada
8. United States
9. Netherlands
10. China

Anyone want to take a stab at how employee productivity by nation matches up with this ranking for a search?

“We’re still trying to figure out what the questions are.”

Accenture had an opportunity for Mobile Learning. The Business need they had was to increase the speed and ease of uptake of corporate required training by senior executives. They also needed to provide important information at the moment of need.

Fortunately, they have a receptive audience that would benefit from and use a mobile approach to training. Mobile devices for their senior executives are enabling technologies. Senior executives make up a large population of our mobile device users.

• January 2007 = 6,000; October 2007 = 14,000

The Future Scenario:

1. The SE receives email aobut required training on their mobile device just before heading to the airport.
2. SE selects the “myLearning mobile solution” option for this training from her mobile device.
3. myLearning automatically enrolls the SE in the course and the SE has access to the mobile training course
4. SE takes a 15-20 minute segment of training and successfully completes an assessment en route to the airport.

Obstacles:

• Flash not supported as it needs to on mobile
• LMS Communication issues
• Configuration issues with the broad span of devices that need to be supported (dozens with different OSs)

Accenture decided to pilot it with a 12-screen prototype, intentionally selecting 12 screens that would present a challenge porting from their E-Learning to mobile. The decision to do this rather than designing from the ground up was intentional, as SEs wanted an experience that was as close to traditional E-Learning as possible. Accenture started in-house with a live demo with a very small population, and then they went remote for a pilot. Both groups came back and said they’d use it (about 90% in each group) when asked — stating they had a “better than expected” experience with the prototype.

Phase 1: Prototype

• Goals
  • Develop small prototype
  • Test with SE
  • Refine future scenario
• Key Research
  • Audience reaction
  • Insight on mobile technology
  • User interaction design considerations and trade-offs
• Content Interaction Definition
  • Ten minutes of content from existing ethics course
  • Simple text and graphics
  • Two types of interactions: multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank

Phase 2: Field Testing

• Goals
  • Develop a full Ethics course on a mobile device (no LMS interaction)
  • Test with a broader audience
• Key Research
  • Audience reaction and insight use of mobile devices
  • user interaction and design considerations
  • Preliminary infrastructure research

Phase 3: Infrastructure (including LMS integration for the first time)

• Goals
  • Develop LMS integration for mobile training delivery
  • Create a seamless experience from notification and enrollment on through to completion
• Key Research
  • Enrollment and completion communication to the LMS

Phase 4: Rollout

• Goals
  • Expand Accenture’s mobile learning asset catalog
  • Increase the richness of the user experience
• Key Research
  • Determine how to make the user experience better

Effective Design

Elements of effective designa nd usability of a mobile learning solution:

• Refreshable content
• Appropriate chunking of focused content
• Concise writing
• Effective and logical navigation
• Simple graphics

Projects Underway:

• LETSI - Beyond SCORM
  • Natural Evolution
  • From ADL
  • Adoption since 1997 has been enormous
  • Things were not designed back then to scale the way they need to now
  • Truly Global stewardship of SCORM
  • Taking over the responsibilities from ADL to be able to scale that support up
  • Charter, Governance, Infrastructure in the works now
  • Big things to emerge in 2008
  • Masie Consortium has given $10K to support LETSI, representing 250+ commercial organizations
  • Tom King is Masie’s delegate to LETSI.
• 3D Learning Project
  • Masie has paid to develop custom Second Life objects (islands, rooms, etc)
  • The “Compuserve” of virtual worlds
  • Not ready for corporate life, but there is a lot of innovation
  • Only Consortium members can come on to the Masie Island
  • Assets can be reused for free by any of the Consortium members
  • Interests in using Second Life as a narrative-based learning environment
  • Common thread — many of the people in organizations whose job is to research nextGen stuff has to do it from home, because nextGen stuff (Second Life, Facebook, Twitter) is blocked from corporate firewall.
• Voice of the Learner Survey
  • Looking for 10,000+ participation
  • Quick beta in November
  • Will aggregate member data for the member itself (separately) — for free.
  • The goal is that this happens every year.
  • Question this should answer: How is Learner Preference changing?
• Mobile Learning Project (iPhone+)
  • Judy Brown and Tom King
• Coaching & Mentoring
  • Stretch Assignments (Critical element in development)
  • Little scalability
• Performance Support
  • Interface issues
• Visual Front End of LMS