What I think of m-Learning

While both need to be given equal importance, I feel “what the learners should learn” is more important than “how they should learn”. So what’s that got to do with the title? Wait, I am coming there.

When we go a little back in time, learning was primarily a classroom affair. Then, some smartass came out with the concept of eLearning, primarily to improve ROI and not learning per se. We added a lot of multimedia and interactive features to infuse some learning element in there. Then we started comparing this easy to use and less expensive mode of delivery with the comparatively more expensive classroom training. Bingo! We hit the jackpot. We were flooded with projects. We then borrowed the existing learning principles and then forced them into eLearning courses. Things were going right till another smartass came out with an idea to outsmart the original smartass, m-learning.

So, in m-learning we remove all the interactive features to make the course small, light and mobile compatible. However, we make sure there are some animations in between so that the learners don’t complain. And when the learner complaints that the same info could have been passed on to him over mail, we give him some ID gyaan as to how we followed learning theories to build this course and it wasn’t possible over mail, till the time the learner blames his own intelligence or his mobile for the mismatch between our claim and his actual learning.

So with all these experiments with trying to deliver training with every mode possible, are we not doing injustice to the “what” part of learning? Can we ever be able to deliver quality training through every goddamn device possible? While we are happy scoring some brownie points over the traditional trainers for using these funky tools for training delivery, do we have any plan to match their training effectiveness?

I am not against the use of technology for training delivery but a little concerned about our approach. In m-learning, learning should come first and then mobile. We should not make it a point to force every kind of course into mobile. While a few vanilla Knowledge level courses can be delivered on mobile, the story should end there. Considering the limitations with handheld devices, we shouldn’t try and put too much into our course. M-learning is only fun so let’s take easy for some time till the technology becomes learning friendly.