The Learning Guys

Those of you that have been following my journey into learning Mandarin are familiar with the fact that I have made a daily podcast the centre of my personal learning plan. Given that I am having such a positive experience with this, it is natural that I would begin to explore how podcasting might fit into the learning plans of the clients I work with.

One of the more interesting uses of podcasting that we have come up with is the CEO Cast. What we do is film senior executives (at their office or in our production studio) as they share leadership thoughts, stories and insights. After we complete filming, we do some quick editing and post production, and then distribute to employees. Employees can view the CEO Cast on the device of their choice (desktop computer, laptop, mobile phone, iPod etc).

Why, you ask, would a senior executive want to do this? Here are a few compelling reasons:

Share your leadership vision
• Senior executives can communicate with employees in a personal and compelling way.

Share success stories
• Tell the stories that have made your company successful.

Keep it current
• Communicate the results of key meetings and corporate events.

Communicate globally
• Allow your global and distributed workforce to access senior leadership thought and expertise.

Succession planning
• Capture and internally distribute the thought leadership of senior executives before they retire and before that experience is lost to the company.

Look for more CEO Casts to be coming to an iPod near you.

At a meeting with a client this week the subject was mobile learning (m-learning), and how (or if) custom developed mobile learning might fit into the organizations learning strategy for its employees.

What is mobile learning?
Just in case your not sure, m-learning is portable and focused learning content (learning objects) delivered via a variety of wireless devices (PDAs, mobile phones etc.). M-learning is a simple and timely way to deploy critical information such as condensed versions of training materials, product updates, audio and video files, job aids, or anything that your employees need to reference on a moments notice to do their jobs more effectively.

M-learning is vital content that is there when your employees need it. And it’s easy to deploy. Mobile content can be downloaded onto mobile devices from your VPN, website, emailed or transmitted using Wi-Fi networks or via Bluetooth directly from one handheld device to another.

How can organizations use mobile learning?
Here’s how leading organizations can use m-learning to instantly share information
with employees, partners and customers around the globe:
-Marketing Campaigns: Reach out to your customers with targeted content
-Training initiatives: Deliver condensed training material to employees around the
globe
-Meeting notes: Keep employees in the loop with the lastest meeting notes
-Sales Force Initiatives: Quickly roll out new sales initiatives across the enterprise
-New Product Releases: Keep your sales force up to date
-Location Free Support: Provide just-in-time support to mobile and remote
employees
-Technical Specifications: Provide easy to search documentation on all of your
products

Is this for us?
Yes. I think you will find a place for mobile learning in your organization. Your people already have the tools (cell phones, PDA’s). These tools represent an opportunity for learning designers to reconceptualize how we package and distribute learning objects to our learners.

I will follow up in future posts with more thoughts on how to design mobile learning content.

Your thoughts?

I am nearing the 5 month mark of my study of Mandarin with ChinesePod. I will answer your questions right away:

Yes. I am still studying (almost) daily.
Yes. I am continuing to make progress.

I have been seriously busy with work and family commitments over the past few weeks. Normally this busy period would have marked the end of any extracurricular activities, such as language learning.

What is it about the Chinesepod model that has allowed me to continue with my studies? I think it is the flexibility of learning options. I can pick and choose how and when I learn. Most importantly, I can decide on the intensity of my studies. When I have some extra time, I can study a lot. When I am very busy, I can lessen the intensity. But I never have to stop studying.

Here is what is currently working for me:

Daily Podcast: I continue to listen to a daily podcast. When I first started with ChinesePod, I attempted to sequence my podcasts in a logical progession. I spent a lot of time tinkering with the order of my podcasts. Now I am too busy to do that. I just listen daily to topics that interest me. It seems that the less I structure my learning, the more I learn.

Rote listening: I have a playlist on my ipod with Chinese only versions of the daily podcasts that I have listened to over the past 5 months. Each day I listen at least once or twice to the complete playlist. This means that I am repeatedly going over everything I have learned. Again and again until it has become branded onto my brain. This memorization technique is pretty traditional stuff. But it works. See Ken Carroll’s recent post Listening and Learning for more on this, or look at my colleague Dan’s recent post on Back to Basics.

I am aiming for 1 year of continuous study of Mandarin. At the end of this period I will be able to make some solid observations about what it means to be a Web 2.0 learner.