Designing #mLearning Book Review – Chapter 1

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I intend to provide a brief synopsis of each chapter of ‘Designing mlearning‘, but more importantly I intend to answer the questions that Clark poses at the end of each chapter and then pose those same questions back to you ‘Dear Reader‘

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Chapter 1 – Overview

OK, so I’m off to something of a false start here as I’ve just realised that there are no questions asked of ‘The Reader’ at the end of this short introductory chapter, but we are provided with a list of very realistic and pragmatic situations in which a range of ‘everyday’ roles and occupations can/could/do harness the benefits of a mobile device to increase their performance and value.

And guess what?

Only one of the examples is to undertake a compliance ‘course’! This (thankfully) fleeting mention of a ‘course’ provides me with a warm, fuzzy feeling that the rest of the book won’t be trying to convince me of the benefits of shrinking down desktop learning onto a smaller screen.

He also provides us with a definition for mlearning that he admits the eLearning Guild mobile learning research team struggled to come up with:

“Any activity that allows individuals to be more productive when consuming, interacting with, or creating information, mediated through a compact digital portable device that the individual carries on a regular basis, has reliable connectivity, and fits into a pocket or purse”

(eLearning Guild 360 Mobile Learning Research Report, 2007)

He finally reminds us that the pace of change in this area is so fast that any suggested, specific solutions would be unlikely to stand the test of the publishing process time, so instead explains what the book is really about; preparing the reader to take advantage of the mobile revolution.

I’m hooked.

I’m reading on…..

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I’m speaking at #DevLearn 12…

It appears that US conferences have a slightly different view of accepting vendors as speakers compared with the UK conference circuit, which meant that following my submission of a proposal to speak at DevLearn 2012 I was pleasantly surprised to be accepted as a speaker at this years conference. (note: I am no longer working within a vendor environment, but fortunately my new employer is supporting me in meeting my commitment and of course to attend the wider conference activities).

Of course I’m excited to speaking at such a renowned conference but I have to admit that I’m more than a little intrigued by Neil Lasher’s blog post comparing the US to the UK conference circuit – I guess I’ll be able to take a look for myself soon!

In preparation for my session, I’ve put together a short video that I’m hoping attendees will watch prior to attending the session (previous experience at an eLN event demonstrated that the take-up of this approach was woefully low!) therefore maximising the precious face-to-face that we will have during the session. In the meantime, why not take look at the video yourself (it’s the first movie I’ve created on my Macbook using iMovie) and leave your responses in the comments section below.

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What Learners Want – Part 1 – The ‘why’

Towards the back end of 2012, my organisation formally entered into a working relationship with Towards Maturity to help us better understand our Benchmark results and help us work towards creating an L&D strategy.

During one of those initial meetings Laura Overton made an almost throw away remark about a ‘Learner Audit’ (I’m not overly keen on the name, so we’ve labelled it as a Learner Survey) that she had undertaken some time in the past and that she was considering resurrecting as an offering.

Unlike the Towards Maturity Benchmark survey, which tends to rely on answers by those in an L&D role/perspective, the Learner Survey allows every single employee in the organisation the opportunity to comment on

how they access content that supports themfrom what devicesfrom what locationswhat methods and media they find most effectivewhether they are members of social networking siteswhether they are/would be willing to share their knowledge and practices with others etc

My eyes lit up at this point as I am about to assist in the development of our L&D strategy, so of course being able to hear from about our learners about their preferences, expectations, etc would be hugely beneficial.

Needless to say we took Laura up on her offer which as this press release explains made us the first organisation to do so.

If you’d like to hear more about the rationale behind the survey, here’s a short video of Laura explaining further.

In my next blog post in this series I’ll go into a little detail about the construction of the survey and how we worked together to provide a bespoke survey that would still allow multiple surveys to feed accurately into a wider-benchmark.

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Recording your Skype calls

A couple of days ago I received a tweet from Di Dawson asking if I had screenshots or video files from any virtual classroom sessions that I had previously facilitated for a programme that she was putting together.

My unfortunate answer was “no” as I have admittedly been shortsighted in my use of them in the past and had never anticipated needing to ‘capture’ the session itself as a resource in its own right. (of course I captured sessions using the Blackboard Collaborate tool that I had access to whilst working at URENCO, but I no longer have access to those). Not wanting to let Di down, I did a bit of thinking and thought about how I could kill 2 birds with one stone.

How could I help Di out and also do something that I often get asked about, which is how do I go about recording my podcast audio.

So I came up with the idea of producing a screencast outlining the tools and process that I use to record my podcast audio and then actually call Di up ‘live’ within the screencast and show the recording in progress.

Here’s what we came up with….

