Mobile Learning Essentials - Cultural Factors

An organizational culture is defined as a collection of thoughts, values and beliefs shared within the organization. With its large, encompassing and far reaching effects, mobile learning can introduce many changes in the organization cultures of an organization.

On the plus side, it opens up opportunities for people to explore and bring in new approaches to departments who were working in silos. On the flip side, it could bring about a huge restructuring of the organizations’ culture to include the many points of view that the different remotely working, contract based service providers are catering.

In today’s world, every company has to constantly re-invent its working methodology to adapt to the fast changing environment. Companies that weren’t very responsive earlier have been made answerable due to the word of mouth information sharing that is made possible due the use of social media. In today’s time, a company needs to be comfortable with the idea that some of the best thoughts could come from not their managers, but their interns by their questioning the organization’s working methodologies after comparing it with what other companies are doing. Mobile learning will enable them to do this.

This helps bridge the gap between the so-called Brains of the Organization and a genuine aspirant, who keeps himself abreast with all the modern changes happening in the real world. The next big idea could come from any managerial or departmental level now, thanks to mobile learning.

It helps in keeping the management on its toes in an effort to constantly re-evaluate their roles and their contribution to the organization. These changes happen because mobile learning provides a boundary-less, unrestricted and unregulated access to information. Now, no one can claim monopoly on talent and knowledge.

Keeping such a wide perspective in mind, the most important questions that can be asked of mobile learning as a substitute for traditional training in the classroom are −

• Does mobile learning reduce the interaction time between employees or students?
• Is this substitution in pedagogy bringing in a positive transformation?
• Has the mobile learning approach been accepted positively?
• Is everyone getting equally benefitted from mobile learning? Who is getting marginalized?
• What will be the ration of positive changes vs. drawbacks of mobile learning in the working environment?

Mobile learning can be one of the most effective methods of breaking down the lines of distinction between formal and informal learning. Today, teachers happily don the roles of facilitators and refer students to any one the many instructional videos available online.

Let us now understand the difference between – Video, Audio and Text tutorials.

Video Tutorials vs Audio Tutorials vs Text Tutorials

Where most learners prefer video tutorials over text tutorials because of the illustration-backed understanding that the former provides, many people have started gravitating towards audio tutorials off late, because they feel “disoriented” when referring to video content.

They report a high level of distraction and prefer audio learning. Audio enabled eBooks have become a great success in recent times. In the same breath, it has been observed that people prefer interactive online training where they can ask questions any time, much more than going simply going through stock videos.

The interesting point here is that this person sitting miles away would be describing a complex concept in simple language, without having a degree on the subject. In this case, it was his explaining powers that held more importance compared to his lack of an academic qualifications.

More people can be engaged through this concept which makes the entire effort more collaborative and productive. Not only this, cultural boundaries are broken as different people get to know about one another’s culture and interact with one another.

This not only builds a multi-cultural team, but also enhances a mutual tolerance towards different cultures. Cultural sensitivity could be one of mobile learning’s biggest assets. Instead of people working in culturally profiled sub-groups, the entire organization can now work as a huge team.