As my fundamental belief is that more and more training will be delivered via mobile and tablet based devices, this news truly signals the beginning of the end of Adobe Flash usage for training courses. It just doesn’t make sense to develop different versions of courses to work with different technology.

I am building a course building tool that builds html5 courses but I am still sad to see Flash’s time come to a close. As a developer who has built hundreds of flash-based courses over the years and a large number of html based courses, Flash is still the more powerful platform. HTML5 is a long way from being ratified as a true standard and each browser still has its own quirks when displaying content.

Even so, it is apparent that HTML5 will be with us for some time, whether or not it will be the defacto standard for the next 10 years is another question, as devices and batteries get better, Adobe or someone else might jump back into the fray with a new version of Flash or different products altogether.

Full story:

(http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/exclusive-adobe-ceases-development-on-mobile-browser-flash-refocuses-efforts-on-html5/19226?tag=mantle_skin;content)

This leaves two tablet operating systems, iOS and Android. Windows 8 could make a compelling tablet OS, but that wont be released for some time.

iOS is a very clean and simple operating system with a minimum of fuss and clutter. Android has more options in its OS and in the functionality of the desktop but, as you would expect, this leads to more clutter on the desktop.

I own multiple tablets and actually like the PlayBook OS the best, but, as mentioned above, the PlayBook might not be the right tablet for most corporations to consider today. After the PlayBook, I find iOS to be the most simple and straightforward operating system, allowing me to open my training programs the quickest.

Provided that iPads can meet your organization’s security requirements, iOS is simple and allows learners to quickly get to their courses.

As elearning designers, we want to get as close to modelling the real world as possible, with as little interruption from the outside world.

Android and iOS, for better or worse, have truly simplified the operating system experience as compared to Microsoft Windows or even Apple’s operating systems. The path from learner desire to launch an application to actually opening, and interacting with, that application has been shortened to a simple click on an icon.

eLearning interface design (navigation, menu buttons, resources, etc.) has been relatively standardized for a number of years. There is a tried and tested set of navigation rules that work well and are applied by most eLearning developers. This has meant that learners can take multiple learning courses from multiple vendors and still be able to understand the navigation and interface rules quickly.

Mouse vs. Touch

Traditional computer interaction relies, to a great extent, on the mouse - a user moves the mouse to a specific icon or region of the screen and then clicks on the mouse button to affect some action from the system.

Desktop computer users are more focussed on the mechanics of moving the mouse than interacting directly with an application. To illustrate this point, let’s think through the mechanics of opening an application using a mouse.

1. Decide to open an application

2. Move hand to mouse

3. Move mouse to application icon

4. Double click mouse button to open application

With a touch based interface:

1. Decide to open application

2. Move finger to application icon

3. Click on application icon

The touch based interface allows a much shorter chain between intent and action. If a user wants to go to the next page, they simply touch the “next page” button.

A more complex example could be a scenario that requires a learner to assemble components of a machine: The learner selects the component with their hand (finger) and places it in the correct position in the machine in comparison to interaction with a mouse where the user’s motor functions are directed to moving the mouse and not positioning the machine component directly.

The Webster dictionary defines “Immersion” as The state of being overhelmed or deeply absorbed; deep engagedness.

The most immersive experiences come from devices or items that have very little surrounding distraction eg,  books, tv, movies, and video games. The nature of the interaction with each of these items is straightforward: books only require turning the page, movies and tv don’t require anything but sitting and watching, video game interaction is accomplished by using left, right, up, down and action button presses.

History

The nature of the personal computer hasn’t changed to any great extent since its introduction in the 1970s and 1980s. Computers weren’t designed with a box and a monitor for any usability reasons, these were the best/only methods for achieving computer based human computer interaction in that period.

Douglas Englebart applied for a patent for the computer mouse in 1967 at Stanford Research Institute. Xerox developed its first GUI based computer in 1981 . So, in summary, the hardware and the fundamental nature of interaction with computer devices has remained unchanged since the early 1980s.

Apple’s influence

There is much divided opinion on Apple and their i-products, one thing that cannot be argued with is the way in which iOS (Apple’s mobile operating system) changed perceptions on how people interact with devices. I am not contending that Apple actually created anything new, merely that they popularized the notion of: smartphones, touch based interaction, and simplicity of the operating system environment. For better, or worse, iOS reduced the clutter of traditional operating systems, increasing the user’s ability to interact directly with applications simply by clicking and swiping a couple of times.

Apple basically re-invented the tablet marketplace – During the second quarter of 2011, 75% of tablets shipped were iPads (according to ABI Research). Windows based tablets have been around for years but have never been particularly popular. The rapid adoption of iPads and tablets in general can be attributed to the simple nature of iOS—the simple nature of iOS allowed users to purchase a tablet, click on a little graphic and be using their application of choice. Google released their tablet version of Android (honeycomb) in the first quarter of 2011, which built upon earlier versions of Android but was specifically architected for tablets. Android is also a very minimalistic operating system allowing for very quick, direct interaction with the tablet and applications.

e-Learning Application

With devices taking less of learner’s attention, more attention is focussed on the training at hand rather than navigating the complexities of the hardware.

This was to be the final post of this series, but I realize that there is too much material to cover in one post.

The following posts will cover the following aspects of tablet based training and how they shape the future:

Immersion – the way in which a user interacts with a computer based system

Simplicity – the need to provide simple access to training to maximize learners’ time and experience with the training

Portability – the ability for learners to take real training from any location – something that was never offered by mobile learning.

