The Social Age is a time of great change, in how we work and how we learn. To design effective mobile learning, we have to understand these new realities and ensure that what we design fits within the constraints and evolved behaviours that have emerged. These are the slides from the session i ran at mLearnCon 2014 in San Diego with the eLearning Guild.

1. Creating effective mobile
learning in the Social Age
Julian Stodd BSc (hons) MA
!
Captain at SeaSalt Learning

2. Part 1 - foundations

3. The Social Age of
Learning

4. What have you got?
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Mail
• Shazam
• Google Maps
• A game
• A railway timetable
• Photos
• Music

5. What have you got?
• Facebook - community, sharing, collaboration, cohesion
• Twitter - sharing, news, highly curated
• Mail - sharing, volume, formal?
• Shazam - identifying, capturing, sharing, learning
• Google Maps - functional, performance enhancing, external knowledge
• A game - distracting, competing, networked
• A railway timetable - knowledge, performance enhancing, just in time
• Photos - capturing, narrating, sharing
• Music - entertaining, cohesive

6. The Social Age
• The semi formal layers that surround the formal
• Supported by communities
• Facilitated by technology

7. The Social Age
• What is different about your social life than from 10
years ago?
• What is different about your work from ten years
ago?
• What is different about how you learn from 10 years
ago?

9. Where can you turn to
for these answers?
Where is your first
choice?

11. Let's consider the
technology...

13. Our evolving relationship
with knowledge

14. Knowledge vs Meaning
• In the old world: knowledge was power
• In the Social Age, power comes through reputation
and sharing, humility and community
• Roles are contextual: we are adaptable
• We need to utilise knowledge to create meaning

17. How does your
organisation use
knowledge?

18. How does your organisation
use knowledge?
• To inform
• To control
• To do things
• To create transparency
• To build tribal capability
• To earn money

19. How does your
organisation control
knowledge?

20. How does your organisation
control knowledge
• Through technology
• Through elders
• Through physical constraints
• Through geography
• Through mindset
• Through formal heirarchy

21. What does the organisation
give you?
• Technology
• Space
• Community
• Structure

22. What does the organisation
give you?
• Technology - but is it agile? Is it a mechanism of
control?
• Space - but do you need it? Do the walls constrain
you?
• Community - but you have your own. What's it's
purpose?
• Structure - codified knowledge: but is it up to date?

23. Part 2 - making sense
of it all

24. Sense Making Spaces

28. Communities

29. Where are your
communities?

31. What purposes do
they serve?

33. Does your organisation
have formal
communities?

34. Does your organisation have
formal communities?
• Were they put in place by the organisation or
emergent from the community?
• Are they used to broadcast or co-create?
• Who owns them?
• Are you on top of issues of privacy and
permanence?

36. How does mobile
support us in our roles?

37. How does mobile support us
in our role
• Is it providing knowledge or helping us to create
meaning?
• Is it saving the organisation time or saving me time?
• Is it connecting or controlling?

38. How can you support the
formation of the
community?

39. What happens if the
conversation goes off
track?

40. Changing the Frame
• If the frame is too narrow, change it
• If the co-created meaning is divergent from
expectation, what will you do?

41. Tone of Voice
• What communities are you engaged in?
• What is their moderation tone of voice?

42. Generating engagement
with learning

43. Stance
• Journalistic perspective
• It's conscious, not accidental or enforced

44. Stance
• It's not about facts, it can be emotive
• It's not about logic, it's about values

46. Authenticity
• We are experts at spotting authenticity
• Only authentic tones of voice generate engagement
• Curiosity
• Humility
• Recognises everyday reality

47. Reputation
• The Social Age is a Reputation economy
• We can't rely on our positional authority for social
learning

49. Reputation subverts
hierarchy

50. Exercise: create your
framework for moderation
• What is your stance?
• What is your tone of voice?
• Where will your authority come from?
• How does this fit within the social contract?
• Will you share this with your learners or co-create it
with them?
• Are you prepared, as an organisation, to reframe?