If you want a word of advice, I’d only watch the first 5 mins 15 secs of this screencast and the last 90 seconds. They are the parts of the screencast that are visual, the rest of it is purely audio and it’s quite a long time to just stare at a boring Skype screen just to hear the conversation between myself and Di, but don’t fret, my next podcast will be that very conversation.

Relevant links:

Scribie/CallGraph

Skype

DawsonLoane website

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Pre-#LearningLive session via Google Hangouts

In this previous blog post I suggest some simple ideas as to how the conference experience could be enhanced and specifically talk about ‘pre conference’ online sessions

Let’s be honest, when your conference attendees have a number of concurrent sessions to select from, other than previous experience/recommendations of the facilitator, all they’ve got to go in is the session overview on the conference website. Why not invite each speaker (and potential attendees) to participate in a 10 minute online session in which they pitch their session and take part in a Q&A. It may also give the potential attendees an insight into the presentation skills of the speaker (AKA are they going to rattle off a load of bullet points at me?)

I’ve not yet seen this taken up by any conference organisers so I thought I’d take the bull by the horns and set up my own online sessions ahead of Learning Live to allow people up to ask any questions they may have about my session, make sure it’s right for them etc.

I’ll be using Google Hangouts to deliver these bite sized sessions which I know may prevent some corporate folk from attending due to Google Hangouts being blocked, so I’ve scheduled an evening session too.

Here are the dates and times: (all sessions are scheduled for 15mins)

30/08/13 – 0930hrs BST

03/09/13 – 0930hrs BST

04/09/13 – 1930hrs BST

To participate, visit the relevant link above a few minutes before each session commences, set up your speakers/microphone and let’s chat!

See you online?

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I say “tomato”, you say “redvinegrownvegetableation”

Let’s be honest as Learning Folk who have an interest in using technology to add value to our organisations and our learners, we have a tough job on a number of fronts. Not least of which is the challenge in positively influencing those people in our organisations who are responsible for giving the ‘nod’ or putting their hands in their pockets.

So why do we make it hard on ourselves by (at times it seems) making up words or at best picking an existing word to explain what we are doing i.e. curation and gamification???

Surely a couple of words or even a sentence to explain what we are doing is better than trying to cram our plans into a single word?

I have been working with a published author Fiona Talbot for a few weeks now and she has been telling me of some work she has been doing with Corgi/Gas Safe to rewrite their manuals by putting them into Plain English. Interestingly the rewritten version is slightly longer than original version.

Because sometimes in order to make things clearer to people we need to take the time  (and word count) to explain things in Plain English as opposed to using jargon or overly complex words in a vain effort to sound ‘with it’ or dare I say it…. ‘buzz wordy’!

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, however a recent blog post from Saffron Interactive prompted me to respond to. I suspect that there may be some problems with Saffrons commenting system as I left the comment over 29 hours ago and it still hasn’t been moderated so I though it best that I reproduce the original post (and my comment here)

This is a report back from my first day working at Saffron Interactive. Apologies for the short delay, but you’ll understand that I have been very busy for the last month! In an exciting start to my Saffron career I spent my first day attending the Learning and Skills Group (LSG) conference at Olympia – a great way to be introduced to the world of e-learning.

I do not come from an e-learning background but I have always had a keen interest in technology and games and one particular talk really captured my imagination. I’m sure most people are familiar in some form or another with the world of video games whether through PCs or a range of consoles covering all ages and tastes. Gaming however is now beginning to have an effect outside of our leisure time and is becoming prevalent in everyday life, for example the way we shop, network and … learn.

For those unfamiliar with Gamification – a new and growing concept in the world of e-learning – the idea is based on the use of gaming mechanics to increase user engagement whilst delivering key learning objectives. For those still somewhat mystified by the term I have included a definition below;

“Gamification works by making technology more engaging, and by encouraging desired behaviours, taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming.”

Radoff, Jon (2011). Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games. Wiley. pp. xxxii. ISBN 9780470936269.

At the LSG conference, this was explored in depth with a talk from Alicia Sanchez who has been appointed “Games Czar” at the US Defense Acquisition University (DAU).

Alicia’s talk presented some interesting examples, in this case based on military procurement, an area that apparently requires regular and incredibly stringent compliance training. By using the setting of a game, a far more positive response was generated from the workforce in digesting the necessary content for their roles. One such example was a simulation where the user would carry out compliance checks on weapons on the premise of preventing an alien invasion.

What’s more as gaming has begun to take on a social aspect, this can be incorporated into e-learning for even higher levels of engagement. For example, in the same way that Xbox players use “gamer scores” to celebrate achievements and relate to their peers, the DAU allows players to build online profiles giving added value and a social element to their learning achievements. This is also great from a learning provider’s perspective as it provides a method for demonstrating the impact that its courses have on user groups.

