How to fix mobile learning? Why m-learning doesn’t work?

We’re seeing growth at an alarming rate in terms of mobility, whether in e-commerce, gaming, or engineering projects. Unfortunately, we do not really observe such growth in the educational layer. What could be the reason?

Today’s world is relatively different from the one we saw a few years ago. Probably everyone reading this has already been bombarded with the results of the digital transformation of the structures of companies and societies in the wake of the pandemic, although some estimate that it has accelerated progress, by up to 7 years ahead!

We can reach a little further. According to the CSO, in 2016, 80.1 percent. households had at least one computer at home. Three years later, this indicator has increased by 3 points. proc. But what is this equipment without the Internet? At the same time, the number of households with Internet access increased by 6.3 points. proc. to 86.7 percent. in 2019. In entrepreneurs, growth in this area has not been without its challenges either, although they were already providing the conditions for the work.

These numbers are not as spectacular as the seven-year surplus in making up for the technological debt, but they do show an upward trend in social computing. The data on smartphones is already different. In 2014, one in four Poles had it, in 2017 it was already 60 percent, and in 2018 only 7 percent. people had no phone at all, but the rate of those owning a device with the prefix “smart” increased by another 3 pct. proc. y/y. Equipping employees with mobile devices while between 2018., and 2019. grew by another 8.5 points overall. percent.

Of course, we can demonstrate the laborious process of arriving at the need for digitization, but there is no denying that behind the acceleration of this transformation is largely an unsympathetic microbe, or rather a series of political decisions caused by its appearance in our European backyard. So progress was visible before, if only in rearming with the right equipment, but in terms of innovation and moving online, the real breakthroughs came de facto in the last two years. From the PwC report “Strategies that win. E-commerce Leaders on the Development of Digital Commerce” we will learn that in just one year online product sales increased by 35 percent. Banker.pl cites a number of reports confirming this fact, such as data from the National Court Register, according to which in the first quarter of 2021. The number of online stores increased by 2,000, and just for the sake of curiosity, the most popular online purchase was, incidentally, – shoes!

But development is not just about e-commerce

Fintech, NFT, metaverse, mobile applications and b2b services market. There’s a lot going on here, too. Especially in business terms B2b apps are the future of almost every market according to Rafal Orawski – Advanced software is key to achieving a competitive advantage. Allows to integrate a number of business areas of the company, automates and accelerates many operations. In a word – it is the engine of business, providing data and tools necessary to operate in the digital economy – explains – After the first wave of digital transformation, comes the next. On this second wave are companies that replace or develop a system implemented several or even more than a dozen years ago. – adds BPSC President. (Business.straight to.pl). Tomasz Woźniak is also of a similar opinion. –We also see a growing trend associated with the demand for applications within the organization, that is, those that solve the problems of feed management, onboarding employees, communication as a substitute for intranet, which is transferred to the mobile application, etc. etc. – notes the CEO of Future Mind.

So we see changes concerning not only digital, but above all social transformation – in the approach to managing companies, work methodologies, a different approach to the distribution of goods and services or the use of devices in everyday life. The flourishing of many industry verticals should be seen wherever the prefix “e” is seated, but this has not been the case everywhere.

Where is m-learning in all this?

Some rightly point out that mobile is iterating into newer and deeper corners, resulting in new solutions, improving on previous ones, or discovering uses for newly created wearables and headsets. What is interesting here is the lack of clear successes of mobile learning platforms in the face of developments in a number of other areas. The 11th edition of Mobile Trends Conference is already behind us. The first of the speakers was Dr. Krzysztof Wojewodzic, who firmly holds the reins on board Escola S.A. – We are known for creating a lot of educational mobile applications. Several dozen universities use our solutions. Of course, we’ve had lots of requests to create a specialized e-learning service […] It turned out that it’s impossible – says perversely the president of Escola.

Krzysztof Wojewodzic – CEO in Escola S.A.

Using DuoLingo as an example, the expert explains that individual products have indeed been successful in the m-learning consumer space, but there is a lack of a standardized tool in the market that can systematize this sector and spur it to further development.

SCORM

And a tease! Such a standard obviously exists. As the e-learning source explains.pl Sharable Content Object Reference Model is a standard for writing data embedded in e-learning platforms. The first training in this format was created 25 years ago to enable communication between content and LMS. This was a result of the confusion that military e-learning had to go through for many years due to the situation of lack of standardization of the formats of the released training courses, as a result of which not everyone could use them equally. Escola owners note that the standard is not changing much and drags a huge, but not yet noticeable learning debt, the cost of which we will bear even in the future.

I want my coffees!

SCORM, while it exists, can be a real nightmare for course developers. All it takes is a mistake or a factual update for the whole course to have to be uploaded from scratch – The scorm standard is comparable to the DVD standard. In fact, what scorm does is it makes these screens encoded and output in a certain way. However, in order to change anything in this standard – if, for example, you make a typo or paste a bad photo, you have to render the entire training from scratch – explains dr Wojewodzic. – The new standards only allow you to say where a person has completed training – he adds bewildered. Why the frustration, you ask. Well, Krzysztof showing how it looks like in practice, unveiled a sample course, where the effects of our work were rewarded with a coffee for a slightly sluggish, yet charming owl.

Every progress we made woke up the owl a bit, which allowed us to engage in the process. If, for some reason, we need to refresh the page, the connection breaks, or something happens to our device, the latest version of scorm will allow us to return to the last element of the course, but our owl will be sleeping at night. Coffee level will remain at the same level as our gamification desire to complete the course, at zero. – I want my coffee back! – screams the CEO of Escola.

This problem may particularly affect large corporations that operate internationally and organize training in many languages, because now changing one piece of information can cost them considerable money. The training will have to be improved by creating a new one and rendering it, and the learners’ progress to date will be annihilated., which is demotivating and puts your budget at risk.

What IT consists of?

IT has layers. But not as many as onions or ogres. The first is the client layer, i.e. the device on which consumers operate. – The customer layer is at least mobile, smart TV, VR goggles – explains the expert. This level correlates with the layer of logical processing in relation to what I find in the database.

This gives us a hermetic triquetra, in which clients, servers and databases are inseparable. This is how all streaming, social media, e-commerce and apps are built. – Let’s say you display a file [movie] on Netflix and the database is responsible for displaying this context, whether the person is logged in, whether they have permissions, whether they paid for the subscription, and the logic layer is responsible for checking whether the person can actually watch this particular movie. If so, let’s note that he can play it for himself on ipad, on phone, on smartTV – says a lecturer at Kozminski University.

Headless Wellms – new in edtech

Wellms is a tool that allows you to create dedicated training platforms. It is a simple and intuitive program that can be expanded depending on the needs of the organization. The creators argue that it can meet even the most specific training needs.

You can use it to set up content repositories with far-reaching administrative interfaces, which better supports the development and management of the content itself across multiple platforms. This technology does not limit the choice of frontend and frameworks, which is in opposition to the current LMS structures. – Headless LMS is based on API as the main component, and all other components communicate through this interface. – read on the wellms website.io. The tool also allows you to implement multiple fronts on a single backend, which can be an interesting visual enhancement, but most importantly a usability enhancement for the course creation technology.

Will the Wellms standard ever become equal to Scorm?

The content layer may remain unchanged for years, which does not favour novelties in companies that already have their own tools with ready-made content. However, given the increasingly rapid development of technology, it is inevitable. Surely, eventually Wellms and similar solutions will gain a crowd of supporters and get into circulation, especially as better iterations of the internet and changing learning come down the road.