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The 98-page toolkit contains 15 mobile learning methods divided into 4 categories that trainers can choose from depending on their needs – whether they’re looking deliver content; assign tasks; gather feedback; or provide support to their training participants.

These methods have been designed to be as inclusive as possible, with most requiring only low end devices (basic mobile phones with voice calling and SMS capability), allowing interactive learning experiences to be delivered right to the Base of the Pyramid.

In addition to the methods, an overview of mobile learning is included in the beginning of the guidebook and a set of practical tools that allow the methods to be immediately put into practice. 

As well as a general guide, the toolkit includes recommendations for customising the methods for the delivery of the “my.coop” training programme currently being launched by the International Labour Organization to teach the principles of managing agricultural cooperatives in developing regions worldwide. The toolkit offers my.coop participants the chance to experience the benefits of mobile learning themselves while also empowering them to use mobile learning methods to reach their own trainees, thus multiplying the impact throughout the entire my.coop training pyramid.

However, the Mobile Learning Toolkit has been designed to have a value not only within the context of this training programme, but for use in the delivery of all kinds of training within any developing context. Anyone can pick up the toolkit and be inspired to use mobile learning.

The toolkit is an open source resource that is available for download below (please view in "Book" mode):

Mobile_Learning_Toolkit_A5.pdf Download this file

The format of the book is A5 portrait. To make it easier to print by users on the field, another version is included below with A4 spreads ready for printing. The graphic identity of the book aims to be clear and simple, with the goal that it will look good and be easily readable even after being printed in black and white and photocopied several times.

Mobile_Learning_Toolkit_-_A4_printing_format.pdf Download this file

email: mlearningtoolkit@gmail.com
twitter: @mlearntoolkit
SMS: +447946385199

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My final master thesis on Mobile Learning for Africa, presenting every phase of the project, from the initial research to the final design work.

Please view in "Book" mode.

Jenni_Parker_thesis_-_Mobile_Learning_for_Africa.pdf Download this file

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I made this video as an introduction to my master thesis project, Mobile Learning for Africa.

Thanks to Chao Shangguan for the help with Flash!

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My thesis project was very well received firstly by my professors at Politecnico di Milano on the 20th of July and then on the 26th of July at the ITC-ILO when I presented my work to my colleagues there. Almost every department of the ITC-ILO was represented at a 2-hour lunch session on mobile learning and I was delighted by the positive response given by all that attended.

A big thank you to all that contributed to this collaborative project and to those who supported me throughout the project - I couldn't have done it without you!!

I'm now proud to present the final results in the posts that follow - an introductory video on the mobile revolution in Africa, my master thesis, and a mobile learning toolkit for use in developing contexts.

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Just came across this video that effectively presents some key statistics about mobile and internet usage in Africa!

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My.COOP_process_24.05.11.pdf Download this file

Various ideas have already been generated along the way, so I'm currently bringing these together as well as generating as many new ideas as possible.

At the same time I'm working with my colleagues to develop a mobile learning prototype that will be tested during the my.coop training pilot, due to take place in Nigeria in June.

I'll post the progress on here as much as possible and if anyone has any feedback or ideas, please do share them!

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personas.pdf Download this file

Following my analysis of the user research results I have developed 4 personas representing different target users/beneficiaries of the my.coop training: the coop manager, the field worker, the professor and the director.

Each profile includes the job profile, technology access and training needs of each persona, which I'll now use to inform and inspire the concept generation process.

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insights.pdf Download this file

Above is a summary of the key insights that came out from the research phase, gained from the analysis of the user research results and the customer journey analysis.

Some suprising needs came out - not least of all the unanimous desire from participants to connect and share experiences with other coop stakeholders around the world.

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My.COOP_telephone_interview_results.pdf Download this file

During April and May I've been conducting interviews with potential participants of the My.COOP training by telephone and over Skype. More details of the methodology of this research and the full results are included in the doc above.

It has been one of the most enjoyable parts of the project so far, to speak to some really inspiring people in Africa doing great work. A huge thank you to those who took part, for your time and enthusiasm!

In total I spoke to 9 people in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania from different organisations within the coop sector at different levels of the My.COOP training pyramid.

Some very interesting results came out of this research, inspiring lots of new ideas for the project!

