WorkLearnMobile - The Mobile Learning Innovation Network

Why WorkLearnMobile asked Allison.

The perfect blend between academia, and corporate insight. It’s difficult to think of accolades that haven’t been bestowed on Dr Allison Rossett. She is Professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University, while also a consultant in learning and technology. Her areas of expertise include needs analysis, technology-based learning, and engagement in a world with increasing amounts of technology-based learning and performance support.

We live in a world where mobile is embedded in the fabric of our lives from dawn to dusk, their consumer power is not in doubt nor is their ability to infuse every aspect of our life and even some areas we haven’t yet thought of.

Allison Rossett’s area of interest is enterprise learning and the potential impact that mobile has in that arena. During her presentation she takes us back to the basics of defining learning and performance support and the differences therein. She makes the point that mobile is critical in the performance support sphere. Performance support doesn’t need to be lifelong learning, it can be just-in-time information accessed at a critical point in time, location or situation. It can be used to make a decision or perform a task and then forgotten. Often performance support can be used to further enhance a deep amount of real learning, for example doctors accessing drug protocols, or pilots looking up specific technical information. These individuals require a lot of learning to carry out their duties plus some performance support. In other scenarios this may be reversed, for example in a consumer sales setting, product information may change rapidly and being able to access this information readily helps keep sales teams with customers and stops having to take them out of their daily routine in order to update them.

Mobile is great for repetition, practicing and for reminders. Aide-mémoires provide links back to real-time training so that off-site learning is relegated to a one-time event rather that experience can be repeated and accessed until it is embedded or until it is no longer needed.

Here are a couple of the case studies which Allison refers to in her presentation.

• Banjo Rolls Trainer
• Aplia Learning Solutions