So what was the flavor of the show?

I would say, undoubtedly, it was mobile learning. If you were there I’m sure you sensed mobile learning was in the air. All the major players in the UK-EU market showcased their mobile learning solutions and a number of free sessions focused on mobile learning. I believe this is just brilliant for mlearning. So many vendors offering mobile solutions will help the market expand faster. To be frank, mobile learning has been on the horizon for many years but it looks like it’s time has finally come.

But there are some obstacles …

I think there is a lack of understanding on the customers’ part about the following; these issues will delay the customer adoption of mobile learning:

• What is mlearning most suitable for
• How to go about implementing an mlearning strategy
• Which platforms / devices should be targeted
• Which way to go – native apps, web apps, or HTML5
• What sort of tracking requirements are there (if any)
• How to convert existing elearning to mlearning
• Should new projects be developed such they work on PCs, Tablets, and Mobile Phones

Some of these have been answered on our blog earlier and while some of them are as old as 2 years but I think they are still very helpful in understanding the domain of mobile learning. And if you wish to explore further here’s a complete list of all our articles on mobile learning

On a Happy Note

Standing at our booth (#75) I overheard a presenter in the nearby theater talking about various models of implementing mobile learning. His conclusion was that a ‘wrapper app with content pushed / made available from server’ was the best option. I’m happy as our cross-platform product Upside2Go is based on the same concept. We describe it as the mobile ecosystem that combines formal training, informal, social, & collaborative learning on your mobile device.

Hope you found this post useful. If you have any other queries apart from the ones listed above, do share with us.

UpsideLMS version 5.0 is an outcome of the sweat and thoughts put in by our engineering and UI experts. Our designers have put themselves in the users’ shoes to understand the nuances of User Experience (UX).

This new version promises to bring a burst of freshness to the users’ desktops along with a slew of new features. To give you a taste of the new version, here’s a quick take on the 5 top features in the new UpsideLMS.

1. Stunning New GUI

UpsideLMS v5.0 is an evident departure from the traditional LMS systems where mostly functionality is all that’s cared for and practically no attention is given to the User Experience (UX).

With UpsideLMS’ new version, users can expect an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It aims at providing a seamless experience for users, allowing them to access their learning resources, notes, or friends stream from any computer with an internet connection. From the background visual to the color palette, the logo placement, the font and its sizes, every small detail has been designed to give users an experience that they will cherish.

2. Easy Navigation

UpsideLMS 5.0 makes it easy for users to navigate and find the data they seek quickly and effortlessly. Well defined menus reduce the information-searching time, while the logically defined structure ensures a smooth flow.

The new menu style has been adopted to enable users to navigate to the desired section quickly in least number of clicks.

A key example is the new design of the Events Calendar where the users can view the calendar and events without leaving the page.

3. Themes

UpsideLMS 5.0 gives you the freedom to more than just change the color of borders and text. With a set of pre-designed themes, each with a different look and feel (background graphics, colors, shapes and fonts), organizations can now select and apply a theme that reflects their company’s identity.

4. Configurable Learner Login Screen and Dashboard

The login screen is the 1^st touch point for the user as s/he logs into the system. And as such the real estate (or should we say, the pixel estate) on that screen is of vital importance. UpsideLMS’ new version makes optimum utilization of this by giving the Admin the ability to display important information modules for the learner/s right on the login screen. Be it announcements, FAQs, recent blog posts, system diagnostic results, learning catalog or the discussion forum, the admin can now choose one or more of these elements to be displayed on the login area.

Customizability has also been extended to the learner’s dashboard. Depending on the widgets important/ most used by the learner, s/he can easily configure the dashboard to display only those widgets. Further, the learner can also enjoy the freedom to move widgets freely across the dashboard.

