Enterprise mLearning Predictions for 2012

Here on the last day of the year, I offer my predications for the big and shaping trends we’ll see in the enterprise mobile learning space for 2012.  As in the past, this year’s list includes predictions across a gamut of new technologies, consumer/buyer trends plus a few anticipated seismic shifts in the world of business that should collectively reshape the landscape for the adoption and accelerated growth of mobile learning for businesses.

So, in no certain order, here are my predictions…

1. Mobile Learning Goes Mainstream. Or perhaps this is more a case of the classic “frog in boiling water” scenario. Whatever it is, this one is music to my ears after many years of toiling away to make mLearning a reality for the enterprise. The acceptance of mobile learning within the business community probably won’t happen with much fanfare, it will just happen and be accepted as a “norm” wherein the market no longer asks “should we offer learning to our employees (or partners or customers) via mobile device?” and will simply state “we need to offer learning to our workers via their omnipresent mobiles!” The reasons will be plentiful but largely driven by better/cheaper/more ubiquitous technologies and everyone’s acceptance of the fact we all use our phones (tablets, et al) to improve both personal and business communications and to be more productive.

2. Access Points Diversify.  There will be more types of devices and ways to connect with our mobile learning world in 2012. And I am not just talking about the classic iOS vs. Android vs. other argument but the fact that different classes of hardware will start to get into our learning mix too. By next December, the average corporate learner will likely have a capable smartphone and their desktop/laptop PLUS a media tablet and/or eBook reader and perhaps even a smart TV back at home that is web-connected and runs apps. The ability to move seamlessly from one device experience to another will be critical with complete synchronization of our learning progress, status, achievements, etc. no matter where or when we choose/need to learn.

3. Mobile Web vs. Mobile App Debate Intensifies. Is enterprise mobile learning best delivered via native mobile apps or using mobile web apps? I agree the technologies to create, deploy and manage HTML5-based mobile web apps will greatly improve in 2012 but I don't feel they will mature to the point they can replace all native apps – at least in most of the primary enterprise use cases for learning that’s managed and tracked. The many advantages of mobile web apps – like cross platform OS support for iOS, Android and others – will still be mitigated in key areas like security, off-line storage, sync updates, access to device features like cameras (although this is improving in the spec) plus critical infosec concerns like SSO support when disconnected and remote wipe capabilities that just don’t work in mobile web apps yet. We do sense that mobile web apps will start to take their rightful place when looking to support an organization’s external learners (e.g., partners, customers) where ease of install/access are paramount and the required features can be limited to what’s essential instead of everything that’s required by IT, security and management.  We also think hybrid apps that mix the best of native apps and mobile web apps will have a bigger impact on enterprise mobile learning thoroughout 2012 than just pure mobile web apps for that same market.

4. Flash Falters, HTML5 & ePUBs Gain in Popularity. 2012 will be a pivotal year in the way enterprises must think about designing, producing, delivering and managing their content strategies, and mobility strategies will alter many of our current tool kit and business process choices.  Adobe’s move to stop developing Flash Player plug-ins for mobile web browsers set a BIG BALL in motion that quelled the desire for many Instructional Designers to use pure Flash or popular rapid development tools outputting Flash-based content as their unified content delivery strategy.  Part of this shift was driven by the fact that Flash-based content actually didn’t perform/behave well on most Flash-enabled handsets and tablets especially when the content was local rather than on a server. Much has been said and written about the next wave of HTML5-based authoring tools or updates that will transform yesterday’s authoring tools into tomorrow’s more flexible and functional authoring systems and I suspect we’ll have nice working versions of the top five offerings able to create content that’s both desktop and mobile device friendly by mid year with commercial ready offerings from Adobe, Articulate and a host of others.

