Content Types - Level 5: Courseware

Level 5: Content and Courseware

NOTE: This is part 6 of 7 in a continuing series; please see earlier posts for more background information.

For most people, Level 5 content is analogous to the more traditional “online learning” or "WBT" courseware – more interactive and lengthy lesson-based or object-based learning. Until recently, this type of content, while easily accessible over the mobile web, was actually one of the most difficult types of learning to try and deploy out to a mobile device. Coupled with the myriad challenges of tiny displays, limited storage, media restrictions, cramped navigation, slow access and spotty security, mini mobile courseware attained second class status when compared to their elearning equivalents. Luckily, the explosion of the smartphone market – driven in part by the overwhelming popularity of next generation devices like the Apple iPhone®, RIM BlackBerry®, Google Android® or Windows Mobile® devices – has resulted in a viable and affordable platform that allows content developers, training departments and learning services companies to begin expanding beyond simple reference documents and page-turner modules into engaging, fully interactive courseware for mobile deployment.  The learning experience may feel “smaller” and more intimate, but the ability to package, deliver and track compelling content designed with effective pedagogical structure is truly coming of age when the proper tools, devices and methods are applied to mlearning.

Level 5 Content Types 

The CellCast Solution supports the delivery of content and courseware in both Microsoft PowerPoint® and simple as well as complex HTML formats. The ability to effectively produce and publish PowerPoint presentations -- including those with narration and animation -- out to supported mobile devices offers considerable benefits to organizations looking for a rapid content development option, and is particularly advantageous given the current volume of PowerPoint material used in both face-to-face and elearning training.  The CellCast Solution facilitates the use of animations, transitions and embedded audio in the presentations which, if used effectively, can deliver a highly engaging learning experience.  A typical Use Case for PowerPoint content might include:

The fastest growing market is data access/mobile web, with consumers being able to access the internet via their smartphone device.  As with elearning, HTML provides a platform to create content from the simplest of page-turners to a highly interactive learning experience. CellCast allows teams to create very polished, easy to read and navigate HTML modules which can include any manner of static or animated graphics, simple embedded rich media elements and all packaged via CSS-based style sheets for polished formatting.  Typical Use Cases include:

 

Additional Considerations

When using PowerPoint, the author/content publisher must remain cognizant of their mobile audience and should follow a structured design methodology when creating compelling yet mobile-friendly presentations. If a slide presentation is difficult to read on a standard computer monitor, it can certainly prove unreadable when viewed on a smaller mobile screen.  We highly recommend that care be taken when including any image, audio, or animation files within a mobile course given different devices handle rich media content in very different ways. Regardless of whether your mobile content is written in HTML, authored in Microsoft PowerPoint, or built in some other mobile authoring package (e.g., Hot Lava Mobile® from OutStart or ToolBook from SumTotal), great care must be taken to optimize all content to reduce file size, thus reducing the time and expense needed to deploy these modules. 

Summary – Level 5

The level of time and effort generally increases when planning, designing and creating Level 5 mlearning content and often requires the administrator to have (or learn) new content creation skills and perhaps purchase and learn new tools/applications.  The CellCast Server includes functionality for building mobile content using a standard web browser and popular desktop applications like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.  Available third party tools can also streamline the mobile content creation process.  Training time for SMEs and administrators varies depending upon their experience and how comfortable they are learning new applications for the web, but averages 2 to 3 days.   As with Level 4 content outlined in the previous post, the coordination and delivery for all Level 5 assignments requires additional setup time, widget customization, platform integration and other data-related (e.g., access, encryption, security) services.

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Content Types - Level 4: Reference

Level 4: Reference Materials & Static Content

NOTE: This is part 5 of 7 in a continuing series; please see earlier posts for more background information.

Level 4 formats include content typically considered “reference” or supplemental material; it is not specifically learning-oriented, though it often accompanies ILT events or online learning courseware.  Reference material is also used to support traditional performance support – allowing a user to identify the appropriate action for a particular set of conditions.  Reference and performance-related material can empower an employee to perform tasks with a minimum amount of external intervention or training, and when deployed via a mobile device, in “drip-feed” format, has the potential to significantly increase information retention. 