I'm working on a summary of the key insights from this research and persona profiles of the key users, will post them in the next few days!

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The My.COOP training is no different, and to understand the strategy of delivering this training I made the diagram above. It has a pyramid shape similar to that of the cooperative movement structure, with 4 levels.

At the base, on the first level, there are primary agricultural cooperative societies and other farmers’ organisations that want to become cooperatives. Then on the second level there are secondary cooperative societies, otherwise known as unions. The third level includes national cooperative organisations such as federations; government bodies; cooperative colleges; universities that offer cooperative studies; and NGOs that work with agricultural cooperatives. The top level represents confederations, which operate at national and sometimes at international levels, and international NGOs serving the cooperative movement.

The pyramid shape seems to indicate a hierarchical relationship between the different layers, but this is actually not the case. In reality, a higher organisational layer should be considered to be a service provider to the lower organisational layer. For instance, a cooperative union provides particular services, such as joint marketing, to its member primary cooperatives. The primary cooperatives together decide on the strategy and activities of the cooperative union.

Regarding the target audience of My.COOP we can differentiate users from beneficiaries; users being trainers (mainly from the secondary/tertiary levels) and self learners (mainly from the secondary/primary levels), and beneficiaries: trainees (mainly from the primary level), i.e. cooperative managers. Managers can have a farming activity as well but for the My.COOP training we focus on their manager’s function and not their farmer’s function. In the end, we can assume that if the cooperative is well managed, it will be of benefit to its members/farmers but they are not the target audience of the training package.

Clear?! It's true that it's a bit complicated but I'll soon post the results of my interviews with people working at different levels of the pyramid, in which they told me about their jobs and training needs, which should put it all into context!!

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User research results to come soon from the telephone interviews and the online questionnaire!

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I've had it in mind for a while now to write a post about one of the recurring themes throughout my project: storytelling.

Storytelling is something that is being talked about a lot in the design world lately; to the extent that it is in danger of becoming a generic buzzword. But the concept of storytelling is not generic, it can have many different meanings and purposes depending on the context.

In the realm of learning, storytelling contextualises theory, helping us to understand principles and subsequently put them into practice. This element of contextualisation is particularly pertinent in the context of the My.COOP project as there is an element of standardisation in the written training material, which is intended for eventual use in Africa, Asia and Latin America, across all the different kinds of agricultural cooperatives. The use of mobile phones during the training offers the possibility for tailored interaction with each and every My.COOP participant, and in the context of storytelling, could mean the delivery of stories that help frame the material within the individual's own context.

Storytelling is also a very important concept in the African context. In Africa stories are an important part of the culture, and have a strong influence in the instillment of values and beliefs. 

Aside from contextualisation and value instillment, perhaps the most important factor of all is that as human beings we are drawn to stories, we enjoy them, and for this reason they capture our attention and imagination.

But how can storytelling have value via the medium of mobile phones? In particular, using the most low end technologies of voice calling and SMS?

These questions led me to the concept of microstorytelling.

Rather than a concept born from the character contraints of Twitter or SMS, this is based on the simple notion that you can say a lot with a few words. The forebear is assumed to be Ernest Hemingway who once wrote a miniature masterpiece: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

This inspired the six-word movement (see Twitter #sixwords). Back in 2006, Smith Magazine built a bestselling six-word memoir series out of reader's submissions. That same year, Wired Magazine published six-word science fiction stories.

Inspiration can also be found in micropoetry, made famous by the traditional Japanese haiku, which in recent years has insipired the Twitter poetry or "twaiku" movement (see #twaiku, #haiku, #micropoetry, #micropoem, #poetweet).

Finally, going back to the African context, there is a strong tradition of proverbs and sayings that encapsulate profound principles in a few words. Metaphors and similes feature heavily in these proverbs, which can be a powerful medium of communicating the underlying values of cooperatives and even of education itself: "Knowledge is like a garden; if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested."

I hope to use these inspirations in the concept generation phase and I'm sure the theme of storytelling will be cropping up again on the blog soon!

Links

http://www.sixwordstories.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Word_Memoirs
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html
http://haitotheku.com/
http://twyric.com/
http://www.afriprov.org/

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EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.