Cost – the cost of non iPad tablets is dropping and the adoption of non iOS platforms is rising, this will make for low cost delivery of training to more people.

Industries adopting tablets – Many industries are adopting tablets for mission critical activities: healthcare and EMR, Pharmaceutical companies, airline pilots for checklists, this will lead to the rapid adoption of training on these devices in these industries

Portable devices that learners have access to as part of their job – smart cell phones were personal devices or not up to the task of delivering high quality learning, tablet devices will be corporate devices allowing us to develop training for these devices.

Better text presentation – Having developed courses in Adobe Flash for a long time, I can honestly tell you that text presentation is a painful, painful task with Flash, no tables, no numbered lists, nothing other than basic formatting. Html allows for easy and quick text presentation.

Layout modification – Tablet training can be html based, giving us  a lot of potential to change layout easily. 7″ devices, 10″ devices, desktop, phone, simply take the content, change the style sheets and a course can be presented well on each platform.

I will delve depper into each of the topics above in each future post but for now, go out, get a hold of any kind of tablet device and give it a try.

What is mobile learning?

There are lots of different definitions of mobile learning out there, a general thread that appears in all of them is that there is some form of learning event that occurs on a mobile platform.

When did mobile learning begin?

It is hard to get exact dates but Mobile learning started being thrown around in a big way around 2005. Note that the iPhone, the phone that really changed the smartphone market first appeared in 2007. Mobile learning in those “early” days was centered around delivering learning on the small square screens that mobile phones used to have. Even Motorola’s Razr, the last hot phone before the iPhone had a very small screen.

Due to the basic nature of mobile operating systems – no iOS, no Android – the mobile web was a series of text based pages of information. The early mobile learning vendors basically provided ways and means to create these pages of text to display learning and perhaps questions to learners.

Flaws in the mobile learning premise

There were a number of flaws in the premise behind mobile learning.

1. As noted above, mobile platforms were simply not able to deliver content beyond simple text and questions.
2. Mobile learning relies on too many assumptions of the learner and when or where they will take their training: The learner will have a mobile device capable of consuming the training, the learner will be willing to take their training in their own time, the learner will be in situations where they are able to consume the training (waiting at an airport, riding on a train, etc).
3. As learning professionals we have always strived to develop engaging and immersive training, the early move to mobile devices was too large a step back in the kinds of training that could be delivered to gain any benefit from the mobile nature of the device.

The end of mobile learning

I am not suggesting that learning on mobile devices is coming to an end, merely that the notion of mobile learning existing as a seperate domain is coming to an end.

Training is about the content, not about the device that the content is delivered on. Today’s devices are increasingly capable of displaying the same content as can be seen on a desktop pc. This means that we are finally able to build training on mobile devices that can deliver the immersive experiences that we really want to deliver.

In part 3 of this series, we will look at what can be delivered today and how.

A little history

Previous generations of eLearning – computer-based and web-based – were very similar in layout, they were designed to fit on a computer screen.

Space

eLearning courses tend to need a lot of room: most organizations want to ensure that their corporate branding appears in the training, buttons to change pages, open the glossary, open a menu, etc. take up 10 – 20% of screen real estate before we have even started to get content on the screen.

Since the early 90′s, we were designing courses to run with screen resolutions of 640 * 480, then 800 * 600, and, finally 1024 * 768. In order to support the lowest common denominator of user machine, adoption of the larger screen sizes in courses has tended to be slow.

Increasing technical capability

The eLearning industry has always been quick to move to new technology. Just as desktop computers were finally getting powerful enough to play our videos from the CD-ROM drive without stuttering or sticking, we were moving on to place our courses onto the web, basically giving up any technology advances we had made to that point.

As we all know, internet speed and the rapid corporate adoption of Macromedia/Adobe Flash as an acceptable browser plugin meant that within a couple of years we were able to build the same courses on the web as we had been building for the desktop.

It is important to note that these courses were fundamentally the same as those that we had been developing for desktop pcs. By this time, luckily, a resolution of 800 * 600 and 16k colors were the norm. For those of you that remember, how nice was it to not to have to worry about 256 color palettes any more?

The technical capability that we lost at the beginning of the move to the web was more than made up for by the flexibility of placing courses on centralized Learning Management Systems, no longer having to create and recreate thousands of cdroms and updating our content in realtime to our global audiences.

The next post will continue with an exploration of what mobile learning is/was.

Previously, there was CBT (computer-based) and WBT (web-based), it is only natural that we now add tablet-based Training to that list.

“TBT” is definitely a lot better than “training on tablets, iPads, Androids, etc.”

It seems strange to start a new blog named “TrainingOnTablets” with a post about the discontinuation of a tablet and its whole product line.

The end of the TouchPad is not really a bad thing for the eLearning industry or the future of tablet based training. One of the most difficult parts of eLearning development has always been the numerous platforms or browsers that we need to support. The tablet industry was shaping up to be even more complicated for development than the web was.

There are currently three major platforms in the tablet space: iPad, Android, and QNX on Blackberry Playbook (some people will argue that the Playbook isnt a contender, but given Blackberry’s prevalence in the corporate space it seems likely there will be some good traction for eLearning usage). Each one of these has different design considerations, iPad has a 4:3 display ratio, Android on 10″ tablets is 16:9 with a wide variety of screen resolutions, and the Playbook as of right now is a 7 inch tablet with 1024 * 600 resolution. WebOs would have simply presented a fourth totally different platform to be concerned with – it simply wasn’t necessary.

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