5. Centralized License Management

With the License Management moved to the Site Admin level in UpsideLMS’ 3 tier architecture (consisting of Learner, Admin and Site Admin), the process of assigning curriculums to multiple clients from the same setup has become extremely easy. This feature is of prime importance for training companies using LMS for hosting/selling eLearning courses for their customers or for large organizations managing decentralized training units.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. See what you can expect from UpsideLMS v5.0 by registering here for a live demo of best value lms. Looking for more information or a quick chat – please drop us a line at sales@upsidelearning.com and we’ll have one of our sales guys speak with you.

www.upsidelearning.com, our official website has made it to number 26 in the ‘Top 100 Highest Ranking Websites In Learning Technology’ chart.

Conducted by Now, a leading Marcomm management company, this ranking is calculated by crunching together individual rankings from Google PageRank, Moz Rank, Alexa, Hubspot‘s Web grader and Compete. While this list focuses on commercial operators whose primary market is B2B learning, larger companies with specific divisions or product sets targeting the learning industry are included but only specific portions of their website have been used in the ranking.

This has been possible due to continual efforts and dedication of our in-house marketing team especially the SEO/ SMO experts. To our team – Cheers!

View the entire list.

Our stunning, best value Learning Management System, UpsideLMS v5.0, is built to include features that trainers and learners have always wanted in an LMS. It has the features, the performance, the user interface and experience, the awards and recognition, and your trust! Here is what you will find in the v5.0 of UpsideLMS.

The User Experience
UpsideLMS v5.0 UI has been re-designed with singular primary focus – usability. Users can expect a user-friendly interface for UpsideLMS resulting in ‘ease of use’ and ‘intuitiveness’ for users – two often missed features in a traditional LMS system.

The Features
With over 160 features that make it a perfect blend of traditional learning management and innovative learning technologies like social media/networking and mobile device support, UpsideLMS provides a unique platform for companies to manage their organization-wide, multi-department training in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

Some new features include client/ user license management at the Super Admin level in UpsideLMS’ 3-tier architecture (which includes Learner, Admin and Super Admin). This enables a Super Admin to manage user licenses for multiple clients.

Another interesting feature is the ability for the Admin to display important information modules for the learners right on the login screen.

The Awards and Recognition
Our best value LMS, UpsideLMS, is a winner of 8 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Technology Awards; 5 in 2010 and 3 in 2009, making it the only system to be awarded with the most number of awards in 2 consecutive years. It has won gold for Blended or Informal Learning and for Compliance Training; silver for Social Learning Technology and for Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses; and bronze for External Training.

It has also won a silver award in the 2011 Learning In Practice Awards by Chief Learning Officer magazine under the ‘Excellence in LMS’ category.

Further, it has been featured in the ‘2010 Top 20 Learning Portal Companies List’ by TrainingIndustry.com and has been listed as one of the ‘Five Emerging LMSs to Watch’ in CLO Magazine, July 2010 edition by Brandon Hall Research.

The Trust
UpsideLMS has been helping organizations manage their training for over 5 years. Today, over 60 organizations and training companies across the globe trust UpsideLMS for managing internal employee training and external/ dealer training. UpsideLMS has a presence in BFSI, Retail, Education, Engineering & Manufacturing, Aerospace, Training & Development, Healthcare, Energy, IT/ ITES and Pharmaceuticals.

New in UpsideLMS v5.0

Why don’t you see UpsideLMS v5.0 for yourself by registering for our online demo of the product? Please register here for the demo.

Looking for more information or a quick chat?

Please drop us a line at sales@upsidelearning.com and we’ll have one of our sales guys speak with you. And if you find this to be interest to your friends or colleagues, please do forward this to them.

So without much ado, here are Top 50 eLearning Posts of 2011 from our blog as determined by you, our readers. Read them. Reflect on them. Debate them. Enjoy them!

January

1. Game Based Learning Isn’t Always Electronic
2. This LMS Has No Traps!
3. LMS Wikis: Unharnessed Potential
4. Instructional Design And The Six Thinking Hats
5. Microlearning – A Paradigm Shift In The Way We Learn
6. 9 Essential Elements for Fun in Games

February

7. What Is Mobile Learning?
8. Instructional Design for Beginners – What Motivates People To Learn?
9. Getting The Most Out Of Your LMS
10. Mobile Learning – What It Can Do For A Global Workforce
11. What I Learnt About Mobile Learning Design

March

12. Upside’s Learning Design Philosophy
13. Hassenzahl’s Model and eLearning
14. Is Mobile Learning A Reality Now?
15. Getting Started With Mobile Learning?

