Upside Learning Blog

Everyone Is Talking Mobile Learning. Brilliant!

Amit Garg — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:09:47 +0000

Last week we were at Learning Technologies 2012 in London braving the winter chill here in London. Just as we expected this is probably the best show for the sort of products and services we offer. I met many prospects (which is always a real need), some existing clients/partners (always good to catch up), and some casual visitors; and a couple of walk-ins at the show to get the ‘flavor’ of the show. All the interactions were interesting and we learnt something from each one of them. We left the show more educated and very tired – after being constantly on our feet for two days.

So what was the flavor of the show?

I would say, undoubtedly, it was mobile learning. If you were there I’m sure you sensed mobile learning was in the air. All the major players in the UK-EU market showcased their mobile learning solutions and a number of free sessions focused on mobile learning. I believe this is just brilliant for mlearning. So many vendors offering mobile solutions will help the market expand faster. To be frank, mobile learning has been on the horizon for many years but it looks like it’s time has finally come.

But there are some obstacles …

I think there is a lack of understanding on the customers’ part about the following; these issues will delay the customer adoption of mobile learning:

What is mlearning most suitable for
How to go about implementing an mlearning strategy
Which platforms / devices should be targeted
Which way to go – native apps, web apps, or HTML5
What sort of tracking requirements are there (if any)
How to convert existing elearning to mlearning
Should new projects be developed such they work on PCs, Tablets, and Mobile Phones

Some of these have been answered on our blog earlier and while some of them are as old as 2 years but I think they are still very helpful in understanding the domain of mobile learning. And if you wish to explore further here’s a complete list of all our articles on mobile learning

On a Happy Note

Standing at our booth (#75) I overheard a presenter in the nearby theater talking about various models of implementing mobile learning. His conclusion was that a ‘wrapper app with content pushed / made available from server’ was the best option. I’m happy as our cross-platform product Upside2Go is based on the same concept. We describe it as the mobile ecosystem that combines formal training, informal, social, & collaborative learning on your mobile device.

Hope you found this post useful. If you have any other queries apart from the ones listed above, do share with us.

Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning is Wrong

Abhijit Kadle — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:22:28 +0000

Admit it, didn’t the title of this post catch your eye? Coming back from vacation and digging into my feeds I found this interesting article from Wired – Everything You Thought You Knew About Learning is Wrong. While the title makes a sweeping statement, I found that’s not what the article is really about. Perhaps the reporter needed to relearn a thing or two and forget a few too. As an instructional designer, there is a lot of common sense in this article that I directly apply to creating learning solutions. However, there are two really interesting points that caught my attention and linked back to some ideas I had written about before (you can read those here and here).

…think about how you attack a pile of study material. “People tend to try to learn in blocks,” Bjork said. “Mastering one thing before moving on to the next.” Instead of doing that Bjork recommends interleaving… “This creates a sense of difficulty,” Bjork said. “And people tend not to notice the immediate effects of learning.”

The gamification of learning is seen as inevitable, and one part of its persuasive nature is the challenge that games offer players. Here, we see Dr. Bjork directly point to the need for mixing activities and creating a level of difficulty. Most elearning courses sorely lack this varied mix of activities and challenge. We must consider how we can add those to courseware that must cater to a wide demographic. As a designer, it’s always a challenge to design an activity that challenges learners, does not overwhelm them, but must ensure it isn’t too easy to accomplish either.

…while we count forgetting as the sworn enemy of learning, in some ways that’s wrong, too. The two live in a kind of symbiosis in which forgetting actually aids recall…

While I’ve always known that forgetting plays an important role in learning. It’d be very difficult for humans to manage if they retained everything they ever learned. Yet, we consciously do very little forgetting. We often create learning solutions that are required to learn procedures. I wonder if in addition to helping people learn, we need to include some elements that assist individuals in forgetting obsolete procedures.

5 Top Game Based Learning Links: GBL Digest 2

Aneesh Bhat — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:45:36 +0000

‘Gamification’ is a term that one comes across very often. Some of us love it, some of us might even hate it; but nobody can ignore it!

As gamification gradually finds its way into the realm of education, more and more educators are voicing their criticism or admiration for it. Despite the criticism, the gamification of education is here to stay.

This week, we take a closer look at ‘Gamification’ and what various L&D professionals think about it. Below are our top 5 GBL links from this week. Read them, share them or bookmark them.

1. Gamification in Education: Epic Win, or Epic Fail?
A trend referred to as “gamification” has swept industries as diverse as marketing, travel, and even education. While turning everything into a game sure seems like fun, it’s not as easy as it sounds. This article from Digital Pedagog explores the trend towards gamification, as well as some of its criticism.

