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Education-to-go is more than an academic matter
23 February 2005

Mobile learning, which has been getting increasingly popular in academic circles, is beginning to find practical applications in the business world.

In the biotech industry, for instance, Genentech’s salesforce has access to critical information on PDAs to keep up with the increasing pace and volume of new product data and industry developments.

And in consumer products, Unilever has deployed a couple of m-learning initiatives over the last two years, including a PDA-based financial modelling tool enabling managers to make business decisions remotely, and the delivery of the company’s code of business principles via video-enabled handheld devices.

The emergence of m-learning in recent years results from the convergence of various factors. One driver is the decreasing cost and increasing diffusion of mobile devices including mobile phones and PDAs. Improvements in wireless networks, as well as better storage, processing power, and the multimedia capabilities of mobile devices, have forged a promising technological framework for m-learning to proliferate.

Changes in work and training practices have also played their part. The growing culture of telecommuting – research company In-Stat/MDR estimated the number of “remote and mobile workers” in the US to be approximately 94m at the end of 2004, or nearly 40 per cent of all US employment – is playing a role in the increase of remote learning applications.

“As companies look for ways to decrease costs and increase efficiency, m-learning provides an opportunity for employees to obtain knowledge as and when it is needed, rather than through formal courses that may or may not be relevant to the solving of everyday problems in the workplace,” says Eilif Trondsen, director of the Learning on Demand program at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence, a Stanford Research Institute spin-off.

“The access to just-in-time knowledge, such as information on how to solve technical problems for field engineers or the ability to contact experts, is going to play a significant role in the future,” says Jon Andrews, partner at learning services provider, Accenture Learning.

As a result of these factors, an entire industry is growing around m-learning. Beyond manufacturers of mobile devices such as smartphones, PDAs, and MP3 players, content producers such as the California-based Medsn and eTrinsic, headquartered in Colorado, are creating Flash-based animations and simulations for mobile devices used in the life sciences industry.

Learning content development tools companies such as California-based Kinoma are helping clients create and deliver object-based content to mobile devices. Larger players such as Macromedia are also targeting mobile environments, while platforms such as Sun Microsystems’ Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) are providing m-learning developers with useful tools.

One interesting area of development is the application of mobile gaming to m-learning environments. According to Ron Edwards of the UK-based learning innovation consultancy Ambient Performance, projects such as the Washington, DC-based initiative Serious Games are exploring and developing game-based learning tools.

“The popularity of playing games on mobile devices including mobile phones lends itself very naturally to m-learning, and can bring fun and effectiveness to corporate training and communications,” says Mr Edwards. “We expect to see more of this in the future.”

Despite the rapid rate of development, the m-learning industry faces considerable challenges in the coming years. Hurdles range from the relatively small screen size, unwieldy interface, and poor battery life of many mobile devices, and inadequate networks, to the high cost of implementing m-learning programs, and corporate security concerns over the dissemination of sensitive data via mobile technologies.

Other areas of resistance are more cultural in nature. Some experts believe the proliferation of mobile devices may impede learning rather than aid it. Psychologist David Greenfield, founder and director of the Connecticut-based Center for Internet Studies, sees a downside to being continuously connected.

“Learning on the go gives people the opportunity to be masters of their own time,” says Dr Greenfield. “But evidence suggests that being constantly ‘plugged in’ to a mobile device does not improve the quality of your work or your performance.”

“Organisations, on the whole, have been slow to embrace m-learning,” says Mr Trondsen. “Accelerated adoption isn’t likely to happen until 2008.” With ever-tightening budgets, companies have little incentive to adopt new ways of training.

“M-learning suffers from the same fallacy as internet access,” says Nick Jones, vice-president at Gartner Research. “Giving people internet access doesn’t necessarily make them learn or do useful things. The same is true of m-learning unless the content is supportive of something the recipients really want to do. Like many examples before it, the issue is not provision of technology, it’s making people want to learn.”

Popular technology does have an important role in m-learning, however, as a pioneering project at Duke University in the US, in collaboration with Apple Computer, suggests. At the beginning of the school year, the university handed out free iPods to each incoming first-year student in an initiative to encourage the use of technology on campus.

The devices – more commonly used as music players – come pre-loaded with university-related information, and students can download course content including language lessons, recorded lectures, and audio books from a special website.

Keith Rand, an undergraduate student at Duke, is using an iPod to help him learn Spanish. The devices are being used in imaginative ways in language classes, from allowing students to hear dramatised recordings of Spanish novellas, to enabling them to review vocabulary pronunciations.

“I was sceptical about the iPods at first. You know: ‘they’re giving out these free iPods as a marketing scheme for Apple’,” says Mr Rand. “But it’s actually been really useful.”