I also think many teams will begin to rethink their content creation and delivery options resulting in new ways to chuck up or package content that’s friendly to both online and mobile consumption scenarios. One trend is to move away from monolithic, structured 20 to 30 minute courses that worked fine online via a PC towards the notion of shorter, standalone learning objects that can be more easily discovered, accessed and consumed at the time of need from any device/app.  Another counter-balanced trend gaining momentum will be the use of eBook style delivery formats that make it easier to produce and manage long-form content that is far more feature rich than static PDF files. Growing interest in the ePUB content formats, especially media-friendly ePUB-3s, will allow learners to gain more from and interact better with the content packages themselves and enable cool functionality like highlighting, like better indexing/threading and both personal and shared note taking all with the same level of access control and tracking that’s generally only found today with an online eLearning course.     

5. Gamification Accelerates mLearning Adoption.  Once everyone has the right devices and organizations accept the mandate to provide training, performance support and business communications via mobile, what will compel learners to participate and keep them engaged when there are so many distractions like Facebook, Twitter, Farmville and mobile shopping? Gamification seems to be a likely answer to that question. Not that companies need to even create “games” per se; rather, the trend will be towards gamifying our standard formal learning actions and informal social interactions through the addition of point systems, achievement leveling/scaling, overall leader boards, badging systems and tangible reward/incentives. Increased awareness of who’s ahead and how can others beat them to the finish line will drive learner engagement and overall organizational behavior and mobile access to these learning materials and communities makes it easier to participate and stay connected whenever the mood suits us.

6. Fewer but More Capable Tablets. I suspect the annual Consumer Electronics Show (“CES”) event in Las Vegas next week will have far fewer tech OEMs wading into the tablet pool as compared with January 2011. Apple’s iPad will continue to be the market leader in 2012 though a collection of tablet devices based on Android (in older Honeycomb to newer Ice Cream Sandwich flavors), Microsoft Windows 8 and possibly even RIM’s PlayBook 2.0 OS will continue to eat away at Apple’s market share as organizations seek to take advantage of the tablets for media consumption, user-generated content creation and in situ selling supported. Interest in using tablets for business purposes comes across business sectors large and small alike too and we see the broader trend of tablets replacing laptops in many instances and even becoming shared devices in certain use cases (e.g., retail sales, in field tech trucks, departmental loaners) but requiring enterprise level controls and security too. 

7. Cool Mobile Tech Sparks Learning Innovations. The latest mobile devices support a wide array of new features that will ignite some nifty innovations in the learning space throughout 2012. As people and companies replace their older BlackBerries, iPhones and Android devices, their new equipment will sport cool next-gen functions like dual core processors making big media and big data easier to manage on our smaller devices. We will benefit from faster data speeds using LTE (“long term evolution”) or true 4G radios enabling quicker access to high value content as well as video access to our experts and web conferencing access to scheduled ILT events. And more advanced operating systems combined with embedded chips will provide support for new forms of proximity computing using Near Field Communication (“NFC”) thus allowing new kinds of location-based services for learning. I feel the positive effects of the aforementioned evolutions will be more pronounced than similar advances in areas like augmented reality that will remain costly to design, produce and manage.  

8. Market Consolidations Continue/Accelerate.  The big will continue to eat the small as larger vendors seek to increase their market appeal to both customers and investors. According to Bersin & Associates, 2011 already saw several of the tier one Talent Management vendors actively engaged in expanding their market reach and the portfolio offerings through strategic acquisitions and mergers and these moves make the resulting companies far more attractive acquisitions to the larger enterprise software whales that rule their respective oceans. SAP’s planned takeover of SuccessFactors and Oracle’s move on RightNow (approved this week) all are harbingers of more market consolidation as larger companies look to flesh out their cloud, mobile and social strategies. 

Summary. That is what I see in my crystal ball. It should prove to be an interesting year for all of us involved in the training & development and technology spaces and I, for one, look forward to seeing how these cited advances and many others we can’t foresee today will influence how we all interact and learn.

Happy New Year 2012!

