Quipper

M-Learning and Crowdsourcing: Notes from a Truly Global Project

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:27:00 +0000

4,171 miles (6,713km for the metric minded) – while we were working on content for the new Quipper app, that was the average distance between each of the 64 crowdsourced team members and Quipper's London office.

That might not seem particularly astounding; after all, the internet has been around for a few decades, and spatial constraints rarely apply. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that while offline crowdsourcing has been going on in some form for centuries, and even in its online guise it has been practised since the earliest days of the internet, the term was only coined in 2006.

Crowd Knowledge Sharing – An Internet Success Story

The ongoing refinement and evolution of online platforms and software does itself owe a great debt to the open source philosophy of sharing and transparency, to the collective work of crowd members in the development community. Moreover, learning in an informal sense has been inextricably entwined with the democratisation of information flow and content publishing ushered in by the web. Wikipedia is probably the most prominent educational example of the crowd in action. The collective wisdom of millions of enthusiasts has, to date, produced over 30 million pages, and allowed many laypeople to wade - armed with an essential summary of the subject matter - into conversations in which they might previously have drowned. Historically, it had been unfortunate for non-polyglots that many Wikipedia's pages have been written solely in one language. Cue Duolingo, the language learning platform that has harnessed the power of its crowd learners to translate Wikipedia. Duolingo's platform had people reading about obscure models of motorbike whilst simultaneously memorising rules about verb tenses. One crowd learning and helping others to learn whilst building on the work of another crowd, all in the spirit of sharing, mind boggling but life affirming stuff. And these two cases are but a few isolated examples of life in the whole ecosystem of online community-based platforms and services.

But what about overcrowding, and what's wrong with some selective elitism? As regular users will know from its conscience pricking appeals, Wikipedia operates on a shoestring budget, and its admin to user ratio of 1:13,136 allows for (often hilarious, but occasionally sinister) editorial abuses. There's also the constant danger of people, be they well meaning or otherwise, misinforming others or just getting things wrong. After all, the internet hasn't made experts and sages out of everyone, as anyone brave enough to lurk in the comment section beneath YouTube videos will be painfully aware. A spirit of openness is accompanied by a danger of quality dilution, which is why the design of each crowdsourcing platform or project should optimise a kind of natural selection in content quality, a survival of the work of the fittest members of the crowd, and an evolution of input that needs refinement. We carried these considerations over into our own recent project.

How much Crowd Control?

With the aforementioned points and an acute awareness of the responsibility that comes with operating in the m-learning sphere in mind, we started our project by selecting our own admins (teachers) carefully through a third party vendor that showed us the credentials of each applicant and allowed us to make an informed choice. We then opened the floor to contractors who formed teams in their chosen field. Of course, applicants can promise the earth, but the proof of their quality is in the pudding of their work, and so we set about letting the crowd improve the recipe. Team members, or 'creator-reviewers', assessed and amended the work of their peers before each segment was handed to the manager for final approval. On occasion, our managers also acted as arbiters in disputes between team members, where each person thought their interpretation or method was best. Fortunately, however, swirling mosh pits in the crowd weren't too common, and though some people came to realise that the project wasn't for them, these crowd members generally accepted their fate magnanimously. Handling 20-30 team members each, rather than 13,146, still kept our admins busy, but they performed admirably, as did the regular team members. Indeed, nowhere was the fluidity of the crowd logic in greater evidence than our science team, where chemists, physicists and biologists all assessed the requirements and devoured topics that played to their strengths.

We found that continuity and creativity operated on something of a sliding scale, so whilst we strived to maintain a degree of regularity in terms of formatting and other formalities, we resisted any urges to micro-manage; we wanted to let the collective talents of the crowd shine through. With our methodological emphasis on rote learning, diverse and varied content from different perspectives is certainly welcome. This is where the 4171 miles statistic comes into its own. On our English team, the most subjective and interpretative of the three subjects, over 70 per cent of our team was located in English speaking countries, and 80 per cent were native speakers. This provided a solid foundation, yet we found some of the most original content also stemmed from our non-native team members in South America and Eastern Europe. This is the crowd in action, and what is sacrificed in continuity is more than compensated for by diversity.

Of course, each project that sources the crowd will require its own design that accounts for its own idiosyncrasies, and we need look only as far as our own Quipper Quiz trivia app for an example of an unadulterated crowd at work. However, for the purposes of creating m-learning courses for high school children, it was necessary for us to establish a basic hierarchy and some parameters within which the team needed to work. We feel the results have justified our approach.

The Long Tail of Mobile Learning

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:20:00 +0000

The internet has been pushing towards the so-called Long Tail ever since its inception.

The ‘long tail’ of a distribution graph is the portion where events (ie. sales) are spread thinly among many units. The other part of the graph is known as the ‘head’. In a distribution graph showing the sales of books, for example, the head of the graph would be populated by the bestsellers (generally including some thriller knocked out by one of James Patterson's trained chimps). The further to the right of the curve, the lower the sales, and the more obscure the title becomes.

Most retailers have historically focused on the head of a distribution graph, aiming to stock only the biggest hits. This is because traditional retailers (with physical shelves holding physical merchandise) have had to choose the stock which would sell most within the confines of their available space. They had to focus on the items everyone quite liked, rather than the items a few people really loved.

With digital stock, where the product is stored on servers in some remote Californian valley (or some barn in Russia, who knows where these things actually reside?), the imperative of limited space doesn’t apply. And what the Long Tail shows us is that, actually, if you take all the sales of the obscure titles and add them together, they’ll exceed the sales of those big hitters.

In other words, you make more money, by selling more things. Which sounds quite obvious.

Tax-Efficient Hubs

Amazon is the king of the long tail. Importantly, it services both the head and tail of the distribution graph, able to stock both popular and niche products. Basically, Amazon stocks everything. Even things they don’t stock, they stock by means of their ‘fulfilment network’. What this means is that they get other people to sell things, and then they ‘fulfil’ the order (ie. deliver it). So anyone can sell on Amazon. Which is why they have literally millions of products in their inventory. In fact, Amazon sell so much of other people’s stuff that it’s been claimed that they make most of their money that way. Funnily enough, the ‘fulfilment’ lark is also what allows Amazon to avoid all that UK tax.

So in some ways, Amazon isn’t so much a store as a hub of stores. It’s a place you can go to in order to buy anything. In that way it’s like Google, another company which makes billions by making it easy to find the things you want to (and a similarly quirky approach to taxes).

The HTTP Request

It’s not really a surprise that Google is everyone’s starting point on the web. The fact is, the whole way the internet works makes it impossible to find things by accident. Because whereas you can stumble upon Argos by walking down the high street, you can only find a webpage by knowing its address. It may sound obvious, but it’s part of what makes companies like Google and Amazon successful.

Even though we view the web in ‘web browsers’, there’s not really a way to browse the internet. You ask for something, and you get it (or don’t). It’s the foundation of the internet: the HTTP request. You don’t go to the shop, the shop comes to you (but only if you ask).

The idea of the ‘request’ as the foundation of navigating the internet has given rise, in entertainment, to the likes of BBC iPlayer and its many equivalents. Entertainment on demand doesn’t just allow you to select what you watch and when, it requires you to do so. There’s no scheduled program.

But one e-learning site which bucks the trend is Creative Live. It offers classes specifically on photography (ie. niche; long tail), but rather than being simply an archive of learning videos, their broadcasts actually follow a live schedule, and are all recorded in front of a studio audience. It’s free to stream the class live in your browser – but if you want to check out content previously shown you have to pay. The added benefit of the live setting – apart from the talkshow atmosphere – is that learners can interact with their teachers. It’s also an interesting way of providing a limited-time-only incentive which feeds directly into the unique selling point of the service.

Most of the other e-learning platforms which serve the long tail of learning are less idiosyncratic in how they deliver content, often taking a subscription model. For instance, Code School allows users to learn a variety of programming languages right in their browser window, for a subscription of $25 per month.

We’ve touched on Udemy before, which is a more standard learning portal offering videos and other course materials on a wide variety of topics. Users pay per course, rather than a subscription, and anyone can upload their own course and set their own price for it. Currently there are a lot of courses on web development and software, but the full range includes business skills, learning an instrument and even how to train a puppy.

Lynda is another learning platform with a wide remit. It’s a subscription service costing $25 per month for access to all the content, which mostly covers lessons to help you master specific software like Photoshop or ZBrush, though it also has courses on software development, design and business management.

The Long Tail in the Classroom

If we look back to Ananth Pai’s individualised learning model (where each student follows their own track), the long tail of learning can help by increasing a student’s capacity to specialise from the very earliest stages of their education.

In this context, the national syllabus is the ‘head’ of the graph, the popular hits which everyone learns. The long tail, meanwhile, allows a student to pursue a particular topic or strand right up to the very forefront of knowledge – literally until knowledge in that area runs out. This already happens, of course – usually at a post-graduate level, where the learner is no longer a student but begins to conduct original research, having reached the boundaries of knowledge in their particular field.

At Quipper, we want to harness the long tail to provide niche content created by users. Rather than only covering the big hits of learning (like maths, science and a few key professional areas) our aim is to allow anyone to share their knowledge, and in doing so generate a wide array of niche content. If you look on our Quipper Quiz app, you can find quizzes on anything from obscure British folk bands to rodeos. We want to carry on that trend towards the ultra-niche.

With the long tail, learning takes on a different slant. The best students are no longer those most capable of receiving and retaining knowledge. Rather, finding and interrogating content are critical skills – after all, the long tail by definition introduces a slew of stuff you don’t want, a slew of stuff you must navigate and evaluate even before you can begin the process of actually learning.

A blog post by one of Apple’s Distinguished Educators outlines what he sees as the key skills for students of the long tail:

The ability to search and find information
The ability to evaluate the information they find.
The ability to leverage social networks to utilise the expertise of others
The ability to interpret the opinions of others, and to make statistical evaluations of evidence
The ability to express themselves in a variety of media

As the list suggests, it's not as simple as a quick Google search. Learners traversing the long tail have to be critical, and evaluative. It takes time to find the content that's right, and being able to find and interpret material quickly (and, equally, being able to ask the right questions and contribute to online communities) are vital for cutting through the noise.