April

16. ELearning Project Managers – Misunderstood Heroes
17. 5 Myths About Digital Natives
18. Mobile Learning: A Quick SWOT Analysis
19. Developing Mobile Learning: Which Device Are You Targeting?
20. Learning & Skills Survey: 87% More eLearning & Mobile Learning; 73% Less 2-3 Day Classroom Training

May

21. Open Source is Not Cheap, Leave Alone Free
22. Mobile Learning Has A Promising Future In India
23. A Challenge For Designers Of Game Based Learning
24. LMS – All You Ever Wanted To Know

June

25. Learning In The Future – Exploring Five Themes
26. Want ‘Facebook’ In Your LMS?
27. What Is Game Based Learning?

July

28. 3 Essential Themes for Mobile Learning Systems
29. Learning And Social Networks
30. 5 Practical Mobile Learning Tips
31. India And The Mobile Internet Revolution

August

32. JIT Performance Support Mobile App Development
33. The Promise Of 3D Learning
34. iPad Applications In Bloom’s Taxonomy

September

35. How Long Does It Take To Develop An Hour Of Elearning?
36. The Gamification Of SAP
37. Mobile Learning In The Workplace – Survey
38. Worldwide Mobile Learning Market To Reach $9.1 Billion By 2015

October

39. An Augmented Reality Future
40. The Complexity Of Learning
41. Is the iPad Driving eLearning Towards HTML5?

November

42. LMS: Build Vs Buy – A Decision Paradigm
43. Flash For Mobile Is Dead
44. eLearning Development: Haste Makes Waste
45. How Suitable Is HTML5 For Mobile Learning?
46. Tablet Learning – Neither Mobile Learning Nor eLearning

December

47. Measuring And Evaluating Learning – The Top Skill For L&D Teams
48. LMS – Before the Launch
49. A Refreshing Take on User Experience Design
50. What eLearning Should Learn From Games

Before I close this post, I would like to say a quick thank you to all our readers for stopping by and taking the time to read our views. If you like reading our blog, we urge you to recommend it to all your friends and colleagues.

On behalf of the entire Upside Learning team, I wish you a joyous and prosperous 2012. Cheers!

I’d said in a post First Impressions: mLearnCon 2011 Exposition, ‘Mobile devices markets are still fragmented, differing features, screen sizes and operating systems make singular delivery of learning applications a challenge, HTML5 coupled with persistent data storage and computing in the cloud will offer solace.’

Not much has changed in the few months since then.  From a development perspective, the issues emerge when you try to create something that is cross-platform compatible, right now the great HTML5 samples are typically designed to run in a single browser type, these days, primarily Chrome, Mozilla, IE; haven’t really seen anything specific for Opera so far. This is exactly like the issue we had in the late nineties when developing a page meant having to tweak HTML and JavaScript differently to run successfully in all browsers; and this was when HTML2 was already a standard, 3 just around the corner,4 in draft. (for a history of HTML http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html) Imagine the issues possible with HTML5, that is not a ratified standard yet.  Having said that, I believe all elearning companies must adopt HTML5 sooner rather than later; this despite the future Flash may or may not have. Are our customers ready for it? That is a difficult question to answer; it depends on their needs, and how much they would be willing to sacrifice from the mobile ‘experience’ to ensure cross-browser compatibility.

If you want to develop a more significant learning experience for users on their mobile devices, for now it makes sense sticking to smart-phone platforms. I’d also definitely recommend dabbling in HTML5, eventually the web will run on it.  How suitable is for mobile learning? It’s almost there and we should now pursue adoption as an industry. One aspect not to be ignored is the lack of mature development/authoring tools, the sort that Flash provides. Unless a software major with significant muscle moves in, I’m afraid we may be back to the days of using an authoring tool first, and then manually editing the markup to get it running across browser. Given HTML5s complexity and feature set, that is easier said than done.