Media Encoding Tools for Mobile Learning

My friend and colleague Brent Schlenker posted a Tweet yesterday that both caught my attention and also quickly made the rounds through the SoMe ecosystem which read:

Making Video Encoding Easy and Affordable with Encoding.com http://bit.ly/4TmAWU) This is VERY cool! #mlearning #elearning

 The offering cited in the post is for a new cloud-based application/service called Encoding.com from a company of the same name. Their mission, as stated on their corporate web site, is as follows:

"Until we launched Encoding.com in the summer of 2008, video platform operators had two choices: inflexible encoding software or expensive hardware encoding appliances. Now, there's a third and better option — encoding in “the cloud” wrapped within an “on demand, pay as you go” delivery model... Site operators can now focus on content and the user experience while allowing us to ensure that content is available to all users on the most popular Internet and mobile devices."

As a techie actively involved in mlearning content production every day - much of that media-based - I can fully appreciate the benefit this sort of service can offer mlearning content producers and practitioners. In fact, we've spent over 2 years working to develop an efficient  way to streamline all of the necessary media conversion processes and business work flows our mobile customers/partners face prepping and deploying content both to the web and out to mobile devices.  As anyone who works in an environment where "device diversity" is a challenge (where you've got RIM BlackBerrys, Apple iPhones, Android phones, Windows Mobile, Symbian-based smartphones, netbooks, whatever!), a video format that's ideal for one device is likely not ideal for others in your population, and even older devices from the same company (e.g., RIM) may not play (or prefer) the same encoded media files as their newer siblings.

Brent's post piqued my interest and so I decided to do more than just RT the same news to the same people and see what this new service had to offer.  Here's my quick take.


The Pros: 

1. This software-as-a-service application is well conceived and polished.  It uses an installed "desktop client" (though PC only) to help you organize your files for conversion and nicely packages, delivers and manages secure file uploads and downloads for your media.
2. Customers can select/utilize a set of predefined conversion templates that make it easy to "transcode" a master/source file from one format into a variety of different output formats.  Or they can change/edit these core templates to meet their own specifications.
3. Uploaded files are processed and returned back to the producer's desktop computer where they can then be prepared for deployment out to the web or destination mobile devices.
4. Pricing for the service can be handled via a monthly plan or can also be usage-based. 
   

The Cons:

1. This sort of cloud-based offering is ideal for single authors but not necessarily great for content creation teams.
   
2. The predefined encoding templates don't offer as many options as some of the other higher end offerings.  And actions like automatic insertion of DRM information isn't possible and will need to be added manually after the fact if required. 
   
3. While the output files are nicely delivered back to your computer, most of them will need to be uploaded back into the cloud for distribution to your web site, LMS or mobile devices. Given decent looking videos for mobile devices can run from 1-2MB/minute, producing long form videos in multiple formats will result in lots of content shuttling.  In comparison, an enterprise transcoding process (like the one we have integrated into our CellCast Solution platform) will automatically post the output files onto the destination servers and can even streamline your efforts to package your new media files for automatic distribution to all your target mobile devices.
   
4. While the pricing options are generally fairly reasonable, the cost of a mid-level to professional media encoding software suite -- which you can also configure to run in your own cloud -- is probably cheaper and can serve a bigger production team.  
   

Bottom line: As an enterprise mlearning platform provider, our requirements differ from those of most T&D teams just starting to get their feet wet in the mobile space.  However, I do think this is an innovative and novel approach for encoding media files.  And as mobile devices get more capable, the appetite of your mobile learners for compelling content that's professionally encoded for their devices will surely increase. And thanks to Brent for bringing it to my attention too!

A Big Week for Smartphones

Everyone involved in mlearning -- from the learners themselves to the good folks designing and creating the content -- is set to benefit from the flood of positive news and announcements this week coming from both device OEMs and the wireless carriers. 

The net result: faster, cheaper and more capable devices as more easily adopted by mobile learners and enterprise workers and, when so equipped, they will help drive demand for more and better mobile learning.