And if there’s anything the long tail shows us, though, it’s that both the niche and the popular need to be served. Netflix, Amazon, Google et al succeed because they all serve both ends of the distribution graph.

Likewise, it’s no good allowing students to free-wheel through an unordered syllabus only to become dysfunctional masters of their particular corner of knowledge. Any education must be rounded to some degree, contextualised within a broader field. The core subjects should still be the core subjects – but if a student is enabled to learn beyond the limits of the syllabus it would allow for the kind of individualised learning that, so far, has only been realised in a small handful of classrooms across the world.

Is Mobile Learning Relevant in Developing Countries?

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:02:00 +0000

New technology is expensive. And mobile learning has, up to now, been tied to the rise of new technology – smartphones and tablets. So how relevant is mobile learning to countries whose populations can’t afford the asking price for an Android or iOS device? After all, the priorities of developing nations lie with infrastructure. What good is an iPad with no running water or sanitation? Perhaps it’s unfeasible to expect mobile learning to have a place in developing nations’ education systems, when the education systems themselves are often incomplete. It’s easy to see mobile learning as an embellishment, or adornment, to an existing education infrastructure, rather than a new and viable way to facilitate learning.

So, crunch time – is mobile learning just a bourgeois endeavour seeking to skim a profit off the well-to-do? Or can it actually enable learning in ways and places previously impossible? And should we expect innovations in mobile learning to originate from the West – and should mobile learning initiatives in developing nations rely on economies of scale created by the West?

West to East

We previously touched on the growth rate of mobile technology in developing countries, as well as a few UNESCO programmes, highlighting how mobile technology – especially feature phones – have spread throughout the developing world.

And there are a number of examples where mobile technology is being exploited to promote education, usually in the form of wealthy countries providing aid. For instance, UNESCO recently launched a mobile phone initiative in Nigeria called “English Teacher”, where primary school teachers can receive text messages with teaching advice and links to resources on a daily basis. The service is run by Nokia, which has a strong interest in the East African market, and a number of specialised local apps and services.

According to UNESCO, “The rapid uptake of mobile technology in Africa has made it realistic to reach teachers who were, practically speaking, unreachable just a few years ago.”

Meanwhile, an Australian foreign aid initiative is studying the effectiveness of tablets in the education of public school students in the Philippines. The Australian ambassador to the Philippines claims that the study “will provide conclusive data on how schools can use digital technology for the greatest impact on learning”.

So clearly the potential for technology to improve the quality and reach of education in poorer nations is taken for granted. But, as yet, a scalable process hasn’t been found.

There’s a larger question, here, about the nature of foreign aid, and to what degree it can advance any particular cause, but there’s little doubt that foreign intervention is less desirable than autonomous growth and innovation.

And notably there are cases where a lack of infrastructure, or well-developed services, can create new and different needs.

Innovation in the developing world

Reverse Innovation is when a product that was intended to meet the needs of a poor nation is retrofitted as a cheap innovation for wealthier markets. For instance, Unilever previously only sold single-serving sachets of their toothpaste and shampoo products in poorer countries where consumers couldn’t afford larger sizes, but after the recession they found this model was attractive to the poorer consumers in the West.

But Unilever is still a Western corporation. So while the innovation was brought from poor country to rich country (the opposite of the norm), it’s not an example of a native innovation from a developing country.

An example which fits the bill would be the Nano car, manufactured by Indian automotive company Tata, and currently the cheapest car on the planet. The car is now in the process of being tarted up and prepped for launch in the US, and while it will boast more features when it hits the US market, it’s still targeting the poorer consumer (which, incidentally, may prove problematic in a nation where everyone thinks they’re middle class).

And there are other examples where the particular needs of developing nations have led to innovation in the tech realm.

M-Pesa (“mobile money” in Swahili) is a Kenyan mobile phone service which allows people to pay or transfer money to any other mobile phone user. It came about to meet the needs of a population poorly served by traditional banking services, before spreading throughout Africa, and is now among the most advanced mobile payment systems in the world. It’s different from your typical money transfer, because it doesn’t rely on bank accounts.

Instead, a user loads money directly onto their phone by paying at an M-Pesa vendor (usually a shop, chemist or petrol station). Then they can send it to another person’s phone, who can go to their nearest M-Pesa vendor and realise the funds in cash (or send the money on once more).

Today, over 50% of adult Kenyans use the service to transfer money and pay for bills and even shopping.

The Cloud and the Crowd

At first, the internet made the world more global; now, the internet itself is becoming more local. The various fora and message boards serve as increasingly rich archives of dialogues – where a problem has been solved once, that solution can be sought by anyone. So increasingly specific problems – and their solutions – can be found, from stripping wallpaper to debugging software. Anyone with access to Google can leverage the collective wisdom of the masses.

The wisdom of the masses has resulted in the proliferation of crowdsourcing sites (some of them more dubious than others). Kickstarter has already gained renown for crowd-funding a number of high profile projects (and stirred a little controversy along the way).

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website, meanwhile, harnesses the resource of the crowd to perform tedious drudge-work which a computer is incapable of (or, more accurately, tasks which a computer cannot perform cheaply), such as classifying thousands of shoes according to colour, and paying as little as a penny at a time.

But for mobile learning, the advent of cloud computing and crowd-sourcing means that individuals can now create and distribute their own educational content with little to no overhead (apart from a functioning web browser). Many MOOCs already enable anyone to create and publish educational courses, and some of them even allow the content creator to make money for doing so.

Udemy is one such platform, enabling educational content to be sourced from individuals rather than publishing houses (though a number of publishers do use the platform). Anyone can upload a lesson, and anyone can take a lesson. Udemy is the commercially-minded MOOC, proving that different models are sustainable in the mobile- and e-learning space.

These platforms, which empower the individual, are significant because they enable highly local, highly specific learning content. While publishing houses need to generalise their content and target the largest audience, an individual is under no such imperative. Hobbyists and professionals alike can supply content – and while such freedom may have implications for the quality of the content being served, ultimately that freedom means content can become more niche. It’s why Amazon is so powerful – they can profit by selling a million different items once, rather than selling one item a million times.

Individual Innovation

As mobile learning platforms grow in number, it becomes more and more feasible for anyone, anywhere to share their knowledge on a global scale. In such a model, it’s not poorer nations that benefit from the benevolence of richer ones – rather, the transaction becomes more individual. One person, anywhere, can learn, and can teach, another person. That person can be their neighbour or someone on the other side of the planet. And if the concept of reverse innovation shows anything, it’s that the East can teach the West a thing or two.

Gamification Pt. II: Gamification for Good and Evil

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:49:00 +0000

You brushed your teeth and your mum gave you a gold star to add to your collection. You did pretty well in class and your teacher gave you a merit. You did OK at university and you got a degree certificate. In every instance, the abstract is objectified. As we get older, and as our horizons both deepen and broaden, it’s tempting to believe that our goals get further away, and become more abstract.

Except, fundamentally, as adults our goals actually simplify and become more urgent. Above all, we need to make money and survive. Which is far less complex than devising new ways to have fun or annoy your sister.

Considering that so much of our lives hinges on the increase and decrease of our bank balance, it’s perhaps not surprising that the concept of a high score – an arbitrary value which can be increased with persistence, hard work and a dash of luck – is such an engaging and easily-understood principle.

Gamification, then, seeks to tap into our goal-oriented nature. By turning any process into a sequence of objectives, progress is more readily felt, and (the theory goes) we’re more engaged in the activity we’re undertaking. The idea being that, sometimes, going for the gold star comes more naturally than striving for the wellbeing of our teeth and gums.

The Gamified User Profile

Milestones like achievements and badges have been used by a number of e-learning platforms, such as Codecademy and Khan Academy, where users earn points and badges for completing exercises. In these examples, badges are transparent in their aim to increase user retention. Khan Academy throws points at you before you’ve even created an account, offering you the chance to ‘claim your points’ by registering with them. Codecademy, meanwhile, uses a ‘streak’ to get users to return to the site – as a user learns day after day, they build up an unbroken streak, which they can maintain by doing as little as one exercise every day.

But gamification isn’t limited to platforms which centre upon interactivity. LinkedIn, a popular professional networking site, uses game-elements to encourage users to complete their profiles. Users earn points for uploading a photo of themselves and filling in every field (education, previous job history, skills, etc.). The user gets to feel like they’ve ‘upgraded’ their profile (a graphic showing that they’ve gone from ‘Advanced’ to ‘Expert’) while LinkedIn benefit from having fuller, more accurate data.

Notably, such structures have no impact on a service’s content. Although Codecademy’s courses are certainly interactive, the learner doesn’t do anything particularly game-like while they’re learning. They earn points and virtual trinkets for completing exercises – that’s pretty much as far as the game-elements go (except in the odd instance where the actual exercise is game-related).

It’s a similar story with the social networking app FourSquare. Users are coaxed into the behaviours the app creators seek – namely, checking into a location. From first check-in through to the fiftieth check-in with multiple friends, users are awarded badges (again) for behaving a certain way. And, of course, retention is another key goal: a user can unlock certain badges for returning to the app repeatedly (30 check-ins in a month, or 4 days in a row).

Granularity, good and evil

The real benefit of game-structures in e-learning contexts is that it breaks tasks down into small units. The very nature of points and badges require them to be dispensed often and liberally – one badge for completing the whole of Codecademy wouldn’t do the trick. And this showering of goodies can only be achieved with a narrowing of focus, by breaking material down into the smallest rewardable unit of action.

So a gamified structure can help by demanding that tasks are reduced to their smallest components. Where reading a chapter of a textbook can feel dry and heavy going, the repeated breaks and positive reinforcement provided by game structures help prevent the learner becoming bored or overwhelmed. Each exercise is rendered small enough that the points keep totting up. And so while the various badges and other trinkets help make us feel good about ourselves, it’s also the natural consequence of well-structured, granular material that we feel our progress at every step.