[NOTE: All Level 4 through Level 6 mlearning content types require additional integration and infrastructure to handle the various forms of digital content being managed; review the Advanced CellCast Network Diagram for more information.]
 
Level 4 Content Types
 
The CellCast Solution supports the delivery of reference material in a variety of formats, including PDF, Text, and HTML.  Typical reference material may already exist in this mode, and therefore the CellCast Solution provides a perfect platform to repurpose that material in a mobile format.  Given the mode of delivery and the requirement to use PDF readers, web browsers and text readers, Level 4 content is more suited to a smartphone/netbook than a basic mobile handset. Typical Use Cases include:

Additional Considerations
 
Level 4 content types represent a cost effective means of distributing mlearning content, as the form factor is more simple (typically a one page document or search-based delivery) and the effort required to create and deploy the content to a mobile device is minimal. This is an ideal format for organizations creating large volumes of content for their employees to access remotely.
 
In addition to the cost benefits, the low file sizes can reduce the costs to access and download content files, maintain system performance efficiencies, and ensure a positive user experience.
 
Summary – Level 4
 
All Level 4 (and above) mlearning content requires a smartphone device or netbook computer and this fact alone adds costs for most organizations, although an accelerated ROI for these existing smartphone and netbook device purchases can easily be realized by doing more with these devices than just accessing email!  Much of the Level 4 content is actually easy to prepare (or convert) from existing source materials (e.g., text files, PDF documents, images) and doesn’t require much time or effort.  Administrator training to learn to prepare and convert these materials averages 4 to 8 hours.  Coordination and delivery for all Level 4 (and above) assignments requires additional setup time, widget customization, platform integration and other data-related (e.g., access, encryption, security) services.

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Content Types - Level 3: Voice

Level 3: Voice-based Content and Assessments

NOTE: This is part 4 of 7 in a continuing series; please see earlier posts for more background information.

Level 3 extends the mobile learning experience by providing users with anytime/anywhere access to audio-based content without needing a smartphone device or standard MP3/iPod-style media player. This makes it possible to deliver just-in-time information, training materials, data collection tools and performance support mechanisms to mobile workers using the tool virtually everyone already has in their pocket or purse – a voice-enabled mobile phone.

Any mobile worker equipped with a cellphone (or even fixed-line telephone) can receive scheduled (“pushed”) audio content from the CellCast Server (their phone rings and they answer the call to hear their most current assignment), or they can initiate a call from their cellphone (“pulled”) to access audio learning assignments and training updates whenever they have time to learn (by placing a call to the CellCast Server directly or through an embedded link found in an email or SMS message). To help measure understanding and knowledge retention, voice-based CellCasts Sessions can include spoken word assessments (e.g., tests, quizzes, surveys), allowing managers and administrators to determine who is merely listening and who is actually learning.
 
The CellCast Solution platform contains a highly unique set of audio content creation and deployment features not found in any other enterprise learning platform that bridge the previously separate cellular voice network with the Internet data network. This allows organizations to extend the reach of training content typically only accessible via a network-connected computer or data-enabled smartphone to anyone with a phone capable of making and/or receiving a voice call.  As shown in Exhibit 1 on the next page, administrators create content from a variety of audio formats including voice recordings, music files and podcasts and then upload them to a secure, hosted CellCast Server where they are packaged and deployed to mobile learners.
 
Level 3 Content Types
 
The content options available at Level 3 span from spoken word content to episodic training modules and just-in-time updates, and even include community-generated content created by mobile workers and managers.  Level 3 content is also generally fast, easy and economical to produce and deploy, requiring fewer resources without sacrificing impact or quality. 

