Published Date: 07/17/2008
 MOBILE LEARNING
by Steve Wexler, Judy Brown, David Metcalf, David Rogers, and Ellen Wagner
With 17.3% of Guild members indicating that they use Mobile Learning (m-Learning) sometimes or often in their organizations, one might think that m-Learning is but a speed bump on the e-Learning highway. But ten years ago, very few people were using asynchronous e-Learning (aka, computer-based training) and five years ago very few people were using synchronous e-Learning. M-Learning use may be small, but it is growing.
More importantly, we’re starting to see substantial learner-initiated growth in Mobile Learning. According to the Guild’s dedicated Mobile Learning survey, only 8% of Guild member have explicitly created Mobile Learning content, yet The Guild’s modalities profile shows that many more learners are in fact accessing learning and/or performance support content from a mobile device, even if the designer of that content did not have a mobile device in mind. In other words, while 8% of Guild members explicitly created m-Learning content, 17.3% of Guild members “organically” accessed this content using a mobile device. And as workers become more mobile, and Smart phones become even smarter, we expect continued growth in this arena.
While the vast majority of Guild members that have explicitly adopted m-Learning report strong results, not all attempts at m-Learning are working as planned. In this report we’ll see what it is that members have emphasized to get learners and management to adopt m-Learning, as well as learn how to avoid the mistakes made by Guild members that did not get good results.
This 90-page report and accompanying essays and case studies will arm you with information from industry experts and over 1,350 of your peers. In addition, this report gives you the best data and analysis available to help you determine where you are with respect to your colleagues and if, when – and how – to move forward with Mobile Learning.
With dedicated Mobile survey data from over 1,350 Guild members and learning modality preferences from over 2,600 members Guild Research is able to definitively answer the following questions: - Which industries are leading the adoption of m-Learning and which are lagging?
- How are Guild members themselves using mobile devices and are they prepared to lead the charge into m-Learning?
- What types of m-Learning content are members developing?
- How are members that have implemented m-Learning getting their organization to buy into the benefits?
- What would Guild members that reported disappointing results with m-Learning do differently the next time around?
- Are your needs and priorities in alignment with your peers that work in similar organizations?
Here are just some of the findings from this report:- 20.2% of Guild members use Podcasts sometimes or often and 17.3% use Mobile Learning sometimes or often in their organizations.
- Members with seven or more year’s experience in e-Learning use Podcasts 33% more often and m-Learning 25.6% more often than members with six or fewer year’s experience.
- Asia Pacific leads all geographic regions in m-Learning adoption, with 21.4% of members using Mobile Learning sometimes or often. Canada lags with 10.7%.
- 37.5% of Guild members completing the Mobile Learning survey indicate they plan to do more m-Learning in the next 12 months.
- Blackberry is the most popular development platform with 46.6% of Guild members that plan to implement m-Learning targeting Blackberry devices. Windows Mobile is next with 26.9% followed by the iPhone with 15.2%.
- 81.4% of Guild members that have implemented m-Learning have seen improvement in learner/user access and availability.
- 59.4% of Guild members that have implemented m-Learning have seen improved user performance.
– Review of Guild members’ adoption of Mobile Learning and Podcasts, as well as analysis of individual preparedness for adopting m-Learning.
– An in-depth exploration of Guild member responses, broken down by industry and organization size. Use this information to see if your priorities and needs are in alignment with your peers.
– Analysis of benefits, ROI, and best practices, by members who have implemented m-Learning.
– Ellen Wagner discusses the fact that attempts at Mobile Learning have been ongoing for almost ten years, and we only now seem to be approaching actual deployment. This industry expert presents a summary of what it will take to bring m-Learning to real life, in whatever neighborhood you happen to find yourself.
– Clark Quinn explains that one of the biggest challenges for those who want to play in the m-Learning arena is simply knowing how to deliver interactivity. We have a plethora of competing devices, operating systems, and screen sizes, and no clear winners. The answer may be simpler than you think, as Clark’s essay illustrates.
–David Metcalf, Judy Brown, and David Rogers discuss the advent of mobile phones that can determine their location, scan and read bar codes, run software, and easily connect to the Web and to other mobile phones via the Internet cloud. These three leading experts show how new location-based learning strategies are just around the corner.
– Robert Gadd explains why sales training organization Sales Quenchers decided to deliver its just-in-time reference and teaching materials via the one device that every sales person has mastered: the mobile phone. He reviews the benefits for the company and its customers, and how Sales Quenchers selected a platform. Gadd closes with a compelling summary of the measurable results and outcomes, including costs and implementation time.
There is simply no other research report that offers you a more comprehensive 360° view of Mobile Learning than this Guild Research report. In addition, no other research organization can offer you Direct Data Access so you can drill down beyond summary views of the data to get clear answers to all the questions that are relevant to YOUR organization.
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