Collaborative & Mobile Learning in the US Military

The US Military has always striven to enhance training with technology, and pioneered e-learning when the Army Signal School stared to experiment with using television for training in the 1950s, and when the Air Force Institute of Technology began using commercial phone networks to deliver instructional content in the 1970s. In 1996, the Army created a distance learning program for troops to access college degree programs over a combination of Internet and satellite teleconferencing. Recently, the US military has been embracing the training potential of collaborative and mobile learning.

Determining the Benefits of Online Learning

In my previous post, I explored how to determine the costs of an online learning program by modeling and comparing the projected costs of a classroom-based training program to those of an online training program. However, modeling the costs is relatively easier than determining the financial and educational benefits of an online learning program.

Modeling the Costs of Online Learning Programs

In determining whether to implement an online learning program, any organization, whether it is a company implementing a new training program or a school implementing an learning management system, costs and benefits need to be scrutinized. Often organizations will forgo the benefits of an online or blended approach to learning in favor of traditional classroom based instruction, as they only consider the higher upfront costs of online learning. However, online learning programs can result in substantial cost savings over several years due to their lower recurring costs.

Mobile Learning Gangnam Style

Mobile devices have long been a bane for educators in the traditional classroom setting. When I first started delivering SAT preparation programs for Kaplan in South Korea a decade ago, my colleagues and I had to take extreme measures, and collect mobile phones from students at the start of each class. I was teaching in the Gangnam district of Seoul, Korea, in the early 2000's, where Korea's Miracle on the Han economic boon had produced an upper class wealthy enough to send their children to prestigious boarding schools in the US, and then to SAT prep courses back in Seoul over the summer holiday. This was Gangnam Style SAT prep, as the students had the latest LG or Samsung phones, carried to class in Gucci, Prada, or Louis Vuitton bags.

The Value of Social Networks in Education

In my previous post, I discussed some recent ways in which schools are incorporating social media into their pedagogy. The use of Facebook and Twitter in education will probably always be fraught with controversy, and thus some education institutions are turning to private social networks as a way to utilize the positive aspects of social networks. However, the issue still remains whether social networks can benefit education and not just add another burden for educators or be a detriment to learning.

Social Media in Education

Social media has a great deal of potential for education. Ever since the advent of social communities and collaboration in education technology, such as the pioneering PLATO Learning System, powerful tools have been developed that enable learners to collaborate on documents, share thoughts, obtain feedback on questions or ideas, and to be able to interact with their peers and instructors outside of the traditional classroom time and space. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education highlights some of the recent methodologies and research regarding the uses of social networks in learning.

However, while social media tools, such as Facebook or Twitter, can be very useful for the learning process, they are not without their downsides.

Revisiting PLATO, a Pioneering Learning Technology

Growing up in Urbana, Illinois in the 1980's, I was fortunate that my school district was privy to the PLATO Learning System, created and managed by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a child, I was able to access PLATO, an innovative system that pioneered the first online community and e-learning systems. The plasma touchscreen was a true precursor of today's tablet computers, and the system provided messaging and chat rooms before anyone had a computer at home, much less an internet connection.