Typical Use Cases for voice-based mLearning content include:
 

Network Architecture for Voice-based Content


Content creation and access over voice networks, both wired and wireless, is actually quite easy.  In fact, as the Use Cases above suggest, this form of content delivery is as simple as someone making or taking a phone call from a colleague or friend.  On the other hand, the technical complexities of packaging and delivering that content is a little more involved and requires a seamlessly integrated end-to-end architecture.  OnPoint has spent more than 4 years creating and refining a highly specialized digital voice server that handles all in-coming and out-going voice calls and accepts these connections from either the mobile or standard voice networks (view Network Architecture Diagram). 

Separate connection points to the global SMS/messaging network as well as integration into an organization's private VOIP voice networks have also been provisioned to allow fast and easy access to all mobile workers across an enterprise.  Finally, specialized accounting and billing services ensuring accurate attribution and collection for all related transational services. 


Additional Considerations
 
All voice-based CellCasts require the provisioning of digital (or analog) voice phone circuits used to connect the in-bound caller or outbound server to the mobile learner.  The costs for configuring and deploying these phone lines can vary greatly depending on the location (country) and carrier(s) used by an organization.
 
Summary – Level 3
 
Because all Level 3 mlearning content is audio-based, extra media production time and effort are required by the administrator and additional tools/applications may need to be purchased and learned before high quality content can be generated.  Administrator training time to a level of proficiency is typically 1 to 2 days (depending on experience).  Content delivery also requires additional setup time, platform integration and other digital services including dedicated voice circuits to connect callers with the CellCast Server.  The incremental costs for these additional services as well as applicable transactional fees (billed by the connected minute) are directly proportional to the number of CellCast calls deployed that are accessed and connected.

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Content Types - Level 2: SMS Campaigns

Level 2: Interactive Messaging

NOTE: This is part 3 of 7 in a continuing series; please see earlier posts for more background information.

Level 2 mLearning content broadens the core messaging capabilities found at Level 1 and enables two-way messaging campaigns to support additional mobile use cases such as mobile testing and surveys, basic data collection and even mobile entertainment. 

Standard Level 2 Content Types and Methods

The most common use case for interactive messaging functionality in mlearning is the delivery of mobile surveys and tests via SMS.  A two-way campaign can either be launched via a direct call-to-action message (email or SMS) delivered directly to each registered mobile learner, or initiated by any mobile learner sending a predefined keyword to a server using a Common Short Code or Long Code (country and carrier-dependent); think of a Short Code or Long Code as a specialized and approved phone number that’s used as the delivery address for these messages. In either case, once the CellCast Server receives a texted keyword from a registered user account – specifically the user’s phone number as embedded in their SMS message – the interactive message campaign is automatically launched and sends the first question in the series to the recipient.  The server then awaits transmission of an expected response from that user which is recorded into the CellCast database when received, and then triggers the delivery of the next question in the series. This process continues until all defined questions have been delivered and responded to.  The supported question types for two-way interactive messaging campaigns include True/False, Choice/Single Answer, Likert/Scale, Numeric Response and Short Answer/Essay.

To clarify how the process works, consider the following interactive messaging Use Case:

Additional Considerations

All two-way messaging campaigns require a carrier-approved Long Code or Common Short Code ("CSC") as a fixed/known “address” to send and receive text messages. CSC's can be "rented" from various providers for a fee (transactional use or fixed price) and organizations can lease the own private CSC in the United States for a fee of US$500 to $1,000 per month.  Outside the US, different countries/carriers may provide support for either Long Codes or Common Short Codes depending on regulatory requirements. Long Codes tend to be much cheaper and far easier to attain than Common Short Codes. 

Once you’ve obtained access to the appropriate Code, every message managed as part of a two-way interaction is fee-based whether it is regarded as Mobile Terminated/MT (server sent to mobile) or Mobile Originated/MO (mobile sent back to server).  Associated transactional costs range in price from US$0.025 to US$0.05 depending on the country and the carrier.

