How Widespread is Mobile Learning?

The other day at a presentation, a participant asked me how many companies have adopted mobile learning…was it widespread and if they where behind because they didn’t have a full blown mobile learning roll out yet?

The answer is that mobile learning is just now starting to get a foothold but it is not widespread by any means.

In fact, two separate surveys indicate that m-learning is just now starting to become of interest to organizations. Although there are a number of contributing factors to m­learning only recently becoming of interest to organizations, the three biggest seem to be the recent proliferation of multi-functional “smart phones” with multimedia and broadband capabilities, the increasing availability of Wi-Fi connectivity, and the increase in screen size on many of the mobile devices.

Two external reports point to only a few organizations actually implementing m-learning.

One is by the Masie Group and that study revealed that only 3%, or six of the 204 organizations surveyed were deploying mobile learning widely throughout the organization (although 21% did indicate that they have implemented it in some areas of their organization.)

Another study by the eLearning Guild of survey of 940 of its members indicated that only 9% or 84 organizations had actually implemented m-learning.

Of the 9% who had implemented m-learning, 65% use it for less than 10% of their learning initiatives. These organizations are not developing content specifically for mobile devices; 70% of them indicated they create 10% or less of their learning content specifically for mobile devices.

Additionally:

The Masie Study revealed that 38% of its 204 member organizations indicated that they were not planning any Mobile Learning initiatives.

The eLearning Guild found 33% of its members had no plans to implement m­learning.

So now is the time to implement to seize a competitive advantage but the road will not be easy since there are not a huge number of case studies or examples to guide the way.

Here are a couple of books that could help:

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Posted in: mobile learning

Leave a Comment (4) ↓

4 Comments

  1. Anonymous May 22, 2009

    Nice blog~
    http://www.daai007.org

  2. Karl Kapp November 19, 2008

    Eric,
    Thanks for the information. Is the learning over a smart phone? And do you have any idea if it is learning focused or more performance support?

    Thanks for the post,
    Karl

  3. Jason Ramos November 6, 2008

    I was reading in Oct. edition of PC magazine. They were talking about the smartphone as the future of the mobile web.

    With the 3G networks which allow high speed internet access it is only a matter of time that the two connect.

    There are many times I see people now fact checking via the iPhone. I think that if you can listen to online radio you can do some interesting training pieces.

  4. Eric Wilbanks November 3, 2008

    The only company I have personally encountered that is doing m-learning is Nielson (the ratings folks). My brother-in-law works for Nielson and it seems they are making extensive use of m-learning. He likes having the instant, easy access.

Karl Kapp
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