Even if the agents comprising the population of the system are complicated and heterogeneous (just as people in a learning network are), this variability tends to “average out”; while the agents may be complicated, the objects can be modeled as being homogenous as a first approximation. While it goes without saying that humans are extremely complicated as a species, I don’t quite agree that the objects we create can be modeled simply. Some of the artifacts that a learning network can generate are extremely complex. However, I have a sense that the objects will be homogenous in a reductionist way.

In the first part of my post on The Complexity Of Learning, I mentioned competition as an element that is inherent to complexity in networks. Due to competition, the population of objects will often become polarized into two opposing groups. From my experience I have seen this happen in workplaces, another example that immediately comes to mind is bears and bulls in financial markets. Competition acts as the element that stabilizes the system. Without competition we would probably see wild fluctuations in the behavior of the system. Learning networks as I mentioned before definitely compete for resources, but in larger workplaces I have seen two distinct camps, or rather schools of thought and these tend to have divergent views of the system.

The fact that It’s sometimes possible to steer the behavior of a system by manipulating a subset of the system’s objects is quite interesting and may prove to be very important when attempting to understand learning networks. In my view this essentially proposes that agents can take measures to alter the state of the system by modifying objects. When thought of from a learning perspective, quite simply the objects are the pieces of learning content, tools, and ‘things’ (because they take varied form). A group of agents could manipulate the behavior of the network in ways to promote learning, essentially learning designers would then be manipulating network objects such that they promote learning. As a side note, I’m not saying this group of agents would be the ‘training department’ or ‘L&D’, for this assumption about learning networks to work, the agents would need to be influential and well-connected (in a network sense).

It’s interesting that learning networks are very strong in their structure; taking away agents and objects from the network only causes temporary damage. The networks gradually reconfigure to co-opt new agents and objects into the system. In the corporate workplace we uproot individuals and transfer them from workplace to workplace, from company to company, I’d hazard a guess that this produces a negative effect in the short-term; until the individual reconfigures to include agents and objects that are from the new environment. Given the state of information technology and telecommunications, these days it’s possible for the network to suffer minimum damage. While the ‘locale’ changes, and network distances change between agents, the system still remains robust.

The overall behavior of a system, and the ability of agents in the system obtain resources is directly proportionate to the amount of available resources and the level of connectivity (network structure) between agents. When resources are only moderate, adding a small amount of connectivity widens the disparity between successful and unsuccessful agents, whereas adding a high level of connectivity reduces this disparity. By contrast, when resources are plentiful, adding a small amount of connectivity is sufficient to increase the average success rate and enable most agents to be successful. So in a learning network, it is not just about resources but also about the connectivity between agents. This may be a problem in workplace learning networks, especially ones where resources are aplenty, but connectivity between agents is not.

Over the course of my reading, I’ve discovered that behavioral outcomes in complex systems tend to follow a power law distribution, with smaller events being most common (as is expected), but with extreme events also occurring more often than the distribution might suggest (unexpected). I’m not quite sure about this and must give it more thought, but offhand I equate behavioral outcomes as the result of learning transactions occurring in the network. So while there are continuous and numerous (seemingly insignificant) learning exchanges between agents, there are some large-scale exchanges on occasions that would seem like major learning events.

The science of complexity offers a different type of lens to view learning, one that is apart from cog-psych lens designers so often wear. There is much to learn, even more so in an increasingly connected world.

How might ‘complexity’ as a scientific concept affect learning? Especially if you consider learning as a complex adaptive network that is driven by human desire for knowledge (learning) and sociability. I had some thoughts about that.

