Mobile phone novels, keitai shosetsu, are now dominating the fiction best-selling list in Japan, a country at the forefront of technology development and adoption. The novels are divided into sections, which phone users can read between two stops on the Japanese subway after downloading them from publishers’ websites. The novels are also written on mobile phones.

As mobile devices with Internet access become more common, the era of mlearning is certainly upon us. In a recent presentation at the Learning Technologies conference, Gordon Bull of Learning Forte presented these mobile phone novels as evidence of the degree to which people are using technologies on the move; his point was that commuting is an obvious period that could be used for mobile learning.

However, making mlearning ubiquitous still faces challenges, perhaps the most prominent being the different mobile operating systems. According to Bull. “It’s quite challenging to deliver to different technology; although, it would be easier if mobiles were used for corporate learning which are on a common system.’

Bull suggests the real inhibitors are the different resolutions and screen sizes of the various devices. And while certain websites already exist that can reconfigure a single source into different formats to be sent to various mobile devices, sending a large amount of data to mobiles - such as video - is still costly, and many phones are still 2G, which can typically handle digital voice transmission, text and messaging, but not large quantities of data, audio or video.

For now, Bull thinks that some of the best mobile learning is text-based. Voice files are also a good option to consider for mobile learning currently, according to Bull, as shown by increasing numbers of commuters downloading the news to listen to on the way home.

In the future, Bull envisages that one growth area for mobile learning could be augmented reality. It is already used in the aircraft construction industry, with workers getting performance prompts as they move on to the next activity.

For more, be sure to check out the full article at BCS