2. The GameiT Handbook
The GAMEiT project is targeted at teachers, trainers, and multipliers and will empower them to design learning environments and teaching methods which are more creative, innovative and motivating by including game based learning elements and engaging the learner. The GameiT Handbook illustrates how games or elements of games can be included in educational practice, and to what end.

3. Why Game Designers Are Better Motivators Than Your Boss
This article from You Tern examines the power of games to motivate people, and how gamification can be applied at the workplace.

4. Three Reasons NOT to Gamify Education
This article from the Learnboost blog examines some potentially negative ramifications of applying game psychology to education.

5. The Fun And Games Of The FBI
This article from Kotaku takes a look at how the FBI is developing and using video games to train its agents.

Hope you like these links. If you come across anything interesting please feel free to share the link with us.

5 Amazing Features That Make UpsideLMS 5.0 So Desirable

Amit Gautam — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:29:21 +0000

Just over a week since we released UpsideLMS 5.0, and the interest it has generated in these few days is mindboggling! For those of you who still haven’t taken a look at this stunning, best value LMS, we suggest you do it now.

UpsideLMS version 5.0 is an outcome of the sweat and thoughts put in by our engineering and UI experts. Our designers have put themselves in the users’ shoes to understand the nuances of User Experience (UX).

This new version promises to bring a burst of freshness to the users’ desktops along with a slew of new features. To give you a taste of the new version, here’s a quick take on the 5 top features in the new UpsideLMS.

1. Stunning New GUI

UpsideLMS v5.0 is an evident departure from the traditional LMS systems where mostly functionality is all that’s cared for and practically no attention is given to the User Experience (UX).

With UpsideLMS’ new version, users can expect an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It aims at providing a seamless experience for users, allowing them to access their learning resources, notes, or friends stream from any computer with an internet connection. From the background visual to the color palette, the logo placement, the font and its sizes, every small detail has been designed to give users an experience that they will cherish.

2. Easy Navigation

UpsideLMS 5.0 makes it easy for users to navigate and find the data they seek quickly and effortlessly. Well defined menus reduce the information-searching time, while the logically defined structure ensures a smooth flow.

The new menu style has been adopted to enable users to navigate to the desired section quickly in least number of clicks.

A key example is the new design of the Events Calendar where the users can view the calendar and events without leaving the page.

3. Themes

UpsideLMS 5.0 gives you the freedom to more than just change the color of borders and text. With a set of pre-designed themes, each with a different look and feel (background graphics, colors, shapes and fonts), organizations can now select and apply a theme that reflects their company’s identity.

4. Configurable Learner Login Screen and Dashboard

The login screen is the 1^st touch point for the user as s/he logs into the system. And as such the real estate (or should we say, the pixel estate) on that screen is of vital importance. UpsideLMS’ new version makes optimum utilization of this by giving the Admin the ability to display important information modules for the learner/s right on the login screen. Be it announcements, FAQs, recent blog posts, system diagnostic results, learning catalog or the discussion forum, the admin can now choose one or more of these elements to be displayed on the login area.

Customizability has also been extended to the learner’s dashboard. Depending on the widgets important/ most used by the learner, s/he can easily configure the dashboard to display only those widgets. Further, the learner can also enjoy the freedom to move widgets freely across the dashboard.

5. Centralized License Management

With the License Management moved to the Site Admin level in UpsideLMS’ 3 tier architecture (consisting of Learner, Admin and Site Admin), the process of assigning curriculums to multiple clients from the same setup has become extremely easy. This feature is of prime importance for training companies using LMS for hosting/selling eLearning courses for their customers or for large organizations managing decentralized training units.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. See what you can expect from UpsideLMS v5.0 by registering here for a live demo of best value lms. Looking for more information or a quick chat – please drop us a line at sales@upsidelearning.com and we’ll have one of our sales guys speak with you.

Shining At #26 On The Top 100 Highest Ranking Websites In Learning Technology List

Amit Garg — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:02:10 +0000

One of the prime forces that drove us to release a new version of the website (back in 2010) was enabling visitors make the most of their time spent on our website. And as such, our website has reflected information that is accurate and to the point. Little did we know that one day these efforts will put us on the chart of the best websites!

www.upsidelearning.com, our official website has made it to number 26 in the ‘Top 100 Highest Ranking Websites In Learning Technology’ chart.