(1) Learning happens in networks, call it informal or social, but it’s the network and its nodes that actually make learning happen. For learning to occur in an audience, it can’t really be a one on one event, but rather an interaction with the ‘agents’ that form the network. In the case of human networks, the agents (humans) not only act as part of the network but also produce artifacts that can be shared across the network. These could be considered as a type of resource generated by the network. The objects could be simple like a rule or best practice that has been documented, to more complex objects like an excel sheet that helps users calculate specific values.

(2) As is innate in most networks, there will be some sort of competition among the agents for limited resources. In larger networks we might also find that there is local collaboration among network agents – this resembles the typical team plays in an organization. Local teams compete against each other for resources, but remain a part of the larger network. This assumes a network boundary that is fixed and encompasses all employees as agents. However, as anyone associated with learning will say, the boundary can’t really be defined as a static element, it changes – grows and shrinks based on the agents coming into the network and falling out; it is difficult to draw boundaries around the learning networks that humans create for themselves. The competition for resources results in an uneven distribution of said resources. This might explain why knowledge remains in organizational silos, it may be that the network agents use knowledge objects to gain a competitive advantage.

(3) Networks are beautiful structures for enabling feedback. Every agent action ripples through the network and may even be amplified by other agents. This is the sort of behavior that plays an important role in learning. Learning cannot happen without feedback. Looked at in that perspective, feedback within the network is quick and remedial. Also, as objects/behaviors propagate through the varied paths in the network, feedback can come from agent nodes far away (non-local) almost like wave after wave of feedback. This enables agents to react and modify their behavior appropriately far beyond the immediate reactive feedback they receive.

(4) Object propagation through the network is constantly evolving. Objects need to adapt their strategies in response to their history, and the feedback they have received from the agent nodes of their network. In learning, this can simply be equated with ‘objects/containers’ changing form to propagate best. In another light, it means that the nature of the content used in learning is always evolving and that change is based on feedback received from users. If the content isn’t changing based on the feedback, maybe we are doing something wrong. Perhaps the future will see adaptive content.

(5) A learning network can only be successful if it retains the ability to interact with its environment. Without some sort of environmental awareness, the network is unable to respond and it may ultimately result in degradation. With human learning networks, it is difficult to draw a comparison. To me, it seems like the environment is the workplace, and the network automatically responds to those changes. For example, if the environment is a factory shop floor, and the process or machines used in process change, the network must recognize this change and reconfigure itself to be able to provide learning about those changed elements. An appropriate response might be the creation of new objects, or may mean co-opting other agents into the network.

(6) One of the amazing things about complex networks is the principle of ‘self organization’ i.e., the ability of the network to exist without the need for a central controller. The ideal human learning network would be self organized too; and if you look closely, it is. We create personal learning networks that co-opt various agents and objects, there is no one individual or resource that we look to in times of need. Quite naturally, we send out messages across the network, receive feedback, analyze it, and utilize it to meet the need at the time. A centralized authority will only lessen the efficiency of such a network, if not take it away altogether. We must question our centralized L&D or training apparatus.

(7) Emergence of significant patterns of behavior within the network is another fascinating aspect of complexity. Every network, its agents/nodes and the objects contained within display a mix of ordered, disordered and chaotic behavior. A look at organizational learning  will probably reveal exactly the same chaos, but individuals do learn and progress in the network and its environment. How does this happen?  Can agents recognize a pattern in the underlying chaos?

There is more to come, in the my next blog post.

Four bits I found really intersting after watching the webcast , I really found this  interesting:

1. This is without doubt the world’s cheapest tablet. It will cost Rs. 2250 (45 USD) to students. There are no subsidies as everyone expected. For one, the government was smart in not providing subsidies at that price point. Also, that gives the manufacturer clear cash flows from sales, without government intervention, as it should be in a free market.

2. It is being manufactured in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and not assembled in China or Taiwan as most thought it would be. This move ensures control over manufacturing and jobs for Indians. Goes to show we can do hardware manufacture and not just software if we put our minds to it.

3.  This is the first device designed in India with a specific purpose in mind – to provide a quantum leap in the quality of education provided to millions of children, and bridge the growing digital divide. This could be a big blow to illiteracy in India. I see huge potential in this device, and would love to explore creating content and applications for the device.