Clearly, game-structures offer a compelling way to encourage users to behave in particular ways. Gamification can make anything from completing a profile page to learning a skill feel like more of an accomplishment. For e-learning, the added engagement game-like elements can inspire is a good thing, since the ultimate outcome is greater progress through the learning material. But by tapping into compulsive behaviour, developers tread a fine line between gentle encouragement and insidious manipulation. It’s down to us to be sure we’re using the badges and achievements thrown at us as tools to enrich our experience – rather than yielding to compulsion like one of B. F. Skinner’s pigeons.

Gamification Pt. I: How Computer Games are Helping Kids Learn

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:56:00 +0000

Ananth Pai had a problem with his third grade class. His 20 students ranged from the 10th to the 90th percentile of achievement. How to teach the more advanced students without leaving the others behind? Or – how to teach the less able students without compromising the others? There was no way he could helpfully instruct such a diversely able group.

So he began furnishing his classroom with technology. He bought 11 Nintendo DS’s, a few desktop PCs, half a dozen laptops, and – strangest of all, perhaps – over 20 digital voice recorders. By adapting his teaching to these devices, and incorporating a variety of games spanning various subjects and difficulties, he managed to boost the growth of his class by between 150% and 300%, year after year.

The reason for his success does not simply lie with games, and making learning fun. In fact, it all goes back to B.F. Skinner’s concerns over the traditional classroom – simply put, the fact that there aren’t enough teachers to go around. Pai wasn’t just using Nintendo DSs because they were fun, but because of their utility – they effectively multiplied the teaching capacity of his classroom.

In equating how technology can improve the classroom, Pai posited that in the traditional classroom, the amount of time dedicated to teaching a subject is constant, while the progress across students varies. But in a classroom where every child is learning on a device, the time spent learning a particular subject can vary, ensuring that they are always progressing towards mastery. In other words, every child progresses, because every child is engaged with their own learning. This is why Pai described his technique as ‘Individualisation’, and this is the true heart of gamification in the classroom.

Old Books

Gamification refers to the act of using game-like elements in non-game contexts in order to engage people (and sell them stuff, sometimes). Gabe Zichermann, a gamification evangelist who’s made a career out of writing books on the subject, uses Ananth Pai's classroom as a glorious example of the possibilities of gamification.

And he also sees technology, and the influence of gaming, as changing the shape of children’s brains. He refers to neuroplasticity, the phenomenon of our brains’ capacity to grow in response to new behaviours. He cites a study where adults who were challenged with learning to juggle over a three month period experienced growth in their grey matter. Three months later, those who had stopped practising had their grey matter correspondingly reduced.

Significantly, Zichermann posits neuroplasticity as being responsible for a generation of children who live to multitask. Post-millennial children – so-called Generation G – are the first generation whose primary entertainment medium is computer games. And Zichermann claims that these games have physically altered this generation’s brains, making them more adaptable, more able to multi-task, and – crucially – more liable to grow bored with traditional media, or indeed any media which requires an unwavering attention span. It is, as he says, the end of sitting by the windowsill and reading ‘an old book’ (in fact his latest book comes complete with an app with diverse game-like elements to keep you engaged).

So is gamification turning children into illiterate robots?

The question of whether computer games are changing the shape of our brains refers right back to B.F. Skinner’s pigeons. As computer games reinforce particular patterns of behaviour (compulsiveness, reward-seeking) there’s the danger of us becoming the very pigeons we wished to guide our missiles for us. The goal of gamification is to accelerate learning through engagement, to make dry matters seem less dry, and more inherently rewarding.

The troubling part is in the suggestion that the behaviours we exhibit affect the composition of our brains. In other words, what we do affects who we are. Neuroplasticity doesn’t just suggest why youngsters are so capable of multitasking, but also justifies complaints that the younger generation have ailing abilities of concentration. If we use our brain in new ways, it grows – but, by the same token, if we get stuck in the same behaviours, it shrinks. And if we stop reading old books by the windowsill, we lose a particular kind of mental nourishment.

Fun and Games

The strength of gamification lies in how it can work in conjunction with other technologies – particularly the MOOC and adaptive learning platforms. In fact, part of the reason Ananth Pai’s classroom was so successful was down to adaptive learning – except instead of a computer, it was he who offered the timely interventions, gauged progress, and rewarded his students to maximise their progress. Because his students were all working on their various devices, it allowed him to address each of them as individuals. Think of him as the human incarnation of Knewton.

And if you look at Pai’s presentation, you’ll notice there’s a dip in student performance corresponding to an extended period when he was unable to teach his class due to illness. And that’s why we should be cautious with his example – Ananth’s story isn’t just the story of technology improving teaching. It’s the story of a gifted, possibly quite brilliant teacher, whom his students adore.

But the implications of gamification are greater in an integrated setting. MOOCs and adaptive learning give us the tools to learn, while gamification can keep us learning for longer. It makes abstract goals (learning skills or gaining knowledge) less abstract (reaching a high score), and in doing so it makes the reward of learning more present, moment-to-moment.

Pai himself emphasised that his experiment was appropriate for primary education. His third grade students are of an age which has a particular capacity to learn through games. It remains to be seen how game-like elements can sustain learning into adulthood. Games are excellent devices for learning fractions or basic grammar, but how unfeasibly complex would the game have to be in order to teach you about the Crusades?

Or is there a game which already does that?

Why Adaptive Learning Might Actually Change the Way We Learn

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:52:00 +0000

After creating the pigeon-guided missile, American polymath B. F. Skinner invented a teaching machine in the late 50s, intended to improve upon the traditional classroom learning experience.

The problem with the traditional classroom – as Skinner saw it – is that students don't receive feedback often enough, since the teacher’s attention is divided among the entire class. His teaching machine would prompt students, often requiring them to ‘fill in the blank’ or perform other similar tasks, incrementally progressing them through the intended syllabus.

Half a century later, and look what the latest revolution in learning is…

Not Pigeon-Guided Learning

Like MOOCs, Adaptive Learning is another Hot Topic in the e- and m-learning realms promising to drastically change the way human beings get things into their thick skulls. Wikipedia defines adaptive learning as:

“an educational method [where] computers adapt the presentation of educational material according to students' learning needs, as indicated by their responses to questions and tasks.”

The goal of an adaptive learning system is “to allow electronic education to incorporate the value of the interactivity afforded to a student by an actual human teacher or tutor.”

In short, just like Skinner’s teaching machine, adaptive learning seeks to enable computers to teach us effectively. So ‘Adaptive Learning’ is really a misnomer. It’s all about adaptive teaching.

And there’s a strong parallel between MOOCs and adaptive learning, because while MOOCs are trying to destroy universities, adaptive learning is going full steam ahead to supplant teachers in their position of gatekeepers of knowledge. (Eventually, of course, we won’t have to learn anything anyway, because every field of human endeavour will be operated by computer.)

Data, Big and Small

In a previous blog post way back last year, we discussed the notion of models of learning, and specifically how the VAK model (which centres around Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic types of learning) has informed teaching – despite being a bunch of “neuro-babble and phoney science”.

So it’s no surprise if a phrase like ‘adaptive learning’ sets the alarm bells going. But the key difference is that adaptive learning very much hinges on data, whereas the VAK model was just something someone made up.

Knewton is one e-learning platform which is backed by lots (and lots) of data. It’s used by big publishers like Pearson (which has also invested in it), as well as a number of US universities. The Knewton platform continually captures data from the students who use it in order to serve recommendations and plot the ideal ‘learning pathway’ for the student – and the more students use it, the more accurate its feedback becomes. Also, the longer a student uses the platform, the better its recommendations become.

Such platforms seek to personalise a learner’s trajectory of study according to their strengths and weaknesses. If a student is struggling with a particular topic, the platform recommends content that will most benefit the user, according to the weight of evidence (ie. Big Data).

LearnSmart, by McGraw-Hill, is another platform which touts adaptive learning as one of its key selling points. It incorporates a number of adaptive elements, including “the first and only adaptive reading experience for the higher education market”, an interactive e-book which tests the reader as they proceed through a text.

As easy as V-A-K

While the current trend of adaptive learning focuses on nudging the user towards different subject areas according to their relative strengths and weaknesses, this isn’t the only way in which learning can be more adaptive. And, perhaps ironically, it may be that the much maligned VAK system can help suggest new ways of adapting to user’s abilities.

For instance, the current models of adaptive learning don’t alter the style of the content – the content itself is static, rather it is the user’s pathway through that content that is unique. But if we think about breaking learning down along the lines of Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic, additional possibilities open up. Some learners may excel with social elements like scores and badges (like Codecademy et al) or be more engaged by visualising their progress with charts and graphs – or feel more compelled by elements of gamification. Being able to key the material in to the user’s motivations could prove highly effective.

Or alternatively there’s the possibility of adapting the learning experience for different end goals. Someone who’s trying to revise to pass their GCSEs will have a completely different approach from someone who’s tackling the content for the first time. Similarly, people learning new skills in their spare time will need different learning structures from those committing hours of their day to study.

There’s no doubt that computers enable us to learn in new ways. The fact that this possibility has remained latent for so long (despite pioneers like Mr Skinner) is perhaps surprising . It may well be that mobile devices were the missing piece in the puzzle – and not so much for the functionality smartphones and tablets bring. Perhaps the most significant consequence of tablets and smartphones is the enmeshment of technology with our everyday lives.

Certainly, adaptive learning has some way to go. But perhaps we’re finally ready for technology to change the way we learn.

What MOOCs Might Mean For Higher Education

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 11:10:00 +0000

Or: Why It All Comes Down To Jobs

As Joey ‘Clams’ Scala declared in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Mean Streets’, – “We don’t pay mooks.”

MOOCs, likewise, are rarely paid.