Summary – Level 2

Two-way text messages are relatively easy to define, generate, deliver and track, although the administrator needs additional training (4-6 hours) and systems knowledge to learn how to design, assign and track messaging campaigns and assessments.  The marginal costs to send these messages are also a bit higher due to the fact that all Level 2 interactions use fee-based SMS messages and each question asked and answered requires two physical messages to be generated and handled inbound and outbound.

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Content Types - Level 1: Messages

Level 1: Alerts and Notifications

NOTE: This is part 2 of 7 in a continuing series; please see earlier posts for more background information.

The simplest form of mlearning content delivery is via one-way/inbound electronic message and there are two popular options available: short message service (also known as “SMS” or “text messages”) and electronic mail (“email”).  The majority of all cellphones support SMS, provided the user has a ‘texting plan” from their carrier. Up to 140-character “texts” sent via this method are actually considered “high value” content by the recipient and are normally read/responded to faster than any other form of mobile communiqué.  Smartphones with “data plans” also have the ability to send and receive email messages; in fact, mobile email access is the primary business driver and ROI justification for most organizations seeking to provide smartphones to their mobile workforce and executives.

Level 1 Content Types

All the options here are simple yet powerful. The CellCast Solution platform provides the ability to generate and send timely market updates (“Acme’s new Olympus Product will be available for customer delivery on April1st.”) and friendly reminders (“Don’t forget to attend Sales Training Webinar for the new Olympus Product Tues at 2PM.”) directly to mobile learners via their ever-present mobile devices is an obvious use of this functionality by a Training Team but a plethora of other uses are possible as follows:

Triggered Notifications and Reminders

Administrators can define and manage sophisticated notification templates that automatically generate and send personalized SMS or email messages based on pre-defined business rules and conditions.  For instance, an SMS can be sent to a mobile learner asking them to confirm their understanding of a current policy or procedure, or reminding them to complete an important assignment (see Figures 1-2 below).  If that user’s status is still marked as “not attempted” or “incomplete” the next day, triggered reminders can be automatically generated and sent to the learner until that specific assignment has been marked as “completed”.

Organizational Results and Escalations

An additional benefit of a Trigger-based Notification platform is the ability for the system to generate and send out important status updates to managers, supervisors and other affiliated parties based on predefined business rules.  For example, if a manager has twenty direct reports who all need to complete their annual Safety Compliance certifications by the end of the current calendar month, they can likely benefit from an email message outlining which of their subordinates has yet to complete their mandatory training (see Figures 3-4 below).

Scheduled Learning Content (2 Types)

Training teams can plan, schedule and deliver message-based content to mobile learners using the Notification Series feature of the CellCast Solution platform.  The two most common uses for this feature are learning reinforcement and serialized content delivery.

Type 1: Learning Reinforcement. According to industry professionals, most people forget as much as 80% of the new concepts/policies they learned while attending an instructor-led training session or completing an online course within 30 days of completing that training.  To help keep new concepts fresh and top-of-mind, Training teams can define and manage message-based reinforcements sent out at predetermined time intervals, say every Friday at 2 PM, to a salesperson’s email account or mobile device (see Figures 5-6 below).

Type 2: Serialized Content Delivery. CellCast’s Notification Series feature can be used to package and deliver regularly scheduled message-based learning content as part of a serialized training campaign. Common examples are “Sales Tip of the Day,” “New Product of the Week,” and “English Phrase of the Day” campaigns. In each case, subscribers can opt-in to receive relevant content on their mobile device and messages can be either plain text or can include web links to launch other media-based content as desired (see Figures 7-9).

Additional Considerations

Most Level 1 Alerts and Notification use cases are either very low cost or free. The Notifications feature of the CellCast Solution platform is a standard function.  However, when sending SMS messages, a nominal transaction fee of US$0.03-.05 is assessed for each message generated/delivered due to the fact all SMS messages must be sent directly through the carrier or an approved SMS aggregator. There are no transaction fees to send electronic mail messages to any CellCast user, and these messages can contain either plain text or rich media elements as defined by the Training team.

