Is mLearning Like eLearning? This is a question I recently responded to as posed by Janet Clarey, Technology Editor from ELearning! magazine from a LinkedIn group she moderates (The ELearning! Magazine Network). In one of Janet's comments, she thinks the key in in the "m," - I agree. It's an important question and because we've discussed mLearning several times in this blog, so I thought I would share my response...
Great question and to Janet's response, the "m" is very relevant right now. To answer directly, mLearning is a form of eLearning in that it's electronic but should otherwise be treated as a very different medium. At the same time, some are making many of the same mistakes made when eLearning first came out...
For instance, efforts and tools designed to convert and deliver PowerPoint and traditional eLearning into mLearning eerily parallel efforts to convert traditional classroom training and later PowerPoints straight to eLearning. We all now how that turned out... Why did they do it that way? Because it was new, shiny, and at least in the beginning, eLearning differentiated itself from classroom training as the latest and greatest... (and probably also because true instructional designers were not used to develop). However, it also resulted in very expensive and time-consuming development cycles along with content that often did not address the needs of its learners. Yet now, we are seeing new mobile products designed to develop and deliver "rich mobile media" that allow conversion of PowerPoints or include interfaces that are either not intuitive or are hard to use because they were really designed for use in a standard PC, Mac, or Linux browser. Some have come full circle...
For mLearning as with any medium, instructional designers and course developers need to ensure the medium will meet the needs of the organization's business context and learner. Mobile is useful when it is short, simple, and can be agnostically delivered to many devices. Think 2 minutes with content that's light to stream or download. Think MP3 for audio, think MP4 for video, think HTML or PDF for talking points, process diagrams, checklists, sales positioning, etc... As opposed a large PowerPoints or movie files that are large to download or stream, too long to maintain an attention span on a smart-phone, and are just plain not appropriate for the mobile learner. Mobile is meant to be augmentative and add value as part of a larger and blended learning path. It's for the learner on a plane, train, or automobile; for sales person on the way to propose a new product, for the field-tech who is making an on-site repair. Mobile is for the learner on the go. It needs to be designed, developed, and delivered that way.
So in the end, mLearning can be like eLearning if we make the same mistakes we did 10 years ago, or we can make it different... ;]
