Jul
30

By

mLearnCon 2012 – Learnings & Roadmap

Category: Enterprise Mobility Tags: , , ,

A 38% rise in registrations at the mLearnCon 2012 conference held in San Jose in June is a testament to the growing awareness and anticipation surrounding mobile learning and development. The 3-day event is a platform for designers, developers and managers to understand mobile learning and its evolution, network with people actively facilitating mLearning in organizations, and take note of innovative mobile solutions and new technology available to consumers and businesses.

mobile learning conference 2012

Project Tin Can API

One of the most important events at the conference was the announcement of Project Tin Can API – an update to SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) – that allows learning systems to communicate with each other thereby supporting learner’s tracking across corporate silos and web services. Though still in beta, a number of apps incorporating the Tin Can API were demonstrated at the conference including Tappestry app (social conversation), Goldstar app (gold star reward system emulating elementary school’s achievement acknowledgement system) and MAP Deck (a mash up of PowerPoint).

Gamification and mobile engagement

Another notable topic was the use of gamification techniques to support mobile engagement and learning. However, like we discussed in our last blog post it’s not only about doing things effectively but also efficiently. As Koreen Olbrish points out in her blog post, gamification has failed to gain traction because of poor design. However, the idea is spot on. Games are addictive, motivational and rewarding. If we add that flavor to mobile learning, adoption and effectiveness rates would shoot up.

HTML5

With the influx of mobile devices and corresponding platforms, mobile app developers and enterprises are looking at HTML5 to build platform and browser independent solutions. Naturally, that makes HTML5 important to mobile learning techniques and development.

Topics to ponder

The fact that these topics figured at the conference implies you need to think in these lines too: