E-learning - but mobile!
When you think about it, people these days cannot sit still for more that a minute without getting their smartphone out of their pocket or their tablet out of their bag. Whether this is on a train or in a waiting room, people are increasingly using mobile devices to fill 'dead time'.
Benefits
For any business or training body, the possibility of being able to deliver interactive training content that an employee or student can access on their mobile device when they are away from the office/classroom is somewhat desirable. For the employee/student though, the training content has to be engaging, interactive and fun for them to want to do it in their spare time. Of course, you can make m‑learning mandatory for the student to ensure they do it, but it is better if they want to do it because they enjoy it.
Development considerations
The main considerations when developing m‑learning are often overlooked by most content designers. These are:
- Device
The mobile device is much smaller than a traditional e‑learning platform (a computer), so the features of an e‑learning package may be fiddly to interact with on a mobile device. These devices are great for watching videos, reading an article, looking at images and playing games, and all of these mediums should be included in an m‑learning package to keep the student engaged.
- Time
E‑learning courses are best delivered using 'protected learning time'. This is where a supervisor gives their employee a time slot to complete their e‑learning in a quiet area away from their usual duties. This can be a 30 minute period or an hour for longer packages.
The window of opportunity for a student to complete an m‑learning package is significantly smaller. People only have say, 10 minutes on the tube, 20 minutes on a train etc, so an m‑learning package has to be designed in much smaller chunks to be achievable by the student. M‑Learning chunks should be around 2 minutes in length, but the whole m‑learning course can still be 30 minutes worth of chunks (or more). Moving from chunk to chunk every two minutes will keep the student engaged.
- Format
Choosing the right format for the content is critical. Flash content cannot be delivered on the most popular mobile devices due to the drain on battery power caused by playing a Flash movie (besides the fact that Flash is obsolete and should not be used any more). Video content can take up a lot of storage, especially if it has been filmed in high‑definition for added detail. Text documents can be difficult to read on smaller mobile devices.
HTML5 solves a lot of these issues, but this normally requires an active internet connection to access the content through a browser - not so convenient when travelling in areas of poor signal. However, HTML5 content can be cached to a student's device for accessing 'offline'.
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