Here are a few of the key announcements this week and my take on the overall impact we might expect:

1. Google's Nexus One Device Smartphone Announced. The Android movement takes another step leap! down the path with the introduction of a top shelf smartphone designed by and sold direct to market (at US$529 unlocked).  Yes, you can still get a carrier subsidized device if you want (T-Mobile offers it now with Verizon and Vodafone slated to come onboard this Spring), but these mobile powerhouses are designed to work with any carrier network and boast an impressive array of features including a super fast 1GHz processor, the best display yet on a phone (480x800), and voice-enabled access to virtually ever device feature (including email, twitter, etc.).  Running Android v2.1 (no cute baked good name this time around like "Cupcake" or "Donut" or "Eclarie" this time), these new devices will soon sport the new Adobe 10.1 Flash Player as well adding another viable mlearning content type to the mix for these well-equipped learners. If you want to read a nice summary about the device, here's a link to a Tim O'Reilly posting I received today (courtesy of Tom Stone over at ElementK) that highlights the cool features and compares/contrasts the latest round of Android versus iPhone.  
2. AT&T Adds Android & WebOS Devices.  AT&T is set to expand their smartphone stable by announcing the coming availability of new Android and Palm WebOS-based devices later this Spring.  In the case of Android, they are planning to release devices from Motorola, HTC and Dell (rolling out their first non-Chinese smartphone).  We can only assume the Palm devices will be the Pre and Pixi or some as yet unannounced varient.  With these additions in place, "Ma Bell" will now have support for virtually every major smartphone device under one roof and key enterprise accounts may start to move to diversify their mobile device portfolios meaning the days of "BlackBerry Only" for mobile workers is nigh.
3. Apple's Tablet Emminent Debut.  Finally, many of us sit in rapt anticipation for Apple's upcomg iSlate/Tablet announcement later this month, rumored to not only have built-in Wi-Fi but possibily having wireless data capabilities too. Several vendors at this week's CES in Las Vegas have already announced or previewed their own tablet offerings and virtually any of these devices will prove compelling mobile learning platforms in the right environments. 
   

Given we're only six days into the New Year and new decade, I think we're about to reach a Tipping Point (thanks Malcolm Gladwell) in the enterprise mlearning space as highly capable, affordable and compelling hardware running on virtually any network gets combined with heightened levels of market demand, learner interest along with a proven set of flexible and capable authoring tools and platforms.  And after 6+ years of playing in the space, I'm pleased to finally witness the sea change too.

My mLearning Predictions for 2010

After many years of sitting on the sidelines and reading the postings of others, I've decided to enter 2010 with this new mLearning Trends blog where I can post my own scattered thoughts and musing about all things "mobile learning" and begin sharing my own experiences in the design, development, deployment and support of mlearning solutions for the enterprise. While I'm quite familiar with where mobile has come in the educational space, and our experiences have some nice overlap, the reality is our "world view" is very focused on how businesses seek to leverage mobile technologies to educate, inform and connect their workers, partners and extended business ecosystems. In short, we think about what managers and management need to do, not what teachers and administrators are trying to accomplish. So, these pages and all future posts will likely stay in that vein.

After 6+ years of experience working on more than 100 different projects, pilots and proof-of-concept efforts in the mlearning space, we've got insights aplenty to offer here and I'm convinced the benefits to sharing these experiences will easily be reciprocated through a continuing and open exchange of ideas, tips and strategies for all. I'll start things off by offerings my own list of mobile learning-related predictions for 2010. As we reflect on the "ups & downs" of the year just passed and catch our breath before beginning anew, some interesting trends seem to await us in this New Year and their immediate and lasting affects are likely soon to be realized.

By virtually anyone's take, 2009 was a challenging year for all and especially so wherever new technologies and IT budgets/spending were concerned. And mobile learning is still in its infancy where both mass market acceptance and adoption are concerned. After years of false starts and miscues, market acceptance for enterprise mobile learning in 2009 was largely stymied through slashed corporate spending and canceled next generation (or hopefully just postponed) projects. Thankfully, our company experienced an uptake in interest during the 4th quarter that actually led to several forward-looking companies deciding that waiting on the sidelines for a full year might prove a strategic blunder when preparing to catch the first waves that will front the anticipated market recovery we're all hopeful for.