4. Kapil Sibal mentions ” the tablet is a highway and we need something on that highway” – he was pointing to content, an opportunity of unimaginable proportions.

They are planning an initial production run of 100,000 units; if those are successful, and content providers jump in,  we are going to need a few hundred million more.

What are you thinking? Please comment.

SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe is saying “If I look at how my kids are consuming software, if it’s not desirable immediately, they throw it away. Can you imagine what happens to your IT landscape when these people come into business?”

The very same applies to Elearning as well, if your audience doesn’t like it, they’re going to trash it. So how do you make it engaging enough to prevent that from happening? I’ve written about gamification several times over the last few years, as I believe it will play an important role in the future of Elearning. Here are a few links to my previous posts:

Educause Review: “This Game Sucks”

3 Game Mechanics To Include In Learning Games

2 More Game Mechanics To Include In Learning Games

Are you adding gaminess to your courses and content? How are you doing it?

Why then is there such a gap between technology development and adoption by the L&D community?

Off-the-cuff, I think there are some definite reasons this is happening:

1. System cost/cost of development – It isn’t budget friendly to implement a ‘behind the firewall’ system that allows for collaborative 3D. In addition to the cost of the system software, there are a number of associated costs – hardware, training, maintenance, etc. Only the early adopters with deep pockets have potential to deploy such systems. Secondly, deploying such systems is one thing, developing content for them is another cost altogether. This cost is significantly higher than other sort of content we typically used for electronic learning.
2. Networks/Bandwidth – When 3D started out, the biggest constraints faced were around the hardware and networks required to deliver a reasonable 3D experience. First, because the hardware till just a few years ago wasn’t very good at rendering 3D without the use of specialized hardware and drivers (graphic accelerator + GL library). Second, the amount of data a decent rendering of a 3D environment requires is very large. A few years ago, we didn’t have the pipes to deliver that sort of data fast enough to offer a decent user experience. Now, the situation is very different – the hardware has matured to an extent where most computing devices have enough computing power, memory and the graphics capability to render 3D. Same applies to bandwidth, it is now good enough to stream video, and should easily transfer data for 3D. I feel the issue lies in companies being hesitant to unleash what could possibly be a huge resource hog on the network. Corporate networks are constantly forced to upgrade given the insatiable appetite for data in the workplace, they don’t want to add another driver that adds huge data traffic consequently adding to their cost.
3. Ease of Use – The first time I used a 3D environment, the first thing that struck me was how unnatural navigation in the virtual area was, the next was the clunky user interface that made the space navigation worse. That however, is changing now – the key word for 3D virtual experiences is now immersion. As 3D becomes more capable of offering immersive experiences, perhaps it will spur adoption. Another interesting development in this sphere is the development of mass-audience interfaces like Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Move, which could potentially make navigating 3D virtual environments much more natural and human.
4. Inertia –For middle-aged decision makers, 3D is a unfamiliar metaphor. It’s only the part of the employee population that are less than 30 years old who are familiar and comfortable with 3D environments. While I don’t want to get into a debate , I’d hazard that when gamers become decision makers, we will see 3D make some impact for learning/collaboration. Over time, perhaps all learning activities that require simulation and collaboration will take place in synchronous 3D environments. That day is far off yet.

If you are considering adopting 3D in some way for learning, Karl Kapp’s presentation about 3D Learning is quite interesting.

While that’s quite broad, even more interesting is this presentation in which he shares insights from his book Learning in 3D, about the 11 3D Learning Archetypes. As an instructional designer this is particular interesting when considering any sort of design to facilitate learning using a 3D environment .

“Education has been a system of status and points since the dawn of the Industrial Age.”

She also espouses three fundamental small steps to take in higher education – make goals clear, make progress transparent, think about your game-play. I like the end where she clearly mentions that gamification is about motivation and engagement; and that making learning fun does not involve huge investments in technology.