The challenge for week 2 of the mobile learning course, MobiMOOC was to come up with ideas for mlearning courses. I have two possibilities in mind. The first is the old inappropriate transfer from an old medium to a new medium in that I have an existing course which can be delivered face to face, online or blended and I would simply like to add an m-learning option to widen the delivery channels. It does not gain very much from being made mobile except that accessibility.
The second option is a definite attempt to move away from more traditional forms of educational delivery in a deliberate attempt to make learning not only fun but something that you might be willing to pay for while on vacation. The idea here is that the classroom simply does not exist.
In the first option I already have the class available on a Moodle LMS. Moodle doesn’t show up very well on mobile devices but I have been told that there is an Apple app which does something nice with it. One problem there is that the mainstay of the Moodle instructor, getting blocks ready in advance but hiding them until they are relevant, is subverted by this app as it shows everything! The solution here apparently is to change the Moodle settings every time you want to reveal a new block by increasing the number of blocks of the course by one. My Moodle courses are heavily dependent on use of the forums and here I worry that participating in these by mobile device would be a barrier (witness the number of contributors in the MobiMOOC forums who have apologised for the brevity of their contributions because they are writing on a mobile device). So I’m a bit stuck as to how to make this Moodle course even more mobile friendly. There is one part of the course in which I would like to insert a decision maze. For a long time I considered doing this in PowerPoint as a way of demonstrating the possibilities of PPT as a decision maze but I have also considered using the Hot Potatoes program Quandary and now also Google Breadcrumbs. I tested out Breadcrumbs last week but wonder how much can be included. For example you can’t include images, audio or video material.
So these are my thoughts on widening accessibility of a traditional course; traditional here meaning an online Moodle course. I can’t believe that I just called an online Moodle course ‘traditional’!
Now for my second idea for a mobile course which you may like better than the Moodle based one.
This is aimed at visitors to a leisure facility (golf resort) where couples and families stay in rented or owned holiday homes. It is likely that the love affair with golf will vary amongst family members. Therefore the resort also offers fitness and wellness facilities as well as gourmet dining. I see a market for casual English lessons which don’t resemble traditional lessons.
The concept is for English walks with small groups where the main activity is conversation. I had already envisaged asking participants to use their mobile devices to take photos which they can use as starting points for descriptions or stories either during the lesson time itself or afterwards in a digital place belonging to the course. I had also imagined that participants could do role plays which can be recorded in audio or video format, again with the option to extend and review by uploading to a shared digital space. And now I also see a role for QR code activities if these can be secreted about the resort beforehand. If I were really creative I could also devise a game using these environmental markers which could be played even without a session leader/teacher (but then where is the profit for me?).
I have taught English to adults here in Denmark for many years both recreational and for business and my learners often remark on how different my sessions are from what they had expected. They are generally favourable and usually comment that my sessions are more fun than they had expected and yet they still feel that they have learned something. So this idea of English on the go is an extension of my approach to date but this time getting rid of the classroom altogether.
I can see scope for several variants of what I’m proposing; golf English, natural history English, general English and maybe even a form of business English!