• It also depends upon what we mean by …

If you are an avid follower of the e-learning communities you will, no doubt, have recently started to notice an ever growing buzz in the e-learning community forums, tweets and blogs about the new HTML standards that are expected to have a huge effect on how we can deliver practical mobile e-learning.

To try and break down all the hype and jargon currently being bandied about I thought I would break this whole topic down into 3 easy questions.

What are the main obstacles to the practical delivery of learning via mobile devices today?

The first one is easy to answer so let’s start with the obvious, a lack of technical standards. Because of the global variations in mobile technology standards this has always been a huge factor for global organisations. In some countries where mobile devices are more standardised, e-learning is easier to deliver. In other countries where competition trumps standardisation, it is much more challenging to deliver mobile learning to most or all devices, except for very basic non-interactive text and image lessons.

It also depends upon what we mean by the delivery of learning. If we are talking about e-learning “courses,” then the average length of current e-learning courses, the necessary screen size and input methods are all obstacles in their own right. On the other hand if you define learning as access to knowledge, reinforcement materials, reviews, updates, support when it’s needed and mixed media format study aids then they are being used today very effectively, both for push and pull.

I read about an example of this recently where in Pakistan they are using SMS as a way to teach basic reading to adult-age women who have not been allowed to attend school, many of whom are therefore illiterate and feel very out of touch with society. The women take classroom based lessons and are then sent reinforcement material via SMS text message to help teach them basic reading and writing.

The issue of technology standards, or lack of it, has always meant we won’t be able to create vibrant, media-rich, interactive e-learning that can take full advantage of the strengths of mobile devices, such as GPS or built-in cameras, until that is, a set of global standards are adopted that can be used across the majority of capable mobile devices.

Unfortunately all too often we look to technology issues when talking about mobile learning, rather than re-thinking how learning theories could be enabled through the social and cultural aspects of mobile devices. For example, the Jigsaw collaborative learning theory could potentially be automated and distributed to a variety of learning teams via mobile devices. The immediacy of the mobile device with instant on, fully portable, multiple modes of input and output (cameras and GPS) make it an ideal environment for asynchronous collaborative learning.

We also suffer from a lack of imagination which is inherently impeding the progress of good mobile learning. We need to break away from designs that work well only on desktop computers or in full screen browser mode and start focusing on the strengths and limitations of the smaller devices that are in question here. More importantly, we have to look at how people actually use these mobile devices, and make it a natural progression for them to learn using those same methods.

Many of the main line authoring tools are quickly evolving to provide platforms for creating mobile learning. The easier the authoring tools become to use, the easier and faster we will be able to deliver mobile learning.

The final obstacle is perhaps the biggest, we need to work out and adopt a viable business model in order to ensure success in mobile learning delivery. For businesses it has to make financial sense to equip their staff with the mobile devices with the required technology, many will not be willing to adopt this method for learning delivery until the cost of devices decreases or a compelling business case is presented.

How do we solve the current problems?

Well clearly fully developed authoring tools, increased business awareness and requirements and a better understanding of design for mobile learning devices will go a long way to removing the obstacles outlined above and provide an environment in which mobile learning will really flourish.

From a technology stance HTML 5 holds a lot of promise for mobile learning. When fully adopted across all major mobile devices it will become part of the standards needed to help reach the goal of easier-to-deliver mobile learning. To the best of my knowledge, at the time of writing, no coherent authoring tools exist for creating HTML 5 applications, but that will quickly change!

So what is HTML 5 all about? When Apple released the iPhone they broke all preconceptions of what could be done on a mobile device. The world became obsessed with Apps, the touch screen revolution went up another gear and e-learning creators got very interested in HTML5, a new and much improved version of the HTML mark-up language that has been the mainstay of the web since it began. It’s important to note that this is not a brand new technology, just a collection of improvements to a long established one, most of the latest browsers have support for the new HTML 5 features such as canvas, a method of defining how graphics are generated and displayed, video a new way of defining a video object, audio, geo-location and local storage. But the big news for budding mobile learning developers is that all mobile browsers released in the past 6 months already support all these features and more besides.

So what does this mean to the delivery of mobile learning you ask? Well some pundits in the e-learning industry are forecasting that HTML 5 coupled with Apples stubborn approach towards incorporating the Flash player into its own mobile devices will be the end of Adobe Flash as an e-learning delivery method, and from examples I’ve seen and my own experiments with HTML 5 I can see why.

HTML 5 provides a platform for delivering content in an environment that looks like the ubiquitous iPhone App via a web browser, with full support for touch screen, video and audio playback, rich graphics and animation.

Let’s not forget that success breeds success and the more we distribute successful mobile learning applications, the more others will want to do the same.

When do you think this will happen?

To answer this I’d like to quote from William Ford Gibson

“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”

Mobile learning is already being delivered, but its advent has been slow and somewhat sporadic. Like most new ventures, it will reach a point where it will find itself part of our everyday activity. When will that be you ask? Well opinions vary, some think it’s within a year, others within five years. In our own circles we have been talking about delivering mobile learning for at least ten years now. I believe that we are closer now than we have ever been to the breakthroughs that we need to make it a viable business model, and for authoring tools and standards for delivery to be established.