If you take this social aspect in combination with a Gamification style of e-learning further, it is also clear how learners working together could gain huge additional benefits in terms of organisation and teamwork given the right environment. In a previous organisation I worked at, the Sales Director actually mused:

“If teenagers can work together in World of Warcraft to be organised and achieve common objectives I do not see why our sales force cannot do the same!”

It will be interesting to see if many of the positive side effects of massively multiplayer gaming would become increasingly prevalent as an additional benefit for this type of delivery. Although I would add a caveat here that had the sales force assembled itself into a 30 man raid group and stormed customers offices (a la World of Warcraft) it may not have gone down well. I do hope however you can see the point I am making In terms of cooperation between departments and employees.

Of course there are limitations to the Gamification of learning. Budgets are always under increased scrutiny and is there as one of my colleagues put it an assumption that “if its fun it can’t be good for you”? Even taking these issues into account it will be interesting to see if this is a view that shifts if Gamification style courses begin to build up a backlog of case studies with quantifiable results. The other long term factor here could be as younger generations of the workforce come into management positions with a greater familiarity with the culture of gaming there will be an increasing appetite at senior levels to champion this as a style of learning.

As a final note I would like mention one of my favourite solutions of this type currently on the market: a revision of House of the Dead which is not only guaranteed to improve users’ typing skills but also looks like great fun!

I look forward to giving some further updates on Gamification from the Saffron perspective in the coming months.

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Educating for Cosmopolitan Ideals and Reducing Hegemony

Educating for Cosmopolitanism and Reducing Hegemony

 The world is becoming more global and American diversity is increasing. Therefore, we need educators today who are comfortable with diversity and passionate about fostering cosmopolitan ideals without becoming hegemonic (Childress, 2010; Diamond, 2006; Friedman, 2005; Jarchow, 1993).

David Hansen (2009) describes cosmopolitanism as a controversial and multidimensional construct. Hansen explains that many scholars feel that the utopian approach and array of variables included within this term make it too broad and unrealistic for serious discourse. However, he also points out that as a concept many scholars have found it useful, and have engaged in deconstructing the topic. Hansen further notes that cosmopolitanism is interdisciplinary in nature and scholars and practitioners may never completely agree on its essence or application. Hansen (2009) deconstructed cosmopolitanism which includes some of the following orientations: 1) political (including: global citizenship, transnationalism, and humane responsiveness), 2) moral cosmopolitanism (including: justice, equality, and open-mindedness), 3) rooted (including: local tradition, personal dignity, universalism) and 4) cultural (intercultural fusion, cultural critique, and choice).

In a recent study I am working on, 23 faculty at two community colleges were interviewed about globalizing their work (research, practice & service). The key part of cosmopolitanism they tended to agree on was the ideas of global citizenship: being part of one global community and the importance of engaging in global morality. This included the idea that there are numerous global problems to solve (environmental decline, poverty, human rights issues, access to education….) and working together across academic disciplines and societies we will have a better chance of solving them. This supports the idea that educators need to facilitate learning around these global problems and inspire students to interact in a meaningful way with their local community and the global world.

One important consideration in moving to a cosmopolitan educational pedagogy at any level is the moderating variable of hegemony. Hegemony the idea that a single dominant group has control over all others (Litowitz, 2000; Nartowski, 2003). Teaching about cosmopolitan ideals may unwittingly embrace hegemony if the educator is not privy to this concept. For example, Americans embrace volunteering and philanthropy. This is a wonderful characteristic to have as a country. The issue comes in when we want to “tell” others what to do to help themselves instead of working with them to find a sustainable solution that works in their environment. Also, giving can be one sided which may take away individual control, identity, and self-efficacy in the recipient. Therefore, promoting exchanges where people from a privileged class and/or country give and receive from another group.

For example, two faculty in the study I am working on felt that the privileged class in the U.S. sees community colleges as places for second class citizens; and is not so concerned that these students will transfer two four-year universities and engage in community leadership positions (local to global). These faculty participants felt that this dominant focus on community colleges as predominately training centers and technical schools, for the poor and marginalized, produces an infrastructure that places heavy teaching loads on faculty without the time and support to focus on major complex, intellectual, and global pedagogy. Being able to do so, they argued, would better prepare students to rise above their current constraints, improve their lives, and contribute to the betterment of the global society.

Therefore, I am interested in learning more about specific ways educators can globalize their practice by incorporating the concepts of cosmopolitanism and hegemony into their curriculum and pedagogy. I am especially passionate about using service-learning in a way that builds people up in a disadvantaged situation by allowing them to give as well as receive. I think taking part in a reciprocal exchange with people from different backgrounds and/or countries can be a powerful learning experience for the privileged and marginalized.

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