Danielle Beck IT 6750 Futures Reflection Paper

Introduction Currently I am working as the Supervisor of Training and Quality Assurance in a call center for a local mutual fund company. My training team handles all training for current, new and temporary phone representatives. The purpose of my futures reflection paper is to put in writing what I want to see from my career. I want to shift my career from call center training to more of a professional development role in a corporate setting. My goal is to be involved in the designing, developing and implementation of career enhancing training and development using both my facilitation skills, but also new technology. I am particularly interested in mobile learning. The possibility of using a handheld device to deliver quality training to employees in the field fascinates me and I am taking this opportunity to preview my future position.

Futures Reflection

It’s another Monday and I haven’t even left the house yet, but I have already checked my email and calendar via my iPhone. Looks like a busy day. I’m in meetings for the first half of the day, but the afternoon is devoted to working on my current project – rolling out the latest field training for the sales division via our mobile learning platform. I work with a small group (five or six folks) in a professional development department of a major financial institute. I started a few years ago (back in 2008) and it’s been an amazing learning experience. I primarily facilitate training, but lately the tech person has been utilizing my skills

and knowledge of our products to roll out training updates via mobile devices to our salesforce. Since, I have been lending my skills on the products; he has been teaching me all about mobile learning or m-learning.

Some folks are still getting use to receiving their training right from their iPhone, but they are coming around. I get a lot of questions about m-learning in my classes. I like the definition from Clark Quinn a professor and expert in computer based education. He defines “mobile learning as the intersection of mobile computing (the application of small, portable, and wireless computing and communication devices) and e-learning (learning facilitated and supported through the use of information and communication technology).” (Corbeil and Valdes-Corbeil, 2007) Or a simplified definition from Wikipedia is, “Learning that happens across locations, or that takes advantage of learning opportunities offered by portable technologies.” (n.d.) At my work we use the iPhone. Apple has always been on the forefront of new technology and they also provide tech support when needed with our applications.

It wasn’t until recently that we rolled out our first m-learning training session. After the stock market crash of 2008 all IT requests were put on hold for almost a whole year, but the purse strings opened up late in 2009 and we went full-force ahead with a new mobile learning platform to reach our ever expanding salesforce. It took almost a whole additional year to get that first training out. We had to cover all of our bases: infrastructure, our current LMS, legal and compliance issues and finally finding an appropriate vendor. “A major decision in developing your mobile strategy is determining which mobile platforms you will connect with, since this will have a tremendous effect on your development and testing process, timeliness, and cost.” (Vanthournout and Koch, 2008) All of this was taken into consideration. It pretty much occupied our tech person for over a year before the rest of the professional development team got involved, including myself. But before I could get involved in the technology side, I had to learn a little about what makes m-learning possible.

With the advent of 3G (third generation) technology (and moving on to 4G) in late 2008 the web moved into the next stage from web 2.0 to web 3.0 or as Dave Flomberg, Managing Editor/Operations Manager for Examiner.com noted, “3G is aptly named because web 3.0 is the move to mobile.” (D. Flomberg, personal communication, October 30, 2008) Years ago old cell phone technology was good for sending voice and data. However, soon after users wanted their cell phones to do more, to be more. 3G finally allowed users to basically have a computer in the palm of their hand. One way to think of 3G, and the way it was explained to me, is like a T1 cable line. It’s a huge invisible DSL connection within your hand held device – connections are secure, so secure web pages can be accessed without any worry. (T. Toth, personal communication, October 30, 2008) It was expensive at first and most users had pretty spotting coverage when using 3G technology, but within a couple of years 3G devices were as common as iPods.

The great thing about 3G is that, as I noted above, web pages can be accessed securely. Our group started working with the sales team a couple of years ago to establish a group wiki where sales people could log into (with a secure connection) and view any new updates that they might need to notify clients about. At first most of them only accessed the wiki using their laptops, but soon after the iPhones were handed out some of the more tech savvy sales people started accessing the site with their iPhone. Later, we even got a few of them to start adding to the wiki with important insights they uncovered on the road that could help their peers. It was a proud day the first time I got the RSS feed that included a post from a salesperson and not one of the professional development team or marketing group.

Now that the salesforce is comfortable with their iPhone and receiving and downloading from it, we rolled out an actual interactive m-learning training session. The first session was a compliance piece about anti-money laundering.

We already had the course designed for e-learning and with the help of our tech person and the vendor we were able to convert it for delivery through m-learning. The great thing about the m-learning is that you can chunk up the content into small manageable pieces that usually take less than 10 minutes to complete. As Dr. Jonathon Stewart of Abilene Christian University (2008) noted about his introduction level finance course, “Listening to a 10- to 15- minute discussion of ‘risk and return issues’ could seem like a prison sentence if presented in a tradition lecture format.” By using m-learning we are able to make that “prison sentence” fly by.

The learner experience is almost identical to that of the e-learning desktop delivered version of the training. We’ve gotten really great feedback about how easy it was to use, how nice it was that you could take each section of the training in a small chunk and return to where you left off without having to download anything. “Mobility allows teaching and learning to extend beyond the traditional classroom; in the case of distance learning, users of portable devices can break the tether of the home computer. Within the classroom, portable computing/communication devices give instructors and students increased flexibility and provide new opportunities for interaction.” (Corbeil and ValdesCorbeil, 2007) Besides being true for education, this statement rings true for our business as well.

So true in fact that just yesterday our IT department finished an upgrade to our m-learning platform that will now allow video conferencing capability. “Imagine being a sales rep, getting ready to go into a meeting. You leave your hotel, and BAM, marketing sends a learning program to your iPhone on the new product. In the cab on the way over, you watch the video training (about 5 minutes) and then have questions for marketing. You click a button on your iPhone . . . you start a video chat with the marketing person. You get to the meeting and plug in your iPhone to a projector, turning video chat on and then displaying a live demo, with a live talking person on video chat, there in the client office.” (T. Toth, personal

communication, October 30, 2008) We no longer have to “imagine” -- now its reality.

Conclusion

Although this is not reality yet, the technology is there and getting better everyday. “It will feature new strategies, practices, tools, applications, and resources to realize the promise of ubiquitous, pervasive, personal, and connected learning.” (Wagner, 2005) This is the future of m-learning. I truly believe that m-learning will be an “increasingly important part of the overall training strategy” for most corporations over the next few years. (Vanthournout and Koch, 2008)

This exercise made me really think about where I am today and where I want to go with my career. What I envision my workday and the types of projects I might be working on as well. I realize that there is a real need (and desire) for mlearning and understanding the technology behind what will make m-learning even more pervasive is a must. My goal is always to provide the most effective and efficient training possible. M-learning will make this goal even more attainable in the future.

References 1. Abilene Christian University. (2008). “Envisioning the 21st-Century University.” 2. Corbeil, Joseph Rene, & Valedes-Corbeil, Maria Elena (2007). Are you ready for mobile learning, EDUCAUSE Quarterly (Number 2), pg. 51-58. 3. Koch, Dana Alan, & Vanthournout, Don (September 2008). Training at your fingertips, Training & Development, pg. 52-57. 4. M-learning. (n.d.) Wikipedia. Retrieved October 16, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-learning. 5. Wagner, Ellen D. (May/June 2005). Enabling mobile learning, EDUCAUSE, pg. 41-52.