Standing for Massive Open Online Course, MOOCs have been gradually transforming the future of higher education for the past year or so, and now look to be gaining velocity. A MOOC is an online course that generally allows students to watch lectures, read notes and take tests, though there’s some variety in the structure of the user experience. The important aspect is the ‘open’ part – most of these online courses are free to enrol. And the idea of a free education is, understandably, very appealing.

In 2011, Peter Norvig and Sebastian Turun set up a Stanford-backed online course in Artificial Intelligence. As the Chronicle of Higher Education noted, the course was an experiment “where anyone with an Internet connection [could] take classes without paying tuition.” It attracted over 160,000 students across the globe. Literally: it had students from every country on the planet – except North Korea. Of this massive tally, a not-unimpressive 23,000 students graduated. Even more surprising: all 400 top achieving students had enrolled online.

Since then, MOOCs have proliferated, often backed up by major institutions. edX is one striking example, offering free courses from MIT and Harvard. Khan Academy is another famous example, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is notable among MOOCs for being aimed at younger students rather than the committed adult learner. On Khan Academy teachers can share over 4,000 video lectures with students online, covering most of the high school subjects (to a greater or lesser degree). As their website states, “Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer.” Teachers can also use the site to monitor their students’ progress, thereby preserving class time for directly engaging with students. Such a model of learning has become known as ‘flipping the classroom’ – where the teacher no longer has to focus on transmitting the material (by lecturing, writing notes for students to copy, or otherwise ‘broadcasting’ content to the whole room). Instead, the teacher is able to engage in a dialogue with their students.

The University of WWW

In threatening (and promising) to disrupt education, MOOCs have raised a question mark over the very institution of higher education. An education for free – so why pay to go to university? And in a recession, such a question is timely. Indeed, the rhetoric surrounding higher education is becoming more transactional, more mercenary. A Huffington Post article highlights the declining value of university degrees: “40% of university leavers since 2009 are working in unskilled jobs, with an even higher number having to work unpaid. More than one in 10 graduates are experiencing ‘significant spells of unemployment’.”

As ever, everything comes down to jobs.

A degree is now measured in terms of Return On Investment. And with this new, pragmatic (though commercial) mindset, the old models are being interrogated: is a lecture efficient? What’s a university’s Unique Selling Point?

Education, it turns out, has always been a commodity – but it’s only recently that the trade value of an education has become so marked. And in addition to the actual financial cost of a university degree, there’s also the opportunity cost: people who forego university can leverage a stronger work history after three years of work than the graduate with three years of study. In a competitive labour market, skills matter. But can – and should – a university degree be slanted towards skills rather than knowledge?

Meanwhile, the value of the e-learning space is set to be worth $107bn by 2015. Overall, 4 trillion dollars are spent on education globally. Clearly, mobile learning is in its infancy, but if MOOCs are central to its growth, it will be interesting to see how revenue can be drawn from a trend which is – largely – tending away from monetisation completely. The underpinning ethos of the open online course is ‘free’. In which case, the disruption caused by these open courses won’t merely be felt by the institutions, but by the whole educational ecosystem. Who gets paid if everything is free?

Once again – it all comes down to jobs.

The final irony, perhaps, is the fact that it is the oldest institutions which are best placed to surmount the challenge posed by the online course. The tutorial system at Oxbridge had already ‘flipped the classroom’ sometime in the middle of the last millennium. Back then they probably had a different stupid phrase for it, though.

An Overview on the mLearning Landscape

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:00:00 +0000

New solutions to old problems

As the GSMA study on mobile learning (Transforming Learning through mEducation) explains, mobile learning could be the answer to some of the challenges that education faces worldwide. The problems identified were:

lack of access to quality content
untrained teachers
un-tailored approach
infrequent evaluation and feedback
lack of data and analytics to benchmark student performance

Mobile learning provides a solution for the lack of access to quality content by making it available globally. If you own a mobile device with an internet connection, you can access the best educational content shared online.

The problem concerning untrained teachers could be solved by mobile learning thanks to the access to many online sources dedicated to help educators to share best practices. Teachers virtually meet in the same online space and share experiences and tips creating large communities like never before.

Meanwhile, the lack of a tailored approach in traditional education can be addressed by the ease with which digital platforms can gather data and offer feedback, especially compared to time-consuming traditional method. Thanks to mobile learning the students can be evaluated frequently and their feedback collected and effectively used to benchmark students’ performance and provide an adaptive learning experience.

But what makes mLearning extraordinary is that it is not restricted to the western market. Mobile technology is becoming more and more affordable, and good quality internet connectivity is reaching global coverage. As the report states: “Children in developing countries may not have handled as much of the sophisticated digital technology as their counterparts in developed countries. But their increasing comfort and familiarity with digital and mobile technology is inevitable as as countries grow wealthier, technology becomes affordable and devices proliferate”.

mLearning, a dynamic landscape

One of the most active fields in mobile learning is content creation and distribution in higher education. This field is getting crowded with some great examples of how mobile education is flourishing. edX , for example, offers online courses provided by important lecturers from worldwide famous universities that learners can attend for free. This kind of service provides the learner with a high level university education with zero costs and complete flexibility over where they study. This is giving rise to a debate on higher education that brings people to wonder over the legitimacy of universities’ policies and fees. Moreover, a virtual community is built around the course and the learner is able to be in contact with the lecturer and the other students. And it’s not just strictly academic courses which are offered, Udemy is in fact offering courses on practical skills in order to achieve the professional expertise that the learner is looking for.

Other areas of education are opening up to mobile education and proving very promising, such as the use of mobile learning to help kindergarteners achieve reading skills and language fluency -- as happened in a school in New Mexico. Mobile learning seems to be particularly effective for pupils of a younger age thanks to the possibilities of gamifying the learning experience. The abundance of educational app, more or less gamified, prove that mobile learning for school kids is having an important impact in traditional education, making its way into the classroom and in pupils’ everyday life.

Distributors of wisdom

As we all know already, mLearning is a fertile and dynamic landscape and its possibilities are still wide open. This is what mostly excites us here at Quipper. The awareness of being part of one of the most revolutionary changes in the modern world. How does Quipper contribute to all this? As demonstrated, the market of mobile education is well provided with services offering content covering the biggest areas of traditional education: K-12 subjects, English language for foreign speakers, professional education, etc. At Quipper we want to address the “long tail” of education. As Wikipedia explains, the long tail describes “the retailing strategy of selling a large number of unique items with relatively small quantities sold of each”. This means becoming a provider of niche content.

First of all it is necessary to discover an effective monetisation in the market, effective for all actors: content providers and users. The second really important factor is the design of the best and most effective mobile learning method. This involves research on how to best render the content on a mobile device, how to properly harness interactivity for learning. But we also need to overcome infrastructural issues such as connectivity. Although the wi fi connectivity to the internet is spreading and it is becoming available in most parts of the world, it is not universally spread. In developing countries, especially, the issue of the connectivity is very pressing, and of course this needs to be solved before the content can be shared globally. But we do believe that one day excellent content produced in the poorest parts of the world will be used by students in the richest parts of the world -- and vice versa. Quality education is not going to be economically nor geographically determined anymore.

In short, our mission at Quipper, is to become distributors of wisdom! A little ambitious? We don’t believe so. All that’s needed is passion and hard work...

Is Windows 8 Good for Mobile Learning?

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:44:00 +0000

Windows 8 is out in the wild, and Windows Phone 8 will be with us shortly.

While Windows (in all its many forms) continues to dominate the personal computer market, it's mobile tech that's enjoying rapid growth. Smartphones and tablets are constantly in the spotlight, both for ever-increasing sales figures and breaking new technological ground – and, of course, stirring up a few tasty court cases at the same time. And it's this growth in mobile which is beginning to infringe upon Microsoft's PC empire, which may just about have peaked.

The thing is, the trend towards more mobile computing isn't new. Laptops and netbooks first outsold desktop machines in 2008. Since then, of course, we've witnessed the rise of smartphones and tablets, which are now able to perform many of the tasks that were previously the domain of the PC.

With the advent of Windows 8 – and the tediously titled Windows Phone 8 – Microsoft is trying to play to its strength by bridging the gap between the tablet and the PC, making an operating system that works across both, as well as a smartphone OS that, if not identical, is strikingly similar.

Notably, unifying the UI across tablet and PC is something that Apple hasn't done, with iOS and MacOS remaining very distinct. But it's a strategy that, if it works, could make things interesting in the mobile learning space. So here's the rundown on how Windows 8 could affect mobile learning.

The Good

Windows 8 runs on both x86 and ARM processors

X86 chips are mostly used in PCs, and the more expensive tablets, while ARM architecture is the dominant technology among tablets. Different processors usually require different software – this is why it was so momentous when, back in the day, Apple Macs migrated from Motorola to Intel hardware: suddenly they were able to boot into Windows, because both operating systems were designed for the same processor.

The fact that Microsoft has created an operating system that is (mostly) cross-compatible with different processors means that Windows will have a wider reach than any other OS (let's ignore Android's x86 support...). And this is especially important for mobile learning because it allows –

A persistent experience across devices

For teachers and educators, Windows 8's wider compatibility means that they will be able to develop content that fits both home computers and mobile tablets. Learners will be able to learn on the go or at the desk (or even in the classroom) as a continuous, persistent experience, rather than having separate apps for separate devices, or different apps which need to be synched up with each other. And content can be presented consistently across different devices, allowing content authors to develop material that spans home- and mobile-learning.

Developers can earn a bigger cut

The standard cut for a developer selling an app on Android or iOS is 70%, but Microsoft have announced they'll be offering a better deal on the Windows Store, allowing successful apps to earn 80% of the asking price for the developers, once they've made over $25,000 in sales.

Developers can offer free trials of their apps

Demo versions allow the user to experience the app before buying it. It's a compelling way to drive sales – 'try before you buy' (and the related 'money back guarantee') has been used by marketers since the dawn of man, so it makes sense to bring this to the app market.

