10 DOs & DON’Ts in MOBILE LEARNING - Game of Phones

Mobile learning is confusing. In theory it sounds great, in practice it’s often misattributed hype. Different devices have different patterns of use. The fact that you make ‘responsive’ e-learning simply means that it can be delivered on different devices NOT that it will be used on different devices. M-learning is, therefore, often more fiction than fact.

1. DON’T expect people to play tennis in a cupboard

People don’t do long e-learning courses on mobile phones. It’s a device for short, episodic activity, not long, deep, reflective learning experiences. Large e-learning courses on mobiles are a waste of time. It’s like playing tennis in a cupboard.

2. DO use for informal learning

Formal stuff is hard on mobiles, so focus on informal, such as fast facts, flashcards, quick quizzes, comms and support for students, social media and so on. People use mobiles informally, so deliver informal learning. 
3. DO think about social media
Mobiles have become the primary means for accessing social media. Twitter has become a great form of CPD for all sorts of professionals. Indeed, all forms of social media have some relevance in learning. So thing about this aspect of informal learning.

4. DO use for projects

Long used for gathering material and evidence for assessment in vocational learning. Mobiles are great at gathering data, whether notes, images, audio or video. It gives impetus to learning by doing.

5. DO use for performance support

OK, you’re stuck and only have a mobile to hand. That’s when you need the right answer to a question or solution to a problem. This is short, sharp and useful. Learning at the point of need.

6. DO use for spaced practice

The most ignored piece of theory in the psychology of learning is the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve – we forget most of what people suppose we learn – fact. The solution is spaced practice and mobiles are powerful, portable and personal devices in our pockets, so we can deliver spaced practice by delivering cues from any learning experience across a defined time.
7. DO use for assisted learning
Do use for useful apps that assist learning. A good exampel is the AI app, Photomaths. Teachers hate it, learners love it. You point your camera at the maths problem and it gives you the answer. Not only that, it gives you the breakdown of the steps between the question and answer. That's useful. 

8. DO think about context
One of the advantages of mobile is the fact that it is personal, powerul and portable. Think about recommending its use in context, In the store in retail, in the ward in medicine and so on. With the Internet of Things we may even see Beacon driven learning, where learning is triggered by beacons in the workplace.
9. DON’T expect people to pay

Yes, non-wifi use costs money. Don’t expect learners to pay unless they have agreed to this approach. This sounds obvious but it’s a fact that is too often forgotten in designing m-learning.

10. DON’T cheat on mobile metrics

First, there’s confusion about what ‘mobile’ devices are, a confusion that is confusing the hell out of everyone. When I say “he’s using a mobile”, I don’t mean he’s using a ‘tablet’. Otherwise, I’d say “he’s using a tablet”.  Yet people are reporting mobile use as phones plus tablets. If the answer is, tablets are taken around by people and used as second screens, then those two criteria also apply to my laptop. This is sleight of hand. Don’t cheat on mobile metrics

Conclusion

In the same way that tablets have been hyped in schools, as they are limited in terms of complex learning tasks such as long-form writing, coding, tools etc., mobiles are hyped in formal learning. Don’t treat all devices as delivery devices. Different devices have different learning attributes.

Educational research largely useless - no costs, no bite

A question that is often asked is why education seems to never change in relation to to technology, compared, for example, to health? One answer is that there's no real consequences of failure for deliverery in education, there is in health. A more extreme example is the universal use of very expensive flight simulators for pilots. Why? Pilots go down with the plane! But another problem is the lack of a culture of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA).

A wonderful paper by Levin and Blefield ‘Guiding the development and use ofcost-effectiveness analysis in education’ (2013) shows how education, unlike other areas of massive expenditure fails to apply Cost-Effective Analysis (CEA) to research projects. In practice, this leaves a massive vacuum at the centre of arguments around educational interventions and explains why progress is glacial.

Given the massive costs to society for education this is a puzzle. Surely, say the authors,“alternatives that show greater productivity relative to their costs, i.e., that are more cost-effective and more efficient in the use of social resources, should be preferred for adoption and implemented more intensively.” But how often do you see costs mentioned and if they are, they are of such low quality as to be meaningless.