Summary – Level 1

One-way text messages and emails are easy to design, generate and send, requiring minor preparation and less than 30 minutes training for the average administrator.  The marginal costs to send these messages are also low–emails are free, and text message delivery carries a nominal transactional fee for each SMS sent both to the originator and the recipient.

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mLearning Content Types - Overview & Intro

To assist regular readers of this site in better understanding what's possible in the mobile learning space, the next seven posts will all be part of a series exploring the various mLearning content types and delivery methods we are seeing in the enterprise space. We hope these posts prove informative as well as instructional and we plan to include illustrative examples to better "tell the story" of what's possible and practical. We'll begin today with the first two posts including an series introduction followed by a exploration of simple message-based content.

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mLearning Content Types & Delivery Modalities- Series Intro

There are three classes of mobile devices – basic cell phones, advanced smartphones, and ultra-portable netbook computers – and these devices vary greatly in the type of content they can receive and display. To better understand the array of content that can be authored and delivered to these three classes of devices, the Mobile Learning Content Delivery Model (Table 1 below) outlines six unique types of mobile-friendly content typically deployed to mobile learners, spanning simple message-based notifications and alerts accessible by anyone at Level 1, to highly engaging on-device or streaming media services only accessible via smartphones and netbooks at Level 6.

As shown in Table 1 below, mlearning content at Levels 1 - 3 works with any mobile phone (basic or smartphone) while mlearning content from Levels 4 - 6 requires a smartphone or netbook device and wired/wireless data service. There are also stark differences in the time, effort and expense required to create and deliver mlearning content at each of these levels (with some interesting surprises too).

Obviously, if your environment has 100% smartphones and/or netbooks, you can feel confident that all content types discussed herein can be supported. However, if your audience includes a mix of device types including basic cellphones, you’ll need to consider what type of content you will be able to deliver for each class of device to be supported. There is no “one size fits all” solution in the mobile content arena.

In the next post, we’ll take a more in-depth look at the six levels to better understand how each contributes to a well-conceived overall mobile delivery strategy.

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mLearning Testing Tools & Methods

As active practitioners and consultants for enterprise mobile learning initiatives, a frequent question we get asked is “What kinds of tools can you recommend to help us test our mLearning content before we release it to our mobile workers?”  It is a great high level question and the answer is both complicated and multifaceted as each deployment environment comes with its own unique requirements that inject their own set of delivery complexities.  If you’re fortunate enough to have a highly structured and standardized delivery environment where everyone has the same BlackBerry Bold/9000 wireless handheld or your users have two or three different brands of Windows Mobile devices, your testing efforts can prove to be straight forward.  But the bigger your audience is, the greater your challenge can become.  And this may mean that full and comprehensive testing can take you as long as the content authoring effort itself – at least for simple content!

Building & Testing for a Broad Audience

Depending on the “device diversity” of your environment, you may need to create mLearning content for a wide audience who carry an even broader range of mobile devices ranging from basic feature phones to a selection of today’s hottest smartphone devices; in order to do so, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty too.  More to the point, you’ll need to test and verify the functionality, effectiveness and overall user experience of mobile learning content by trying it yourself on real devices under real world conditions whenever possible.  And if you want to ensure the best possible experience for every class of mobile learner, you’ll need to build a collection of working mobile devices, simulators/emulators and testing tools to span the potential reach of your target audience.  Leave “no stone unturned” by testing the full end-to-end experience from distribution/delivery to installation/loading to access/playback to reporting/analysis.  We commonly see teams making assumptions that because something worked fine on one device – even one from the same device OEM – it should work on others and that’s not always the case.  These variations are often the result of myriad factors like different processor speeds, available device memory, device OS versions, encryption settings, etc.