It's easier to develop across both Windows 8 and Windows Phone

The tricky phrase here is 'code re-use': that's to say, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will have a lot in common from a development perspective, allowing desktop and smartphone apps to re-use the same code, in turn making it easier to develop apps across devices. But, there's a caveat –

The Bad

Windows Phone 8 is a different OS

While there are similarities between the home and phone versions of Windows 8, the two are fundamentally not the same. This means that it's not a case of developing an app for one and immediately setting it loose on the other. The app market between the two, therefore, will be split.

There are fewer apps

Windows 8 is definitely playing catch-up on the app front. Because of its small market share in the mobile space, there are fewer developers willing to commit the time and money in developing software for the platform, with only a few thousand apps compared to the hundreds of thousands available on Android and iOS. For developers, this could be a chance to move quickly and establish themselves in the new marketplace – for users, the prospect is less appealing, with less mobile learning content available from the get go. However, with Microsoft pushing hard to make Windows 8 an attractive proposition to developers, the number of apps is bound to rise steadily.

It's new, it's different, and it's unproven

Windows 8 is already annoying some users for a variety of reasons, from the way it divorces the desktop from the new tile-based UI, to the limitations of the touch-friendly menus. Certainly, creating a one-size-fits-all operating system that works with both touchscreen and mouse interfaces is a pretty tall order, and it seems that Windows 8 may have a few idiosyncrasies in the manner it has merged the two. The fact is, Windows 8 is trying to break new ground, and bravely so – but just be aware that such bravery may have its price...

Smartphone Usage in India

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:13:00 +0000

India has the one of the highest numbers of mobile phone subscribers in the world. With over 900 million mobile users, it is second only to China. However, although the number of mobile users is huge, the number of smartphone users is less remarkable. According to thehindubusinessline.com, only 10-15 million people in India currently own a smart phone. Although this number isn’t exactly tiny, when you consider India’s 1.2 billion population that makes for a very slim percentage (about 0.12%).

The main factor that holds back smartphone penetration is the cost. Although tariffs can be purchased cheaply, smart phones themselves are considerably more expensive than a regular phone. For example, the iPhone 4S costs around 40,999 rupees (£469), which is over a month’s wages for the average Indian worker.

Rajan Anandan, the Managing Director of Google India, recognises the problem of cost and feels that it must be reduced by 30% if India wishes to reach the target of 200 million subscribers by 2015. Looking at the current number of smart phone users, this seems like a very optimistic aim. But if the cost was less than 5000 rupees, the levels of accessibility would increase all over India, making 200 million subscribers a more realistic target.

Engaged India

Despite having a small number of smartphone subscribers, India more than makes up for this with high levels of usage. A recent report found that people in India are making use of the internet on their mobile devices more than smart phone users in America. The survey found that 56% of Indian smartphone users accessed the internet multiple times a day compared to only 53% of American users. It also found that 76% of Indian smartphone owners used their device for social networking; this percentage was much less in the US (at only 54%). So although smart phone penetration still has a long way to go, those in India who do have smartphones use them extensively. Because of this high retention rate, app developers should pay attention to the Indian app market as it continues to grow.

Certain parts of India have greater smartphone usage than others. For example in the north 1 in 10 people own a smartphone, but the levels are much lower among other parts of the country. It was also found that the average age of users was 18-24, demonstrating that smartphone adoption is far more appealing to the younger generation. Furthermore, the number of men with smartphones is practically double the number of women with them – a massive disparity which may indicate the need for a greater range of software in order to attract a wider audience, though equally this worrying statistic may reflect a pre-existing gender imbalance.

As for the software already in use, there’s already an abundance of apps gaining traction in India; the most popular ones being Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter and Dropbox. Nothing particularly unusual there. But there are also apps designed specifically to cater to the Indian market such as ‘Sari’, which teaches purchasers how to drape a sari in the correct fashion. As the number of smartphone users grows so will the types of apps available, creating a more active app market than at present. India is definitely on the way to becoming a massive player in the mobile app business, but before that can happen it needs to build an army of smartphone users.

Learning by rote in the digital age

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 16:49:00 +0000

When it comes to education, there’s a divide between East and West (sort of). Eastern nations’ education systems have historically favoured rote learning – that is, memorisation – compared with Western schooling, which often cites creativity and innovation as key goals of a rounded education.

Rote learning has become seen as an antiquated method of teaching which eschews understanding in favour of mindless parroting. The dictionary defines learning “by rote” as: “from memory, without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way”.

And the decline of rote learning in the West has been facilitated by technology.

The internet, and technology in general, has put a downer on the need to remember things. No one needs to memorise friends’ phone numbers or email addresses because such data is conveniently stored and accessible electronically – our phones have become databases, while the internet can answer any question to which there exists an answer. So why remember the date of the Treaty of Versailles when you can find the answer on Google in about 6 seconds?

What was previously stored in our heads is now stored on servers around the world. The internet has become a surrogate for our own memory.

Rote Revival

But now there are rumblings in the UK of a need to return to rote learning, which has stirred controversy in the media, and raised the alarm against dull, counter-productive memorisation.

You’d be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was a terrible idea. But there are benefits to memorising stuff.

In fact, memorising key data is fundamental to learning any skill. Doctoring requires knowledge of the anatomy, lawyering requires knowledge of cases and statutes, learning languages require grammar and even new alphabets in some cases. Of course, being able to recall things will not further your understanding of those things – but without memorising these foundation elements, you cannot progress to a deeper understanding of a subject.

And this is true of every skill – reading, writing, playing an instrument or even playing a sport. Every skill has its own language, and vocabulary, which must be learned before you can truly engage with the subject on a deeper level.

M-Learning By Rote

While the internet and computers have undermined the need for us to remember things, it may well be that mobile learning can help revive this style of learning, by making it more convenient, more accessible, and more fun.

Drilling yourself, with flashcards or by brute repetition, is hard work (and usually tedious), which is why most people need their multiplication tables to be drilled into them by teachers or parents. Rote learning without a willing third party can be a battle of discipline and motivation. But mobile learning can make those flashcards and drills more appropriate to individual study – our devices can challenge and inform us at the same time, and also keep us motivated, whether through game-like structures or recording our progress.

Learning by rote does have limited use – as this article highlights, once you've acquired the fundamentals of a subject, the need to memorise data usually diminishes, and it becomes the application of knowledge which is important. But in that crucial first plunge into a subject, mobile learning can help us acquire a subject’s foundational knowledge quicker and easier than with a pen and paper alone.

Which is the Best Platform for Mobile Learning?

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:57:00 +0000

Quick answer: web apps. Long answer? Well…

Back in the old days (ie. circa '95), Apple Macs had a pretty bad time of it. Windows machines were so dominant, favoured in businesses and homes everywhere, that in a lot of cases it simply wasn’t worth the money for software developers to create applications for Apple Macs. The user-base just wasn’t big enough.

Obviously, times have changed, but that legacy is still felt today, with Microsoft Windows still accounting for nearly 70% of the operating systems market.

That sort of dominance hasn’t happened with smartphones and tablets. There’s no de facto platform dominating the market. Certainly, Apple’s the most popular handset provider (and is certainly leading the tablet market), but there are a lot more Android handsets than iPhones. The market for technology is bigger than it used to be – and apps by their nature are small, light on features when compared with their desktop cousins, with development teams of just a few people, making them cheaper to create – and making development across different platforms more feasible.

But the cost benefit of creating small, lightweight apps is undermined when you have to develop the same software for multiple platforms. So which platform should you start with?

Device-agnosticism

It’s not as simple as Apple versus Android. It’s not even got much to do with Windows phones, or Blackberries, either. The fact is, when it comes to learning and education, platforms become a contentious issue, summed up neatly by a quote from an NHS Report (‘Mobile Learning in the NHS’). In identifying the challenges that m-learning faces in a training context, one of the respondents explained:

“Any newly developed learning and assessment resources for mobile devices should be device-neutral and appropriate for different platforms, and, as far as possible, future proof, so that they would not become redundant when a device is updated with a newer model.”

Device-neutrality, device-universality, -interoperability, -compatibility – whatever you call it, the key point is that m-learning content needs to span as many devices and platforms as possible. And ideally, it needs to span all of them.

From a content point of view, the proliferation of devices is a bad thing. Creating content for iPhone is one thing (requiring its own team of developers), but then what if you want to expand onto Android? And then Windows? You’re creating a new piece of software each time. It applies to all software products (who wouldn’t want their software to be as widely compatible as possible?) but it’s especially important with m-learning.

And the reason is that, for m-learning to truly take off, accessibility is key. The ultimate aim of m-learning has to be the classroom, but even for m-learning to be adopted on wide-scale training schemes, accessibility is still crucial – teachers need to be confident their material can be accessed by all their students, not a subset or minority, and course directors need to know that their content won’t have to be overhauled when there’s a new update to the platform. Governments can’t endorse a technology with a limited user-base – and when viewed on a national scale, even iPhone’s 20+% market share can only be seen as a considerable minority.

It’s here that device specificity holds m-learning back.

The Original Technology

Think of it this way: in order to publish a book, you don’t need to know how a book is made. But the same can’t be said of digital publishing, which isn’t as mature as its traditional forebear – and traditional publishing is notoriously, outrageously slow on the uptake in all matters digital. The result is that there’s a barrier between content providers (educators, teachers) and learners.

But even the book, as a medium, isn’t so universally compatible. After all, not everyone speaks the same language – and language itself is a technology. The advantage the English language has over something like iOS, though, is a 1,000+ year lifecycle, over 360 million users and an auto-updater that never requires rebooting.

And that’s the essence of teaching: the transmission of an idea from one mind to another. Language is designed for it. The closer m-learning can get to that ideal, the wider its influence will spread.

From those lofty sentiments comes the crude reality: web-based apps have the accessibility missing from platform-specific operating systems like Android or iOS. You can argue that web apps don’t have the functionality of native apps, but for m-learning the accessibility is worth the trade-off. If you’re a content creator, you don’t want to be bound to one platform – and if you are, go for the widest possible reach.

Mobile Learning and the Developing World

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 09:13:00 +0000

The use of technology in the developing world has rocketed in recent years.