Moreover, cross-market trends in mobile applications, content, devices, web access and general awareness are now unstoppable and every organization must now move beyond the "pondering stage" and into the "action stage".

Knock, Knock!!
Who's there?
Mobile.
Mobile Who?
MOBILE EVERYTHING!!

So, where to start with this year's predictions? As with all things tech-related, we can anticipate several important events and introductions that will shape the next 12 months and consider them self-evident and thus there's no need to list them including strong technical advances from all of the top mobile device OEMs which will all spur innovation, broaden reach and ensure continued market adoption for mobile learning. We can all expect advances in next generation devices and capabilities from Apple, Google/Android, RIM/BlackBerry, Microsoft, Palm, Nokia and others. It is also easy to anticipate that informal/self-service learning will begin to trump formal/assigned learning in terms of "monthly seat time" as mobile learning begins to facilitate learning and contributing anywhere at any time.

So, without further ado and in no particular order, I offer my early January predictions for mlearning in 2010. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the coming months and where things stand at year end. I'm also very interested in hearing any reactions as well as any and all contrarian opinions the blogosphere has to offer.

1. Traditional "e"-learning vendors will all jump into the "m"-learning and social networking spaces with "first generation" offerings they believe will address the mobile requirements of their customers and prospects; these early efforts will prove largely ineffective as evidenced by their many iterative and incremental updates, retrys and course corrections.
   
2. Rather than getting easier, the mlearning landscape will actually grow wider/deeper and far more complex as enterprises are forced to include/support several disparate mobile devices and changing end user demands; this scenario will drive further demand for enterprise-grade content authoring and delivery platforms for mobile learning.
   
3. Mobile learning will meld with social networking on every learner's mobile device making the two technologies a fully integrated experience; support for these two technologies will be an essential part of every mlearning vendor's core offerings.
   
4. Tablet-based content delivery of mlearning will win our "hearts & minds" over netbook-based content delivery thanks largely to the arrival of Apple's much rumored "iSlate" tablet offering. Others vendors will quickly follow/respond.
   
5. The acceptance and adoption of "cloud computing" resources for mobile learning will become commonplace as IT budgets remain strained and the complexity of mobile authoring and delivery continues to increase - especially in larger, more complex environments.
6. Mobile learners will begin to expect (and demand!) the ability to seamlessly manage and synchronize assignment access, delivery, review and completion between their desktop PC and their mobile device(s).
7. Mobile learning projects delivered in established and emerging global markets will outnumber those delivered in North America (USA/Canada) due to greater interest, faster uptake and willingness to leverage mlearning on both basic feature phones as well as advanced smartphones.
   
8. In the smartphone realm, mobile web-delivered content will prove to be a less compelling mlearning experience as compared to mobile application-delivered content (at least through 2010).
9. Security will become a MUCH bigger issue for mlearning deployments and all vendors will need to step up their game to ensure content/IP protection and integrity while making access easier.
   
10. The arrival of Adobe's Flash Player v10.1 for (most) smartphones will prove far less significant of an event due to the fact content navigation and onscreen interactions will prove difficult on most of the currently deployed enterprise smartphones. For instance, completing a "drag and drop" exercise originally designed for desktop delivery on a BlackBerry Curve/8310 will prove impossible.
    
11. By year end, HTML5 will make rich media playback on mobile devices more practical and compelling too making Flash-based content on mobile less of a need.
    
12. The first several "sizable" enterprise mlearning projects using Apple iPhones and Android-based smartphones will be delivered into the marketplace as mitigated security concerns make way for a superior on-device experience versus today's standard corporate-centric BlackBerry, WinMo and Symbian (Nokia) interfaces.
13. Augmented reality applications for mobile learning will begin to appear but because solution development is expensive, technically challenging, and device dependent, AR will capture more headlines than actual budgets.

So, that's my 2010 Predictions list and inaugural posting for the mLearning Trends blog. I am looking forward to seeing how it all plays out and excited about sharing the coming weeks and months with others in active discussion and creative deconstruction.

Happy New Year to all.