Conducted by Now, a leading Marcomm management company, this ranking is calculated by crunching together individual rankings from Google PageRank, Moz Rank, Alexa, Hubspot‘s Web grader and Compete. While this list focuses on commercial operators whose primary market is B2B learning, larger companies with specific divisions or product sets targeting the learning industry are included but only specific portions of their website have been used in the ranking.

This has been possible due to continual efforts and dedication of our in-house marketing team especially the SEO/ SMO experts. To our team – Cheers!

View the entire list.

Prototyping in eLearning

Abhijit Kadle — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:18:56 +0000

Over the years, you have probably noticed that the typically linear eLearning development process has undergone some changes. One change that I’ve noticed are that customers are realizing that we aren’t just creating courseware or writing content and interactions, we are also developing software. This has led to an expectation that the eLearning industry adopt some development models and methodologies from the software industry.

As Instructional Designers move away from purely being creators of content, to developers of tools and applications that assist learning and support performance, understanding the processes used by the software development industry becomes rather important. The quality of an application doesn’t depend on the content it contains, but rather its functional design, technology architecture, implementation and optimization. In other words, it is about the end-user experience. The design of ‘good’ software applications is a very different ballgame from developing courseware.

Perhaps the first major aspect of software development process to filter into eLearning development is the use of iterative development. The movement away from a linear development process can only be good for eLearning. Endless rounds of alphas and betas, and a go-live date were stressful for all project stakeholders. As we become used to software (especially web-services) being in perpetual beta, it is now possible to release often, sometimes just enough to provide the learning, before adding significant graphic design and interaction effort. Having a fixed iteration schedule also helps get feedback faster, and that can be leveraged in the next iteration. This method leads to better quality courseware that focuses on the essentials first, and gradually improves the graphics and interaction. Rather than attempting to get it all right at the first go, which rarely works because it is difficult to do when attempting to satisfy multiple stakeholders with diverging perspectives on ‘good’ eLearning. Iterative development clearly offers many advantages the conventional linear development process doesn’t, however we are yet to see significant adoption of this model in our industry.

The second element percolating into eLearning is the use of prototypes. I feel this practice from software design and development has penetrated eLearning far more than the use of iterative development and is fairly well established. A prototype accomplishes a lot of things for the developers and designers – it simulates the final design, features, aesthetics and functionality, this in turn allows for stakeholders to get a ‘feel’ for the product being developed, as also provide feedback that is realistic and not based purely on documented designs or storyboards. The ability to allow learners (users) to interact with the prototype results in better and more constructive feedback for designers. Reduced time and costs for development are one obvious advantage of prototyping, but I see the increased involvement of users in the design process as a significant advantage as well. This involvement has a direct impact on the tangible and intangible quality of the product to be developed. Having said that, there are two common traps I’ve seen eLearning projects using prototyping falling into. First, spending way too much time on developing the prototype. Users and developers often get stuck in debating the details of the prototype, resulting in delays on actual development. Second, feature creep is a big deal with prototypes. While they start out to model a few basic features, users start to expect more and more as they see and use the prototype. Without clear requirement and design management, this will eventually bring the development to a halt. Its far easier and better to draw a line and coach users on what they can expect and demand from the development team.

There is much learning to garner from software development models and processes. What techniques from other industries do you use in eLearning development?

Introducing UpsideLMS V5.0 – Best Value LMS With Stunning GUI

Amit Gautam — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:37:19 +0000

The release of the new UpsideLMS version – 5.0, is generating a lot of excitement at Upside Learning. The Marketing team has been on their toes, getting the collaterals and other launch activities ready; the Sales team is now itching to show it off to prospects after laying their eyes on the new version.

Our stunning, best value Learning Management System, UpsideLMS v5.0, is built to include features that trainers and learners have always wanted in an LMS. It has the features, the performance, the user interface and experience, the awards and recognition, and your trust! Here is what you will find in the v5.0 of UpsideLMS.

The User Experience
UpsideLMS v5.0 UI has been re-designed with singular primary focus – usability. Users can expect a user-friendly interface for UpsideLMS resulting in ‘ease of use’ and ‘intuitiveness’ for users – two often missed features in a traditional LMS system.

The Features
With over 160 features that make it a perfect blend of traditional learning management and innovative learning technologies like social media/networking and mobile device support, UpsideLMS provides a unique platform for companies to manage their organization-wide, multi-department training in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

Some new features include client/ user license management at the Super Admin level in UpsideLMS’ 3-tier architecture (which includes Learner, Admin and Super Admin). This enables a Super Admin to manage user licenses for multiple clients.

Another interesting feature is the ability for the Admin to display important information modules for the learners right on the login screen.