The problem, as the authors of the report claim, is endemic. There’s little understanding of some basic economic concepts among educational researchers. No real distinction is made between Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA). There is rarely any conceptual understanding of Opportunity Costs or realistic Sensitivity Analysis. This leaves research incomplete and hanging. A good CEA can even shift marginal and even negative research results into positive territory, as one delivery method may result in marginal or even negative learning effectiveness, but at a much lower cost, allowing other interventions to take place, making the overall system better.

Examples - MOOCs, Blended, Tablets

Let me give you an example. In debates around MOOCs, many claim that MOOCs are no substitute for face-to-face campus courses. But that is not the point. If they result in the same measurable academic outcomes, or even lower educational outcomes, the real win is in the fact that MOOCs can deliver a scalable solution at a tiny fraction of the 'cost per learner' of traditional campus courses. We’re not talking about shaving percentages off the costs but coming down to a tiny fraction of the original costs. This, in turn frees up resources to do better teaching and even more research.

One more example is blended learning, where effective alternatives are rarely, truly calculated in terms of the costs components in relation to effective interventions in a blended solution. Blended learning often turns out to be just variations on blended ‘teaching’, with no real appreciation of the true costs of delivery.

Yet another example is the purchase of tablets in schools. I doubt of there is a single exhaustive cost-effective analysis on any of these large-scale purchases in the UK. In fact, disasters due to inadequate procurement have already been reported from the US.

Rarity of true costs

An additional problem is resource-based costing. In practice, estimates of costs based on resources are often hopelessly inadequate, as the institutions often doesn’t actually know the true costs of delivery. The actual costs of personnel and the all important issue use of buildings and accompanying resources is rarely calculable. Yet we know that many educational institutions, schools, colleges and especially Universities have woeful occupancy rates, making this a substantial figure. This is not easy as ‘rental’ rates are not applicable, as they are in many other areas of the economy but with a little effort one can calculate the costs of the building and its amortisation and maintenance costs. There may also be other hidden funding costs from Government or other sources. It is important to be exhaustive here. The true costs of any control group must be clear if cost-effectiveness is to be measured.

Once you have the true costs you really can determine a ‘cost per learner’, a metric I like. The next step is to also include the marginal cost per learner as further participants in online courses are normally at marginal costs. You can go further and look at the distribution of these costs but few get as far as this first metric.

Conclusion

The truth may be hard to bear here, but much educational research is meaningless in the sense of having no real chance of impact and change, as it does not carry through to Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA). The anti-corporate attitudes in our Universities is one problem, the lack of actual fiscal skills among researchers is another. But the main problem is the lack of commissioned research that demand rigour on costs. Without a truly rigorous Cost Effectiveness Analysis in education we will continue to spend huge amounts of money on fruitless research. The lesson is clear link effectiveness to costs. If you don’t the research will fall into the category of ‘inconclusive’. That means no evidence-based change will happen.

‘Mindfulness’ yet another mindless fad in education

There’s a new fad on the block being forced on our kids – mindfulness (or wellbeing). In truth, it’s not new at all. It goes back to Buddhism, Freud, then Rogers and the relentless effort to get therapeutic theory into education. But there’s plenty of reasons for rejecting this particular manifestation of mindful madness.

1. Adult fixations foisted on kids

Mindfulness is just another example of adults taking their new-age, adult fixations and forcing them on the young. It’s not as if kids take naturally to such unnatural behaviours as they are naturally exuberant. Education should be about opening up young minds not forcing them to do things that faddish adults think is right for them.

2. Ill-defined

I’ve been asking people in the counseling and therapy business what ‘mindfulness’ is and the replies, even from theose who have been on the training courses, are more than a little confusing. Some relate it directly to Buddhist meditation, others to reflection on your physiological processes, others to internal cognitive reflection. In fact it seemed somewhat contradictory, a stilling of the mind yet a strong sense of presence or attention to self using a selfless, meditation-based practice. There’s no consistency as mindfulness is many things to many people. This is always a worry and often a sign that all is not well with a practice. It reminds me of the theoretical mess that is NLP.

3. Enforced silence

Education is about both mind and body but that means being alive and kicking, socialising with others through play, games and sport. Kids are lively and locking them up for most of the day in classrooms, often accompanied by enforced silence, is bad enough, without forcing them to sit in even more complete, communal silence. They are gloriously alive at that age and should play and learn, be lively and curious, not mimic artificial, adult fads.