51. Part 3 - A methodology
for learning

52. A Methodology
for Learning
• Context
• Demonstration
• Exploration

53. Context
• Setting up the contract with the learner:
• Understanding everyday reality
• The bridge between abstract theory and concrete
practice
• The social contract
• Perspective: how this relates to everything else
!

55. • Context is about the stories
you tell and where you tell
them from
• It's a journalistic stance

57. What is the everyday
reality in your
organisation?

58. Do your stories face inwards
or outwards?

60. Demonstration
• Illustrating the core concepts of the learning
• Demonstrating things within context
• The role of the Guide and Narrator
• Understanding the role of the different modalities
• Media: video, animation, audio
• The superfluous experience

63. How do you currently
Demonstrate things in
your organisation?

64. How do you create
disturbance?

67. Exploration
• Playing with the learning
• Developing vocabulary
• The role of different modalities
• The importance of making mistakes
• The role of different modalities
• Contextual feedback

70. Have you created space
to build vocabulary?

71. How are you choosing
which modality to use?

72. Remember...
Choices based on...
• Cost
• Trends... what's cool right now?
• Logistics
• Time... we need it tomorrow...
• Efficacy... because it works...
• Because that's how we do it... and always have...!
• Templates... brand...

74. These are outward facing
stories: what will you do
with it?

76. A Methodology
for Learning
• Reflection
• Assessment
• Footsteps

77. Reflection
• Internalising the learning
• Internal and external reflection
• Personal narratives
• Co-created group narratives
• Solitary and group reflection
• Reflection as assessment
• The role of different modalities

80. Where do you find
your space to reflect?

83. How can you build in
space for reflection?

85. Assessment
• Understanding the purpose of assessment:
• What are we assessing?
• Should we assess?
• Formal and informal assessment
• Observation as assessment
• Triangulating assessment
• Social assessment

87. http://www.dayonetech.com/images/systemscreens/scenario_statements_big.jpg

89. http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/9/6/1283784205551/Pupils-raise-their-hands--006.jpg

91. http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phys2020/phys2020_fa04/exam/samp-exam2-4.gif

92. What are performance
outcomes?
• Improved skills
• Increased knowledge
• Greater ability to create meaning
• Broadened perspective
• Accepting the learning?!
• Changed attitude?!
• Foundations for the future?

93. For your project: how will
you measure
performance outcomes?

94. How will you measure this?
• Triangulate assessment through 3 of these:
• Individual reflection on what has been learnt
• Observation of the learner in action
• Peer review
• 360 assessment of change
• Formal tests

95. Footsteps
• Bridging the gap between learning and doing
• Revisiting everyday reality
• Understanding vs performance
• Pragmatism
• Revisiting the learner and the learning
• Modalities for footsteps

98. Where does the
learning end?
What happens if we don't
engineer in Footsteps?

101. How can you implement
Footsteps in your
projects?

102. Part 4

103. Creating Scaffolded
Mobile Learning Solutions

105. Exercise: Building a scaffolded
Social Learning experience
• Define your story: this is your scaffolding
• Create the spaces for co-creation
• Hang them on your scaffolding
• Define your gateways: formal or informal?
• Define your spaces for reflection and narrative

106. Demonstration
• How can we demonstrate the core concepts?
• What activities can we use?
• How can technology facilitate this?
• What media can we use?
• How will this be more effective?

107. Exploration
• What spaces can we provide to explore?
• What will people be able to do?
• How will we keep this space safe?
• How will we capture the learning?

108. Reflection
• Where is the space to explore?
• Who provides the support?
• Where is the space for narrative?
• What is the legacy?

109. Presenting your Scaffolding
• Groups presenting their solutions
• Link back to Learning Methodology

110. • 8 week scaffolded
experience
• Gateways are calls
• Structured by 4 Q's a
section
• Social space for
collaboration
• Group narrative
shared through blog
Example of Scaffolding

111. • 5 week scaffolded
experience
• Learners seek out
experiences within
the scaffolding
• They quantify what
they find
• The community
carries out the 'sense
making'
Example of Scaffolding

112. Summary

114. STAY IN TOUCH
• @julianstodd
• www.julianstodd.wordpress.com
!
• www.SeaSaltLearning.com
!
• All materials © Julian Stodd under a Creative
Commons license