The Awards and Recognition
Our best value LMS, UpsideLMS, is a winner of 8 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Technology Awards; 5 in 2010 and 3 in 2009, making it the only system to be awarded with the most number of awards in 2 consecutive years. It has won gold for Blended or Informal Learning and for Compliance Training; silver for Social Learning Technology and for Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses; and bronze for External Training.

It has also won a silver award in the 2011 Learning In Practice Awards by Chief Learning Officer magazine under the ‘Excellence in LMS’ category.

Further, it has been featured in the ‘2010 Top 20 Learning Portal Companies List’ by TrainingIndustry.com and has been listed as one of the ‘Five Emerging LMSs to Watch’ in CLO Magazine, July 2010 edition by Brandon Hall Research.

The Trust
UpsideLMS has been helping organizations manage their training for over 5 years. Today, over 60 organizations and training companies across the globe trust UpsideLMS for managing internal employee training and external/ dealer training. UpsideLMS has a presence in BFSI, Retail, Education, Engineering & Manufacturing, Aerospace, Training & Development, Healthcare, Energy, IT/ ITES and Pharmaceuticals.

New in UpsideLMS v5.0

Why don’t you see UpsideLMS v5.0 for yourself by registering for our online demo of the product? Please register here for the demo.

Looking for more information or a quick chat?

Please drop us a line at sales@upsidelearning.com and we’ll have one of our sales guys speak with you. And if you find this to be interest to your friends or colleagues, please do forward this to them.

3 Top Game Based Learning Links: Weekly GBL Digest – 1

Aneesh Bhat — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:32:10 +0000

With our increasing focus on Game Based Learning, each week sees us sharing interesting articles and resources about Game Based Learning on varied social networking platforms. While many of you follow us on Twitter and Facebook, we do realize that keeping a track of all the tweets/ posts, given the high proliferation and dynamic nature of information, is difficult, to say the least.

Hence, to ensure that you do not miss out on all the great links we share and also with a view to building a knowledge repository, every week, we shall be publishing a quick summary post of our best shared material from the week before.

Read it, share it or bookmark it.

Below are our top 3 links from this week:

The Power of Play in Learning
Play is a powerful vehicle for learning which amplifies our capacity to innovate and to adapt to changing circumstances. Adults who are deprived of play are often rigid, inflexible and closed to trying out new options. Play is an active process that reshapes our rigid views of the world. This article from the MindShift Blog underscores the importance of play in learning.
Teaching Science Through Video Game Design
A well designed game is akin to a good teacher. It provides the player/student with a reasonable challenge and helps the player learn through scaffolding and instructions. Kevin Hodgson, a Sixth grade teacher from Massachusetts, USA encourages his students to learn Science by designing and creating their own video games.
Games-Based Learning Experiences: Testing the principles with teachers and students
This paper published by Futurelab outlines the findings from three workshops with teachers and students in which they:
• give feedback on the relative importance of key learning elements identified in digital games
• explore how these elements could be used to support the creation of games-based learning experiences in formal education settings

Hope you like these and if you come across anything interesting do share with us.

Google’s Android Training Initiative – Will it boost mLearning?

Aneesh Bhat — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:57:40 +0000

On the 15th of December 2011, the Android Developer Relations team at Google launched the beta version of Android Training — a collection of classes to help developers build better Android apps using best practices in a variety of framework topics.

This is a move in the right direction by Google, especially since many Smartphone users perceive Android apps to be inferior to Apple’s iOS. This initiative targeted at developers will help to raise the quality of Android apps developed in the public realm.

Android Training will be led by the Android Developer Relations team. As of now the program has 11 basic classes.

1. Designing for multiple screens
2. Improving layout performance
3. Managing audio playback
4. Optimizing battery life
5. Remembering users
6. Sharing content
7. Capturing photos
8. Maintaining multiple APKs
9. Developing for enterprise
10. Monetizing your app
11. Designing effective navigation

These classes are designed to demonstrate best practices for solving common Android development problems. Each class explains the steps required to solve a problem, or implement a feature, with plenty of code snippets and sample code for developers to use within their own apps.

Note: Android Training does not start from scratch and there are some prerequisites for this program. You should know the basics of writing code and how to develop an Android user interface. Android Training is designed for developers looking to refine their apps.

What we see now is just the beginning. Google plans to add many more classes, expand and refine existing classes, and build Training Courses that help developers enhance your apps using objective-oriented collections of classes.