From our experience, there’s no 100% substitute for actually using a physical, operational handset to perform all your testing but this method may not be practical and/or affordable for some teams/content developers.  On the good news front, the longer you’ve been in the mobile learning field, the more likely you are to have an expanding office drawer full of recently retired but still functional mobile devices; all they generally lack is a SIM card module to activate them on a particular carrier network and anyone with a little skill and patience can quickly get comfortable “swapping cards” from one device to another to perform their structured testing protocol (it’s always a good idea to develop one) for any new mobile learning course they plan to deploy. 

Those teams that don’t have full device drawers or enough representative physical devices can also try using available device simulators and emulators  which can generally be downloaded (for free!) from the device manufacturer’s support site or other common web locations.  The price is right but, remember, the experience will not the exactly the same as the real thing especially where possible concerns about access security, content encryption and download speeds are concerned given simulated phones attached to broadband Internet connections are not a perfect equivalent.  After many years of using available simulators and emulators, we’re now comfortable and quite familiar with where they work and where they don’t too; they can certainly be used for most of your initial testing and content verification exercises.  Finally, the best simulators/emulators are from the device OEMs themselves including RIM/BlackBerry, Google/Android, Nokia/Symbian and Microsoft/WinMo.  If your team is developing native Apple iPhone and iPod touch applications, a fully functional simulator can also be accessed using Apple’s Xcode IDE too.  Don’t forget your testing environment may also need to be expanded to include appropriate devices for testing 1-way and 2-way SMS messaging across multiple carriers as well as voice/IVR-delivered services on entry level phones.   Finally, it may also be practical to have a few other non-phone mobile devices on hand like a Netbook computer or an Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer (“UMPC”) to test content delivery to alternative mobile devices wherever appropriate.

The image below is of my office desk and it presents several of the devices and tools we keep on-hand to ensure that all mobile content prepared for wide distribution works as intended across the broadest array of smartphones (old and new), basic feature phones, netbook computers, specialized ultra-mobile personal computers (“UMPCs”) and even spanning carriers and wireless delivery methods (GSM vs. CDMA).   This picture demonstrates how we use a combination of both virtual and physical devices and we’ve certainly learned from experience that there are minor yet myriad differences between a real and simulated playback experience – in short, the only 100% verification test must be performed under the same target delivery conditions using a physical device across an actual wireless network. 

So, what’s in your drawer? My physical mobile devices and virtual tools for testing include:

a. Windows-based RIM BlackBerry Simulators (for all devices & carrier-specific) – we have about 10 of these we use regularly.
b. Mac-based Apple Xcode-based Simulator (for all iPhone & iPod touch device for testing apps)
c. Android G1 and G2 Emulators (for all 1.x, 2.x devices)
d. Windows Mobile Emulator (for WinMo 5, 6 and 7 using VMware Windows partition)
e. Nokia Symbian/S60 Sims (using VMware Windows partition)
f. Windows -based Netbook (for Netbook applet testing); we also have an Android Netbook
g. Sony basic feature phone (for voice and SMS testing on T-Mobile)
h. RIM BlackBerry 9000 smartphone (media support and encryption on ATT)
i. RIM BlackBerry 8703 smartphone (limited media support)
j. Vulcan Flipstart Windows-based UMPC device (1024 x 768 display)
k. RIM BlackBerry Storm2 (full media support and encryption on Verizon)
l. Nokia 5800 smartphone (Symbian 60/v5 testing on ATT)
m. Android G1 smartphone (on T-Mobile)
n. Jitterbug basic feature phone (voice/IVR and SMS testing on MNVO)
o. OQO Windows-based UMPC device (800 x 480 display)
p. Apple iPhone 3G (on ATT)
q. RIM BlackBerry 8310 Curve (no Wi-Fi, no encryption on ATT)
r. RIM BlackBerry 8330 Curve (with Wi-Fi, unlocked for GSM carriers)
s. RIM BlackBerry 7210 phone (very limited media support)
t. RIM BlackBerry 8800 World smartphone (on ATT) 

Next time I’ll explore some of the fee-based mobile testing solutions and alternative platforms you can consider instead of investing in all the physical devices and long-term carrier contracts required to replicate our current methods.

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