4. Surfeit of over-reflection

Is internalizing at this age such a great thing? One of the problems with children and especially teenagers is over-reflection. They already have a surfeit. Peer pressure often forces them to reflect too much on the wrong things, leading to a spiral of negative reflection, even depression. It is often a destructive, not creative, force at this age. Keep their minds on what matters, not obsessive internalized reflection.

5. Mindless sheep

Mindfulness plays a neat trick. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing as it is actually mindless meditation under the guise of mindful attention. What we need is more mindful, external attention on learning, teachers and other people in learning. This means getting involved, not idle internalizing. It means being alert and attentive, as we know with certainty that outward-looking, psychological attention is a necessary condition for learning. The sort of internal attention that is needed for learning is to do with the coding, elaboration, scene setting, deep processing and practice, especially spaced practice, that leads to cognitive improvement.

6. Bandwagon

Mindfulness has all the hallmarks of a fad; not evidence-based (in terms of learning), promoted by celebrities and suddenly erupts as the ‘next big thing’. Believe me, mindfulness will have been long forgotten in a couple of years time, so let’s cut that short and dump it now, before we waste even more time on yet another fad.

7. Dangerous damage

Learning styles, L/R brain theory, whole word literacy, Brain Gym, playing Mozart while kids learn – I saw this stuff served up in real schools, driven by nothing more than the need for ‘fillers’ in ill-organised INSET days. Education does itself no favours by snatching at these crazes. It opens teachers and the educational system up to the sort of unnecessary mocking that their enemies adore.

20 reasons why Stanford Prof thinks video lectures self-evidently better

“The lecture video delivers me in a way the student has complete control over, making it self-evidently better.” Says Stanford’s Professor of Mathematics Keith Devlin. He’s a MOOC veteran, who delivers Stanford’s ‘Introduction to Mathematical Thinking’ on Coursera. We have to understand is why this is so. What makes a recorded lecture ‘self-evidently better’. 

This was confirmed by a friend of mine who went back to do a Masters Degree at the LSE and found that he's questioning going to lectures at all, as the recorded versions are better. He can take detailed notes, reflect more and generally watches most of them at x 1.25 speed. His argument is that recorded lectures are therefore better than live lectures. When I presented these and the following arguments at a technology in Higher Education conference back in the day, I had people walk out on me.... still one of my proudest moneys as a speaker, and at 28,000 views the YouTube version proved my point. Quite apart from the many pedagogic arguments about lectures full stop - one that they are too long (actually arbitrarily long, as they're only an hour because the Sumerians had a base-6 number system), and passive, there are plenty of other arguments for recorded lectures.

So what are the advantages of recorded lectures?

1. Available 24/7

2. Rewind if your attention drops

3. Rewind if you didn’t understand

4. Rewind if English is your second language

5. Pause if you want to look something up

6. Access to vast online resources on same device 

7. Pause to take good notes 

8. Fast forward (even 1.25 speed), if known or irrelevant 

9. Watch several times for increased retention

10. Watch when in right attentive state for learning

11. Watch if you have been ill

12. Watch for revision as exam approaches

13. Not wasting time travelling to and from lecture

14. Academic can focus on tutoring and feedback

15. Multiple uses in courses, MOOCs etc.

16. Data gathered on who, what, when watched

17. Can be subtitled for the deaf

18. Can be translated and subtitled

19. Can be delivered online at almost no cost

20. Can be viewed on many devices

Devlin’s refreshingly honest and revealing article on teaching online goes on to explain that there are deeper pedagogic advantages.

Better than regular classes

Devlin thinks that students “get a version of that close, one-on-one instruction that they absolutely do not get in a regular class of any size”. He notes that many students feel intimidated in speaking back to academics as they have “insufficient confidence” and thinks that “there is good reason to believe that human connection through social media may be enough to have whatever effect is provided by the real thing”. In truth, he thinks that requested feedback could be provided, where necessary, and, in fact “shy students can perform much better in an online environment”.