Given the nascent stage of mLearning development, the learning value that mLearning developers can derive from this training program is tremendous. Eventually that will result in us being able to design more compelling and engaging mLearning experiences.

You can access the Android Training home page here. https://developer.android.com/training/index.html

Hacking Siri for Learning

Abhijit Kadle — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:08:05 +0000

When Apple launched the iPhone 4S, one of the key differentiators to previous models was the inclusion of Siri. For those who haven’t been bombarded yet by the marketing campaigns, Siri is an intelligent software assistant and a knowledge navigator that essentially functions like a digital personal assistant. You can find out more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(software).

To get the official Apple spiel, see here: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html

Apple isn’t known to condone hackers modifying their products and software. When they started out, their hardware and software platforms were fairly open; as time has gone by, Apple has closed of its product/service ecosystems and removed much of that initial openness in favor of tight control (curation of sorts) over its platform. Given this closed environment, it is even more interesting that folks out there are hacking Siri to do stuff that Apple hasn’t included as standard Siri functionality. Here are a couple of impressive examples:

Lamonica – controlling the thermostat of his home with Siri. He was able to trick Siri into thinking it is communicating with Apple’s server, and wrote custom handlers to control a Wifi-enabled thermostat.

A developer was able to hack Siri to find and play content through media center software. Very cool indeed.

Couple of ideas pop into my mind right away about how technology like Siri could help learning – first, to function as an effective search agent within corporate CMS and KM solutions. I love the thought of being able to ask a personal computing device to find things for me, with minimal intervention required. This can be especially useful for knowledge workers responding to customers or critical situations that require accurate information. Siri like technology will probably have a fairly significant impact in the workplace when used this way. Second, to access and read out step by step procedures to support just-in-time performances. This sort of thing would be great for people who work with tools of all sorts and encounter varied procedures at work. For example, a car technician may have to use the same set of tools but different procedures depending on the automobile he/she is working with. Retrieving manufacturer and model specific procedures (ex., the replacement of a part).

Such technology can be used in many creative ways; I’ve been looking for Siri hacks that revolve around learning, but have been unable to find anything. Has any of you seen such a hack? Please comment.

What eLearning Should Learn From Games

Abhijit Kadle — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:37:46 +0000

There sure are lot of learning design community folks who love to play digital games.

It’s always interesting to hear gamers talk about why they play certain genres of games and what aspects of those games they love.

What is even more impressive is the passion and motivation that gets individuals to play these games.

Recently I have been playing Little Big Planet on the PSP, something I bought on whim for my seven-year old. Watching him learn to play and master the game has been quite a revelation. Mainly that learning is such an organic activity that trying to define it in any way will be inadequate. While elearning has a long way to go in matching physical world experiential learning, there are definitely some aspects of the game world we want to emulate.

Little Big Planet; several quick realizations:

1. Easy, simple to difficult, complex – Every platform scroller game does this, but LBP excels because it creates the right difficulty curve, not too much, not too little. Just enough challenge to keep you wanting to try; if it weren’t difficult enough, it becomes boring, too hard and you give up. This sort of difficulty curve is never, (I take that back) perhaps rarely seen in elearning courses. Courses are just that, they run the course. We should learn how to offer experiences and not just display after display of information that could be effective as a booklet or document.

2. Contributory nature is very important, the ‘ability to create and share’. Ask yourself about the last elearning course you took – did you create something in it? If you did, could you share it with the rest of the world? LBP differs from other games by being as much a tool as a game. By offering an entire authoring environment, you can custom design levels and share them with the world. It also offers a unique insight into how game levels are created. While the levels that came with the game are nice; the levels that users all over the world have created are simply astounding. Amazingly, it is not just any other level you are sharing, it is the experience on a standardized platform.

I’d really like to see courses that allow individuals to create ‘things’, artifacts that indicate their level of competence. Also, the ability to share those with others, and if possible experience them (as in LBP).

3. Embedded in activities – While learning to play LBP it is nice how the learning is embedded into the environment and the game play activity. You effectively use the environment and controls to learn how to manipulate the environment and control the game avatar. Contrast this with typical elearning, where there is a huge separation between display and content. They are rarely one and the same thing.

A closer look at much touted simulations reveal nothing more than linear task based exercise with limited feedback or a series of shallow scenarios with questions to follow, of which the user must select options and receive feedback accordingly. (especially in workplace elearning) Perhaps this works, but it is very boring. In eLearning we need to rethink simulations, first with better depth of content and decision making required and second, with better fidelity representations of the real workplace. Including realistic goals that can be accomplished as learners make their way through activities in the environment may prove a sound learning design choice.