This week they're hosting a '5-Day Sprint': a free, weeklong online learning experience from 25-29 April focused on mobile computing.

Today the theme is 'Teaching and Learning', there is an online space for discussions and ideas sharing, plus a webinar that will be online later today.

It's mainly focussed on higher education rather than the kind of the training that My.COOP looks to offer, however some interesting points are raised in this intro video, for example the need for 2-way use of mobile devices in m-learning:

For anyone who wants to join in, it's happening over here:

http://www.educause.edu/Mobile%2BSprint/MobileComputingA5DaySprint/TuesdayTea...

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I came across the Afrographique blog today, a great project by Ivan Colic, who aims to to assist the changing perception of Africa and its people by collecting as much data as possible and presenting the information in an exciting and digestible format to all. Check out the above infographic on African mobile subscriptions plus many more.

Link: http://afrographique.tumblr.com/

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My.COOP_gender_course_interviews.pdf Download this file

So it also makes sense to carry out research with current ITC users and to understand their experience and needs.

On 17th March 2011 I had the great opportunity to attend the evaluation session of an interesting blended course ran by the Gender unit, called 'Capacity Building of Women for Gender Mainstreaming in Economic Development of Policies', which had 28 participants from West (Francophone) Africa.

As well as observing the formal evaluation session I was able to conduct my own interview with a group of 5 participants, you can read the results in the doc above.

Thanks to Paul, Azara, Haby, Adam and Telou for volunteering to speak to me and for sharing your insights!

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My.COOP_expert_interviews.pdf Download this file

The staff at the ITC/ILO have been a great help for me in understanding the ITC course participants and the African context, as they have a lot of experience both at the Turin centre and travelling in the field, where they have made their own observations over time.

From speaking to them (in particular, Tom Wambeke and Coumba Diop from the ITC and Carlien van Empel from the ILO in Geneva) I was able to form a basic profile of the target users of My.COOP, upon which I was able to formulate the next phases of the user research accordingly.

More details in the doc above and thanks to Tom, Coumba and Carlien for your support!

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However, in a user-centred design process ethnographic research would ideally be carried out in the field. In this project we have limited resources for doing that, and so I developed a methodology for the user research that allows us to draw conclusions not only from speaking to the target users of My.COOP but also comparable users, for example African professionals working in other contexts who have a similar lifestyle.

In the above overview you can see the different tracks of the user research that allow us to build a complete picture of the needs of a typical My.COOP user and get inspired for the 'Create' phase. As each track is completed I'll post the results here on the blog!

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This is something that has been at the back of my mind for a while now, so finally I decided to find my own definition of mobile learning or m-learning.

The mobiMOOC wiki defines m-learning as:

Any sort of [technology enhanced] learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies. (Adapted from O'Malley et al., 2003)

However from my perspective (as a newcomer to this field), the integration of technology within this definition is not necessary (even if this seems a bit controversial!). For example, if a task is given to a mobile learner via sms, and they then go off to complete that task, they are not learning through their mobile phone but by their own experience. The phone is just a channel for communication between the learner and the teacher/facilitator.

Therefore I want to take a step back, to firstly break this term down into "mobile" and "learning" and look at the dictionary definitions of these two terms. The Oxford English Dictionary describes them as follows:

mobile

Trying to merge these two concepts, I came up with:

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I have signed up to take part in mobiMOOC, a free online course on mLearning running from 2nd April - 14th May 2011, facilitated by 7 mobile experts. Interested? Join the online google group, the course wiki and enter the mLearning conversation with other peers.

The mobiMOOC course will start with an introduction to mLearning, getting everyone comfortable with some of its key features, and gradually moving into the more complex technical, project planning and philosophical topics. The course will feature mLearning examples from the academic, corporate and non-profit world, and look at both simple and on the edge projects from both the North and South, as the South has been an inspiration for mLearning.

mobiMOOC is a fully online course, which follows the MOOC (Massive, Open, Online Course) format:

This format uses a lot of social media to enable all the participants and the facilitators to stay connected, build a network, exchange experiences.

Links

http://ignatiawebs.blogspot.com/2011/03/join-open-and-free-course-on-mobile.html

http://groups.google.com/group/mobimooc

http://twitter.com/mobiMOOC

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