Closer connection

As Devlin explains, counter-intuitively, “The fact is, a student taking my MOOC can make a closer connection with me than if they were in a class of more than 25 or so students, and certainly more than in a class of 250.”  He reminds us of a fact often ignored in the debate, that “in a large class, the student is not going to get my individual attention, so there is no loss there in learning in a MOOC, so a MOOC seems to offer more of me than a student would get in a regular, large class”.

Intimacy

Interestingly, Devlin designed the course and the style of presentation around this sense of intimacy. “I set out to create that same sense of the student sitting alongside me, one-on-one. If you can pull it off, it’s powerful. In particular, if you can create that feeling of intimate human connection, the student will overlook a lot of imperfections and problems.”

Conclusion

Time and time again (not always) I have experienced, and heard from other MOOCers, about the intimacy of the academic teaching in MOOCs. I first came across it in the Thrun AI course and for me it is the hallmark of a good course. Devlin is a reflective teacher, who waited until he had gone through the experience of teaching a MOOC before making these observations. His full article can be found here.

MOOCs: Coursera moves towards massive revenues on certification

For all of those who say that MOOCs can’t be monetized, Coursera’s Signature Track is proving them wrong. After 700 years, Universities still struggle with monetization and funding models and most would agree that the current systems in the developed world are in a mess, of not broken. Here’s a system that not only matches demand with supply, but provides a way to match payment to product. Not only that, the cost for the course is free at the point of delivery, and because so many participate, it’s dirt cheap for assessment and certification.

Real revenues

Coursera took one year to hit $1 million on revenues from certification, 3 months to hit $2 million (Feb 14) and now report $4 million (Apr 14), that’s $2 million in the following two months. Impressive compound growth. This has been achieved through their Coursera certificate track, which, at $30-$100 per course, has seen an average 1.2% conversion rate double up to the current average of 2.4%, giving them $4 mlllion, driven by demand from employers. Note this last observation – ‘driven by employers’.

Employer demand

This week also saw some interesting research from Duke on the positive attitudes employers have towards MOOCs. This is important, as this is the sort of demand that seems to be fueling the unending interest in MOOCs. Despite what the nay-sayers say, people keep on taking them and keep on making them.

Coursera’s Signature Track

What makes Coursera’s Signature Track sing, is the cleverness of the software, not human assessment.

Biometric typing

When you register for Signature Track, you do some typing on your keyboard and it records your typing pattern, a sort of ‘fingersprint’. This is smart and it works.

Webcam photo

In addition, you take a picture of yourself on your webcam. Easy.

Photo of ID

You then take a webcam photo of your picture ID (driver's license, passport, national ID card, state or province ID card and international ID documents).These photos are securely stored and deleted once your identity is confirmed.  When you submit coursework you submit a matching typing sample and photograph to confirm your identity. This leads to a verified certificate. You’ve got to admit that this is getting places. In addition, you can also take a proctored exam, online or offline.

Shareable course records

On top of this, there’s Sharable Course Records, where you can share your electronic course records with employers, educational institutions, or anyone else through a unique, secure URL. Note that word ‘employers’ sneaking in.

Financial aid

There’s even some money available if you can show real need.

Sequenced MOOCs

Both Coursera and EdX also offer certification for sequences of MOOCs. This is interesting as it is a direct challenge to the traditional degree. Rather than wait for the system to accept them, they’re creating their own ecosystem of acceptance. Way to go.

Conclusion

MOOCs are proving to be a vast sandbox for real world experiments and research. The fact that they are ‘Massive’ helps, as they have the numbers. The fact that they are driven towards real world success, and not just the publication of paper research gives them the imperative to get things done. Right across the board, MOOCs are showing us some interesting new strategic models, such as ‘free at point of delivery’ and ‘openness’ as well as tactical advances, such as new ways to do video for learning, P2P review and online assessment.

But what is really interesting is the matching of learners with employers. Thrun may have been the first to spot the fact that MOOCs are not about HE but people who want real skills and personal development. Thrun and Norvig, were not academics, and understand what the real world needs in terms of highly skilled people. The fact that Coursera, Udacity and EdX have all been properly capitalised gives them a real advantage in terms of platform development, innovation and marketing. My fear is that Futurelearn didn’t learn that lesson and built what looks like a rather thin platform, while European efforts, like EMMA, seem structured to fail, with too many inexperienced partners in too many countries doing too many pilots.