Corporate training and development efforts have long relied on formal learning programs – in person, off-site, delivered by trainer to employee. Requiring employees to leave the workplace to engage such programs, though, has proved over time an expensive, disruptive, and difficult-to-scale practice. While e-learning programs mitigate some of the cost and logistical constraints of in-person training, they often still impose a conceptual and physical distance between the learning activity and the performance context (De Vries & Lukosch, 2009, p. 39). In response to the limitations of these formal approaches, instructional designers and educational researchers are working to reimagine the possible contexts, sources, and formats of workplace learning.
As I narrow the focus of my research to mobile learning in the workplace as a subset of the broader field, I am also led to examine more closely the ways in which adults learn and interact in professional contexts. Informal, situated, social learning is the name of the game here. Most of the learning that takes place on the job is constructed through task performance, self-directed inquiry, and interaction with others. Mobile technologies are well suited to support these kinds of informal learning, but bring with them a host of challenges and constraints. Gu, Churchill, and Lu (2014), Cook and Pachler (2012), and Holley and Sentance (2015) offer three studies of mobile technology designs for workplace learning that show both sides of the coin.
Mobile Web 2.0 in the workplace: A case study of employees’ informal learning
Gu, Churchill, and Lu (2014) study the use of mobile Web 2.0 applications to support employees’ informal learning. The authors designed a mobile app, titled MobLearn@Work, that integrated a RSS reader, podcasting reader, web-search tool, and microblog client into one interface. Logs of participants’ use of the app revealed that self-directed learning was the primary form of learning activity. Users “pulled” information on an as-needed basis, making heavy use of the web-search tool. Participants also demonstrated, though to a lesser degree, incidental and tacit learning from the information they encountered in their RSS feeds. The microblogging tool was generally ignored, due in large part to the choice to make the platform a closed community (with access restricted to participants) and the small size of the community (5 members). Web 2.0 is generally characterized by the emergence of interactivity and user-generated content as central parts of the digital experience, so the relative lack of social interaction and creative production demonstrated by the participants in this study was disappointing, but likely a function of the restrictive and somewhat artificial choices imposed by the study design.
Online people tagging: Social (mobile) network(ing) services and work-based learning
Mobile learning giants John Cook and Norman Pachler explore a more aggressively social approach to work-based learning with their case study of the MATURE project and its ‘People Tagging’ tool. This research design is centered around a socioconstructivist perspective of learning, in which learning is built through interactions with others. This study is useful in its nuance – the authors’ analysis is sensitive to the messy complexities of real-world work and highlights the emotional, organizational, and hierarchical factors at play in work-related discourse (e.g. self-perceived vulnerability when asking a question).
Social tagging is a practice that positions employees as valuable knowledge resources. Cook and Pachler’s study introduced the People Tagging tool to an organization with geographically distributed employees. Within an internal social network, employees tagged themselves and their colleagues with labels indicating their skills and domains of expertise, helping employees across the organization to more easily identify “who knows what” (Cook & Pachler, 2012, p. 720). Participants appreciated the essentially democratic nature of the tool, but raised concerns that the tags would require constant updating to remain useful and that the peer-inquiry practice as a whole would increase workload for all. Workplace learning programs hinged on inter-professional knowledge sharing might require organizational incentives to motivate employees to participate in light of this potential for increased workload.
Mobile ‘Comfort’ Zones: Overcoming Barriers to Enable Facilitated Learning in the Workplace
Holley and Sentance’s small-scale study also raises the idea of workload as potentially complicating factor in mobile learning design for the workplace. The study had trainee teachers enrolled in a post-graduate certificate program using text messaging to engage with course readings while working full-time in school placements. Coding of focus group discussions that followed the learning experience revealed shared themes of identity, appropriateness of the technology, personal space and privacy, and the challenges of collaboration in “an awkward space” (Holley & Sentance, 2015, p. 3).
Learners who reported discomfort stemming from the blurred boundaries of professional and private space felt that the use of synchronous chat for peer learning (in this case, text messaging) demanded an immediacy of response that was stressful and would “intrude upon their thoughts” (Holley & Sentance, 2015, p. 6). Workplace training and development programs that use mobile chat-based interactions might address the potentially adverse emotional effects of synchronous social learning by clarifying the organization’s definition of and expectations for appropriate response time.
An Evolving Field, An Evolving Understanding
My personal understanding of mobile learning has seen an evolution similar to that of the field itself: from a techno-centric focus on device and program design towards a more nuanced appreciation of mobility as a physical, temporal, and conceptual construct. I have come to realize the breadth of forms that mobile learning experiences may take, but have tempered my unbridled enthusiasm for its pedagogical potential with an awareness of the potential affective impact of the “always-on/always-on-you” device.
I began this exploration by defining mobile learning as “the use of a wireless, handheld networked device to conduct inquiries, produce and share ideas, and more broadly engage with others and with knowledge artifacts both within and outside formal learning contexts.”
I revise that definition now to be: “the use of portable networked devices to conduct inquiry, produce and share ideas, and interact with others and with knowledge artifacts across diverse contexts of work, play, and daily life.”
I am grateful to Dr. McClain for her thorough introduction both to the field of mobile learning and to the practice and behaviors associated with being an educational technology professional, the many authors who challenged my thinking with their devoted research and analysis, and the intellectual rigor, energy, and kindness demonstrated by my classmates every week.
Sources
Cook, J., & Pachler, N. (2012). Online people tagging: Social (mobile) network(ing) services and work-based learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(5), 711–725. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01346.x
Gu, J., Churchill, D., & Lu, J. (2014). Mobile Web 2.0 in the workplace: A case study of employees’ informal learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(6), 1049–1059. http://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12179
Holley, D., & Sentance, S. (2015). Mobile “ Comfort ” Zones : Overcoming Barriers to Enable Facilitated Learning in the Workplace. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, (1), 1–9.
Lukosch, H. K., & Vries, P. D. (2009). Supporting Informal Learning at the Workplace. International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning, 2(3). doi:10.3991/ijac.v2i3.1004