Mobile usage is far more common in developing countries than you may think. Although it may seem as though the cost would be too great or that access would be limited, the yearly growth rates speak differently. For example the year-on-year growth rate of 3G phone usage in India is a massive 841%! But it isn't just India; mobile usage is expanding all over the world. Research by World Bank found that active mobile subscriptions have gone from less than 1 billion to 6 billion since the year 2000. This is an amazing feat in itself. However, consider this: nearly 5 billion of these subscriptions are in developing nations.

With such huge penetration of mobile devices, it is no wonder that the mobile learning initiative is really beginning to gain momentum. UNESCO (UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation) is actively working on integrating mobile learning schemes and improving education policy. They have launched many projects in developing nations, including ‘Puentos Educativos’ in South America which provides teachers with resources (including a 3G Smartphone) and training on interactive teaching. The program helps 600 educators teaching over 10,000 children and reported increase in both student performance and motivation. This is a fantastic use of mobile learning and projects like this help to cement m-learning as an effective and useful learning tool. However, UNESCO recognizes that there is more work to be done. M-learning is only just beginning to be considered properly by education departments; therefore it will be a long time before it is readily available in the developing world.

The issue of cost also directly affects learning in less developed countries. Many families simply cannot afford to educate their children and therefore they go without. This is changing. With mobile learning more people will be able to access learning content without the huge price tag. Mobile phones are a lot cheaper than other technologies like computers or laptops, so they are far more widely used. Cheap tariffs and high accessibility mean that owning a mobile phone is a cost effective endeavor. Elsie S. Kanza from the World Economic Forum, states that (when speaking about Africa) “Regardless of social class, almost everyone has a mobile phone, or two or three. Even in remote villages, mobile phones have replaced the bicycle or radio as prized assets” This is great news for mobile learning and education in general as it is now possible to reach a wider audience and remote learners all over the world.

And the learning isn’t just limited to school environments. Other mobile apps are being developed to teach general health and basic knowledge as well. For example according to mobiledia.com a new app called ‘Nine Minutes’ has been created which teaches women about pregnancy and the maternity cycle. This kind of vital knowledge and health promotion is innovative and shows that there is simply no limit to how useful m-learning could be in educating the world.

Do you think mobile learning could be the future for learning in the developing world? Follow us on Twitter @QuipperApps and let us know what you think!

The Essence of Mobile Learning: the Pub Debate

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 14:34:00 +0000

The whole idea of having a telephone in your pocket is a mixed blessing – namely, the blessing of being able to talk to people who are far away, mixed with the curse of having to speak to people you don’t want to (the discomfort of which is enhanced if you ever make the mistake of taking your phone into the loo with you). And there are fewer things worse than that special kind of dread experienced when an unknown number starts flashing on the phone’s display.

But the benefit of having the internet in your pocket – this is something with fewer obvious drawbacks. The internet, for all its rich and varied evils, is more obedient than your friends. It doesn’t ring you up when it’s drunk and try to be funny, for one thing. And while it may send you too many emails from Amazon, like a request to put the rubbish out they can always be attended to later.

The real benefit of having the internet in your pocket, of course, is that it lets you settle arguments at the pub. Pub debate (“I’m telling you Sweden has the most suicides in Europe, fact”) has needed this for so long. It’s finally possible to crack down on idle supposition (“I think you’ll find that Uruguay has the biggest prison population per capita,”) and outright fallacy (“You don’t explode in space, you implode”) with the timely application of a Google search. Waffle has no place to hide – but more importantly, ignorance becomes more transparent, more easily revealed.

This isn’t as trivial as it may sound. It’s pretty much the essence of m-learning: the ability to discover, verify or refute facts wherever you are. While the pub is probably the number one destination for wonky facts and the half-baked application of basic scientific principles, the ability to fact-check and find answers wherever you are is something we now take for granted. It’s easy to think of m-learning as something limited to purposeful study, and the acquisition of skills, but, in truth, it’s an everyday occurrence, whose only prerequisite is curiosity – or, in the case of the pub debate, someone’s dodgy grasp of physics.

Challenges to Mobile Learning (and how Quipper overcomes them!)

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:58:00 +0000

Students Will Get Distracted By Using Mobile Learning – False!

One of the main issues with mobile learning apps is the possibility of learners being distracted. Mobile phones are banned in most classrooms for a reason – they have the potential to divert students’ attention. The sheer number of apps and games available on mobile phones is constantly increasing. This causes concerns for both parents and teachers that if mobiles were allowed in class, they’d be misused. An article published by the Telegraph newspaper (in May this year) discussed how Ofsted are planning to ban phones in classrooms altogether to improve discipline. Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of the education watchdog described the ‘low-level disruption’ in classrooms caused by mobile interruptions (phones ringing, students texting, playing games etc.) as being the ‘bigger issue’ which prevents effective learning. This was met by backlash from people who felt his views were short-sighted and old fashioned, considering how mobile learning can be beneficial and complementary to classroom learning. What Mobile App developers need to concentrate on is ensuring that content is appealing and engaging in order to sustain students’ attention and prevent them using their mobile device for other purposes like games and Facebook.

At Quipper, we’ve attempted to do this. As mentioned in a previous article, we include badges and achievements for learners to earn in order to keep them motivated. Further, we try to ensure the content is displayed in an interesting format with sounds, graphics and feedback at regular intervals. This helps to keep learners engrossed, and therefore less likely to stray away from the content.

Mobile Learning Content Is Not Really Very Educational – False!

Not only can mobile devices provide distractions but it is seen by many that the content provided on a mobile device is too entertainment-based to actually be educational. This is difficult for mobile app companies as they need to somehow strike the right balance between their app being fun and engaging (to prevent distraction) while keeping the focus on education.

At Quipper, though we use images and sounds in order to make the app exciting (as mentioned above), the basis is still firmly educational. There are no gimmicks or mini-games, it’s simply a quiz app designed around learning.

Mobile Learning Content is Often Irrelevant – False!

Another challenge in the field of mobile learning is ensuring that content is relevant. There’s a whole host of internet quiz sites and e-learning apps available online which people can use to learn, however a lot of the content on these sites and apps is irrelevant and too generalised. Learning with an app should be concise and restricted to what the student actually needs to know as part of their specific syllabus or for an upcoming test.
On the Quipper app, anyone can create and customise their own learning content to make it specific to their students, and so avoid anything unnecessary or off-syllabus.

Generally new mobile learning apps are adapting to combat the negative myths surrounding mobile learning. As the field develops in the future, these challenges are becoming less relevant resulting in more people seeing m-learning as a viable and effecting learning tool.

Men Are Smarter than Women

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:21:00 +0000

Man versus Woman. It’s the classic domestic dispute, ever-raging in homes throughout the land. Who’s smarter? Is it Man, with his ape-like fascination with running and hitting things, or Woman – with her so-called intuition, her talent for arguments and sewing and cooking delicious food?

Recent studies have reportedly shown that women have overtaken men in the IQ stakes. But at Quipper we prefer the hard science of trivia quizzes over the soft stuff of IQ tests, so we set about conducting our own tests – and we've found the answer (via quiz). So, once and for all: who's smarter?

It’s men, actually. We were sort of surprised too.

Using data we gathered from our mobile quiz app, we were able to compare how knowledgeable men and women were on a range of different topics. And across all the topics we tested, men just outperformed women, by a mere 1%.

English was the strongest topic for both men and women (84% correct for men, 83% correct for women), while women were better at topics like Trivia (39% men /42% women) and Music (33% men / 36% women). The biggest gap between each gender was on Cities & Travel, with men averaging 52% correct, and women 46%.

There’s a catch, though: there were more women taking the quizzes. A lot more: compare 112,738 women to 46,562 men. Did the larger sample drag down their average? Probably.

If you want to throw your proverbial hat into the ring, download the Quipper app on iPhone or Android and demonstrate your intellect to the world.

The Advantages of Digital Media in M-Learning

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 09:36:00 +0000

As a recent university graduate, the amount of money I spent on textbooks was no small thing. But more frustrating was the fact that so many texts I was looking for weren't available in print. At points my work suffered because libraries didn't have enough books to go around, or didn't have the texts I needed.

But now the age of print media is coming to an end. The days where content was limited by print runs are over. No longer shall books go out of print, or suffer from poor distribution. All you need is an electronic copy, or even a scanned version of the book in question, and it can be distributed electronically at virtually no cost. A university library can, in theory, loan the rights to a text, and distribute it electronically on demand for students. Such services already exist in the form of Jstor and Lit Online.

This makes sound business sense too, and already Apple has tried to aid this process by making it easier for companies to create e-Textbooks. Top representatives at Apple said in early 2012 that they could sell textbooks for $15 (roughly £10) through their iBook application. This is a great deal cheaper than most regular print textbooks, and whereas print media suffers from second hand trade, digital media does not.

This means that students have to go to the publisher to get the text they want. Publishers sell the books for less, but ultimately will make the same profit, by cutting down on distribution costs and making it cheaper to supply niche textbooks. All the while, students get better value for money, paying £10 for a textbook that could have cost close £100 in print form. If you urgently need a book, you could download it straight away to your e-Reader of choice, instead of waiting on long library queues or physical delivery from a retailer.

As a result of this, students would never be short on texts or sources, and said sources would be simple and convenient to pick up and use. Videos and other such information can be embedded into electronic textbooks in the same manner that they can be on websites. Devices such as Amazon’s Kindle already have embedded dictionaries, meaning you can look up a word in an eBook there and then, without having to leave your Kindle. The same is true of the Kindle iPhone App, and iBooks on the iPad.

So short of having computers that can inject information straight into your brain like in The Matrix, we'll have to make do with e-books. While the cost of an iPad or Kindle may be prohibitive to some, from an educational view the benefit is certainly worth it.

Alex Calvin
www.thatcoffeefueledguy.co.uk

How Can Mobile Learning Increase Student Motivation?

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:06:00 +0000

The mobile learning movement is beginning to gain momentum. Teaching in schools, universities, colleges (and even learning from home) has the potential to be more engaging with the integration of m-learning. And as a result, mobile learning is becoming exceedingly popular. It was reported by Ambiant insight that the US market for mobile learning products had generated a staggering $958.7 million in 2010. Not only this, but they predicted the compound annual growth rate to be 13.7% over the next five years, proving that mobile learning will continue to develop as more and more people begin to recognise its advantages.

A number of reports have suggested that mobile learning can in fact help students to be more motivated and therefore improve their overall performance. M-learning introduces a whole new type of learning, different from the typical tasks such as making notes, reading from a textbook, etc. This variety within a learning course is sure to increase levels of interest among learners.

This hypothesis was tested in 2005 by a university in Ohio. Research was conducted into student perceptions of mobile learning to find that it was having a positive effect. Students felt that mobile learning made the work seem easier and ‘more fun’ which eventually resulted in an increase in quality of work produced. However some people still have reservations about how effective m-learning could be.

There is a stigma around using phones in the classroom. Educators and parents alike have a negative assumption, reinforced by school policy, that mobile devices are a distraction to learning as opposed to an aid. However, this view is not universal. Diana Laurillard from the Institute of Education believes that motivation is actually a key aspect of m-learning. She went on to say ‘It is clear that learners working with m-learning enjoy the process’ which she put down to aspects such as students control over their own goals. Not only this, but M-learning is very accessible. Students are able to complete homework tasks wherever they are. If students know that they can complete their homework without being glued to a desk, they would be more likely to do so.

A study by Tsinghua University in Beijing also indicated an improved enthusiasm in students using mobile technology, but for different reasons. As teachers posted content onto forums and sent emails to the students, there was a closer student-teacher relationship which was seen as the main reason behind the increase in motivation. However, many cynics see mobile learning as being far more entertainment- based rather than educational – and these perceptions will need to be dispelled before mobile learning is able to reach every classroom.

Once more people realise the benefit of mobile learning technology the trend of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) will move from only being applicable to the work place, to also being relevant to classrooms. This is already happening. Earlier this month the BBC reported of a school in Newport which lifted a ban on mobiles as a way of ‘embracing technology for learning’. The school reported that it was ‘working well’ and that it was time that schools caught up with the technological revolution.

It is time for other educational institutions to follow suit and ensure that they are keeping up with the latest technology to provide educational content that is relevant and reflective of our modern society. In doing so, student motivation could rapidly increase which would inevitably also help their overall performance.

What Data Means for M-learning

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:46:00 +0000

In the UK, the current wave of smartphones are 3G – so-called because they’re the ‘third generation’ of mobile phone technology. This is important because the wireless connection provided by your home router is very different from that provided by mobile phone networks.

According to this Google article, in May 2010 the average size of a webpage was about 320k. However, since then, the size of the average webpage has risen to over a megabyte. The trend for bigger, richer websites looks set to continue; our desire to consume data seems to be in a constant race with technology's capability to serve it.

Meanwhile, the speed of data transfer over a 3G connection is 384kbps, which equates to 48k per second. Compare this to the average home broadband speed of 9mbits per second – which equates to over 1mb per second. That's 20 times faster.

Obviously, there’s huge variation across different networks and internet service providers, but these benchmarks highlight the difference between home and mobile web. And while 4G is on the horizon (and already available in the US, though not yet widely adopted), promising home broadband speeds on mobile devices, it’s clear that the disparity between home and mobile will play an important role in shaping the consumption of mobile learning content.

After all, it’s not just speed that’s the issue – there’s cost as well. 4G will allow us to consume data faster, but that data comes with a price. American networks charge roughly $10 per gigabyte on their network plans. Contrastingly, it’s common for home broadband to be uncapped for a fixed price.

Why this matters for m-learning

The point is, there’s an added cost to serving data to mobile devices when compared with home connections. The richer the media, the more data you need – and the higher the cost for the user, both in terms of download time and to their data plan. And while the internet at large continues to binge on data, making bigger and bigger websites, mobile content has to come to terms with limited data transfer.

This means that mobile learning has to be data-savvy, and optimised for the narrower bandwidth. So what’s better – Apps with the lowest data profile and fastest performance, or apps with the richest content?

This is a question that’s especially relevant to us at Quipper. Our challenge is to enable users to create their own content and publish it to our app, incorporating images, sound and video if they so choose – while the end-user experience needs to be smooth and fast. We don’t want to put hard limits on the amount of data which can be published on our app, because we want our users to be authors of their own content.

One of the tricks we've developed is loading data in the background where possible. An example of this is how quizzes are loaded, allowing users to start as soon as the first few questions have loaded, rather than waiting for the whole thing to load. And we're always monitoring how authors are using data in their content, and how to best serve that data. It's an issue that's pertinent to all app developers, but especially important for mobile learning. After all, the transmission of data is the very definition of learning.

How Can Achievements Enrich Mobile Learning Content?

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 13:00:00 +0000

In a previous blog post, we discussed the importance of feedback in motivating and retaining users.

One of the more popular forms of feedback is badges and achievements. These started out life on the Microsoft Xbox 360 in the form of the ‘Gamer Score’, where players up their score by earning ‘achievements’ (so-called) for performing certain actions in videogames. For instance, you’d earn achievements for completing a level, or beating a boss. Usually, they have some arbitrary numerical value, generally based on the perceived difficulty of completing the task (100 points for saving the world, 10 points for saving your dog), though they can be as obscure or whimsical as game developers’ fancies – in the videogame ‘Saints Row 2’, players can earn an achievement for their in-game avatar singing along to the radio.

Achievements are interesting because they have no inherent value: they don’t grant access to extra content, or functions, or abilities. In economic terms, the cost-to-benefit ratio is out of whack. In fact, they don’t offer any tangible benefit at all. They’re simply milestones which pop up to pat the player on the back. But far from being a simple record of feats accomplished, achievements powerfully influence how people play games, being able to offer different and surprising goals from that of the game proper.

So it’s unsurprising that achievements are being adopted in the e-learning sector, as part of the ‘gamification’ of learning. A paper by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute found that “by integrating game-like elements such as the notion of achievements into tutoring applications, students are more likely to find learning to be an enjoyable endeavor.”

Motivate and Retain

On a basic level, achievements can be boiled down to any kind of graphical feedback triggered by fulfilling specific criteria: it can be a progress bar that fills up incrementally with each lesson completed, or badges that show up on your profile, relating to specific exercises or general progress. The only real criterion is that there is some illustration of progress – that the user can see, by some arbitrary measure, they’ve made some kind of gain.

As well as being great for motivation, achievements can help retain users. This handy slideshow explains how achievements (or simply rewards, in this case) can be used as an incentive for users to return to your content, and users who consistently come back can be given mounting rewards – Codecademy does something similar with the streak: users are encouraged to keep their streak alive, with a record of their longest streak prominently displayed on their profile.

These dual benefits of motivation and retention shouldn’t be overlooked when devising your mobile learning content: the increasing capabilities of mobile devices equate to increasingly rich distractions just a finger tap away. Hook people with achievements, and help keep them motivated when those distractions start calling.

4 Tips for creating engaging mobile learning content

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 16:20:00 +0000

1. Break it down

Remember the adage: less is more – this is certainly true for mobile learning.

When authoring content, consider the way your content is going to be used: if it’s on a tablet, there are different behaviours from smartphone usage. The key thing to remember is to break your content down into easily digestible units. People using smartphones and tablets may be approaching your content in short bursts, or they may sit down for a couple of hours each time.

Your content needs to work for both these modes. So lessons need to be short, and structured into discrete units so that learners can make progress in small increments, rather than the long in-depth chapters you might expect in a textbook.

2. Signpost

When you divide a topic up, give your users a roadmap: tell them the purpose of each lesson, how it builds from the previous lesson, and how it will benefit them. So if it’s academic material, highlight which part of the syllabus you’re covering, and what assessment criteria they will be fulfilling. And if it’s a skill you’re teaching, give a practical demonstration of what your users will be able to achieve at each step.

By breaking down a large topic into several smaller areas, you don’t just enable people to control the pace of their learning, but also give them a sense of what they’re building towards. This is great for inspiring your users’ ambitions, and fostering their sense of accomplishment when they finally reach that goal.

3. Mix it up

Whether or not learning styles are important to the way people learn, it’s always a good idea to use a strong mix of different media. If your content is text-based, illustrate key points with diagrams or photos. This helps not just to explain concepts but to break up the lesson (see point 1), giving the lesson added structure. Images act as landmarks on the page – and people can gauge their progress more easily. Compare this to the open road of plain text which stretches on for miles …

And don’t get sloppy if your content is video-based. Complement your videos with written or interactive tests. It’s easy to lose track of a video and feel like you missed certain key points, so a test or recap is a great way to give people a sense of what progress they’re making and what they need extra work on.

4. Give feedback

You might think the main reward of learning is learning itself – but that’s hard to keep in mind when it’s getting late and you’re struggling to sit down and focus on studying for 45 minutes to an hour. And with mobile learning, your content is sitting on a device capable of distracting your users in a million ways. They’re bound to lose focus and check their emails or facebook. The question is, how to get them back?

This is where feedback comes into play.

Feedback is an opportunity to reward your users. And it doesn’t just have to come in the standard ‘B+ Must Try Harder’ variety: the beauty of mobile learning is that feedback can come in different shapes and sizes.

One of the more popular forms of feedback is badges and achievements. The underlying concept is that people improve their ‘score’ by completing lessons, taking tests, etc. Users unlock stuff as their score gets higher – usually little graphics that denote their progress. This is a fairly sophisticated form of feedback, but one that is effective at improving user retention.

But any kind of feedback will benefit your users, whether a score for an interactive test or a simple record of topics they’ve covered. The more personalised you can make it, the better.

What Is The Rate Of Growth Of Mobile Learning?

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:39:00 +0000

As the world gains more of a technological focus and teachers recognise the benefits of disseminating information via the web, so the practice of mobile learning will continue to grow. During the early 2000s educational experts would have doubted the merits of using these devices. Indeed the explosion or smart phones and tablets was inconceivable ten years ago. However, the new generation of teachers now have an opportunity to embrace mobile learning with easily accessible apps and internet services.

