ELearning Guild publishes Mobile Learning Report
The ELearning Guild recently published the ‘Mobile Learning
Research Report 2006’. Although it does not contain many surprises,
it certainly reaffirmed Epic’s view that while adoption of
m-learning is growing fast, it is still relatively immature and
firmly at the ‘trial’ stage where it is being implemented.
The survey’s respondents comprise a mix of corporates, colleges,
universities, and e-learning service providers. Unfortunately the
number of respondents is unpublished, although all 21,000 Guild
members and associates, plus their website visitors, were invited
to participate. Some interesting trends and statistics emerge from
the survey.
The report points to differing approaches either side of the pond.
While a considerable amount of research work and trials is being
undertaken in Europe, American academia is forging ahead with practical
implementations of m-learning. Corporates are being much more cautious
because m-learning has not yet been extensively tested in the field,
although they are in the early stages of adoption.
Among the more interesting statistics is that while only 16% of
respondents are already doing m-learning, a much larger 26% will
be doing it for the first time in the coming 12 months. With higher
education leading the way, the main users of m-learning are currently
academic staff and students. Sales reps are the next highest users,
reflecting how corporates are trailing in this area and the type
of corporate user being targeted by m-learning, i.e. executives
on the move.
On the device side, the report mirrors our own experience at Epic.
Laptops, iPods, mobile phones and PDAs are the most popular devices
currently; however this changes significantly for people adopting
m-learning in the next 12 months with the focus moving to Treo Smart
phone, Blackberry and PDA.
Epic believes the PDA will continue to decline as a learning device.
Studies show that PDA sales continue to plummet and are only really
sustained by the in-car satellite navigation market. So we don’t
expect these devices to stay on the radar much longer – iPod,
Smart phone and Blackberry clearly are the mobile platforms moving
forward. With mobile technologies like wearable computing devices
appearing on the horizon, there are real concerns about whether
adopting each new mobile technology that comes along will really
benefit mobile learning - see Steve Barden’s article
on technology fashions in this newsletter for more on this topic.
Whether laptops should have been included in this survey is debatable,
as these are a more traditional PC-based e-learning platform, albeit
for learning on the move.
Rather oddly, the Guild express surprise at the popularity of
iPods for m-learning. The iPod is already the most popular m-learning
device in the US thanks to the popularity of iTunesU sites among
universities and the momentous growth of podcasting. At Epic we
have been delivering iPod content for over a year and podcasting
is becoming an increasingly popular subject among our clients. With
the huge global uptake of podcasting, MP3 players have already moved
beyond music and are firmly established as informal learning devices.
Epic’s iPod-learning white paper explores this phenomenon
in detail and the Guild’s report shows how organisations are
gearing up to tap into the iPod market over the coming year, confirming
Epic’s belief that MP3 players will be the main catalyst for
m-learning uptake on a wide scale.
In terms of e-learning distribution, one-to-many is the overwhelming
standard form of delivery among respondents, indicating that content
providers have no immediate plans to make use of the social capabilities
of the new technology. At Epic we believe this will steadily change,
with the many-to-many approach making a real impact as social software
and informal learning becomes more widespread. The message we are
getting from clients is that they are seeing m-learning more and
more as an integral part of the informal learning mix, where communities
and collaboration come to the fore. So while there will always be
a place for one-to-many for tutor/guru led learning, we would expect
a many-to-many approach to become more common as organisations realise
the social benefits of mobile technology.
Overall, this is a very interesting report and well worth taking
the time to read, with pointers to other research data if you wish
to get more in-depth.
View the report
Article by
Mark Aberdour,
Technical Producer
|