M-Learning Growth Throughout The World

It may not surprise members of the educational community to hear that mobile learning is becoming extremely popular in America. After all, the power of the internet has long been recognised by citizens in this part of the world. And as the number of households with mobile devices continues to increase, so too does student enrolment on web based courses. A recent report showed that the number of registrations for these types of programmes went up from 4.6 million in 2008 to over 6 million in 2011. Moreover, research company Ambiant Insight has predicted that 25 million American post secondary students will be taking classes on the web by 2015.

Word about the effectiveness of mobile learning has rapidly spread across the continents. According to the Ambiant researchers, the amount made by this industry will increase from a current level of £958 million in 2010 to $1.82 billion over the next few years. The wheels have been set rolling by academic institutions such as the Indian Gandhi National Open University and Chinese University of Hong Kong, which have developed special programmes for remote learners. European students are also gaining access to online platforms such as Coursera, which contains a database of courses organised by the world's leading academics. Inevitably these courses will become available on smart phones and tablets.

An industry expert said, “This should come as little surprise, all the blogs and news stories we post onto our site look at how technology is shaping the way that we digest information, and, essentially, learn. E-learning enables individuals in a digital world to develop their understanding and progress, which explains why it is such a huge market today.”

M-Learning Of The Future

As we move in to a new age of mobile devices teachers will have to embrace these learning tools traditionally confiscated for improper use. Leading commentators have pointed to the continued demand for m-learning and the integration of technology into the modern day learning environment. Therefore, those teachers that embrace mobile learning will gain access to a growing wealth of interactive materials.

As more and more people purchase smartphones and tablets, there will be greater use of educational apps developed by companies such as Quipper. As a spokesperson for the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) said, “It [the use of mobile apps] would change the face of education. You would be looking at digital learning in nearly every single classroom.”

People in other industries such as engineering are also set to benefit from substantial investment in m-learning solutions according to the Learning Light's research organisation. It is thought that the full time workforce will enjoy the benefits of flexibility that are offered by these mobile solutions.

You might even like to Facebook Like or Tweet this content!

How can mobile learning address different learning styles?

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 08:47:00 +0000

The most popular model for analysing learning styles is the VAK model, which breaks learning into three distinct strands: Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic. These correspond, roughly, as follows:

1) VISUAL LEARNERS

These are people who respond best to visual elements in lessons: text and diagrams, tables and graphs.

2) AUDITORY LEARNERS

Someone classed as an auditory learner will be able take in lectures more easily, and prefer narration to copying text.

3) KINAESTHETIC LEARNERS

These are 'doers’: people who respond well to practical tasks: conducting experiments, taking things apart. The more active, the better.

So what’s the best way to deal with these disparate modes of engagement with mobile learning? And how valid is the VAK mode of analysis?

An unproven model

While there’s a certain ‘common sense’ appeal to the VAK model (don’t we all find we react better to certain approaches than others?) its validity has been called into question a number of times. Indeed, the VAK model appeared to rise to popularity through word of mouth, rather than off the back of approved data. In truth, there’s no real evidence that the VAK model helps to improve children’s performance at school.

Meanwhile, an article by the TES points out, “Many school activities are not purely visual, auditory or kinaesthetic, but a mixture of all three. A child may be looking at a book (visual) while listening to a teacher (auditory) and making notes (kinaesthetic).”

The truth is, most people learn best through a blend of all three kinds of learning. Just because a person may have a bias towards visual learning, it doesn’t mean they’re locked out from other styles. Professor Guy Claxton, of the University of Bristol, is convinced that the VAK model is based on "neuro-babble and phoney science". Similarly, Professor Frank Coffield, who headed a research paper into learning styles at the University of Newcastle, said: "The reality is that most people learn in most ways. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support a 'one child, one label’ approach.”

Mixing it up

So when creating mobile learning content, the question shouldn’t be “How does this apply to different learning styles?” but rather “How interesting is this?”

And the key to interesting content is a strong mix of complementary media. Video is a good medium for teaching, and is catered to on a variety of e-learning sites (like Udemy and Khan Academy). But with many sites like these the emphasis is solely on the video component, and often other media is subsidiary, or kept separate. Consider Khan Academy, where practice questions are kept on a different part of the site from the educational videos.

A better example of a mixed approach to learning is Code Academy, where users learn and apply concepts on the same web page, typing in code for practical exercises and observing their own success (or failure). The masterstroke, however, is the discussion board, which allows users to exchange notes on specific questions.

So while video is currently the most popular format for learning on the web, soon new structures will emerge for enriching educational content: for instance, ways of incorporating video into practical exercises, or even breaking up reading material with live group discussions. The possibilities of web and mobile learning haven’t begun to be tapped yet. And while the VAK model may be too simplistic, it’s nevertheless a valuable reminder. As Professor Claxton says:

“Most teachers know that watching a video clip, then moving into discussion, then following that with a practical activity, all makes for a more interesting lesson than if they just stand at the front and talk. The reason that VAK works well may have less to do with new-fangled theories and more to do with the proverb about variety being the spice of life.”

How Will Tablets Affect Mobile Learning?

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:42:00 +0000

Mobile tablets are on the rise. The IDC has upwardly revised its sales forecasts to a predicted demand of 107.4 million units worldwide for the year. Broadly, the split between iOS and Android tablets will continue to lie slightly in Apple’s favour, while other tablet operating systems will fail to make an impression.

But this sort of penetration isn’t yet enough to reach the average classroom. The phenomenon of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), where people bring their laptops and other devices from home to the workplace, isn’t applicable to the classroom, where accessibility will always be key. In other words, pens and paper and books will, for a long time yet, remain more widely available than other technologies.

So schools will always lag behind the cutting edge, but that doesn’t mean mobile learning won’t take off. The internet has proven that learning isn’t limited to schools. Online learning services are proliferating. And while smartphones have heralded the advent of mobile apps, a variety of research shows that it is tablets which will prove a more comfortable home for mobile learning.

The Tablet Advantage

A key difference between tablets and smartphones is monetisation: tablets are the stronger of the two. About 14% of Apple's app downloads are paid ones, compared to only 1% for Android. This means that content providers have to find other ways to drive revenue. But according to a report by the Online Publishers’ Association, 23% of apps downloaded on tablets are paid-for. Further, a Nielson report reveals that 40% of tablet users find ads acceptable, compared with 30% of smartphone users. Given the ever-troubling question of ‘How to monetise?’, advertising will continue to play a vital function in bankrolling app development, and the tablet advantage in this domain may prove key.

Another distinct advantage is that tablets tend to be used more for serious purposes, such as business or finance apps, compared with smartphones whose top use is usually Facebook and games. This means that educational content will be more attractive to tablet users than users of smartphones. The chart below is taken from the Online Publishers Association report.

Emerging behaviours

And there’s another insight which could directly complement mobile learning specifically: the rise of ‘dual screening’. This is when you watch TV while using another device. David Gosen, Head of digital strategy in Europe for Nielson, says: “Tablets are driving an increase in ‘dual screening’. This is both good and bad for advertisers. Consumers are unfortunately more distracted during TV ad breaks, with 64 percent simultaneously using a tablet while watching TV at least ‘several times a week’.”

But what’s bad for advertisers could prove helpful in the e-learning sphere: user behaviour shows that tablets are happily seen as a complementary device – people are comfortable accessing content or finding information while watching a TV show (or more likely, while the adverts are on).

For advertisers, that means an unwanted distraction. But educational content providers should focus on harnessing the convenience of the tablet to produce multimedia content spanning traditional and digital publishing – that means companion apps which complement online or in-book content. An app can relate to a television program, or a chapter in a book, or a website, and the data shows that this approach will prove powerful to consumers. Educational content that fits the tablet’s capabilities – and understands the way tablets are used – will flourish.

Using Online Quizzes to Assist Mobile Learning

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:32:00 +0000

Quizzes allow someone to explore, investigate and practice a new subject. These are all great tools we want people to use. However, can you really learn by quiz? Is there enough context for someone to actually learn from answering questions? Is there a good format to use when using quizzes to teach? Should they have an understanding of the content in order for the quiz to be useful?

Start by understanding the person

In order for a quiz to teach, the author must have an idea of the person’s current understanding. So when you create a quiz, make sure the people learning know what the required knowledge is before starting. A simple description of the requirements before entering the quiz can make all the difference to the person’s experience and ultimately increase the value of the quiz.

Provide social support for the quiz

Many people find social support to be an advantage when learning. Using online statistics and social networking, online quizzes can provide support and help from peers. Metrics such as how many people answered correctly can help someone understand how they compare to their peers. Their peers can also help them if they’re stuck on a particular subject and point them in the right direction. Furthermore, these discussions can raise additional questions and enhance the person’s understanding of the subject matter. So try to construct your questions so that they provoke conversation.

Use the quiz to understand gaps in knowledge

Often a learner is not aware of the gaps in their knowledge until that knowledge is evaluated. Quizzes provide a great opportunity for this evaluation to be part of the learning process. People learning on a mobile can identify gaps in their knowledge quickly, and seek out appropriate material to fill that gap. Providing links to platforms such as Wikipedia and Youtube can effectively reinforce the learning objective.

Use multiple choice, explanations and exploring effectively

When teaching with a quiz it’s important to make sure the learner is not overwhelmed or in fear of answering the question. Multiple choice answers allow the person to explore and maybe even guess at the answer. This exploration can then lead to an explanation page where the learner can get additional information and find out how they can improve.

Using the above four points it is possible to create a quiz that people feel is beneficial and enhances the learning experience.

Do you have any other ideas on how to teach with quizzes?

Further Reading

http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw03/papers/quinn/paper.html
http://teachnet.edb.utexas.edu/~Lynda_abbot/Social.html
http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/journal/vol14/beej-14-c2.aspx
http://www.learner.org/courses/learningclassroom/support/07_learn_context.pdf