On designing interaction experiences for the next generation of blended learning

Ellen D. Wagner

We live in a world where we send e-mail from our personal digital assis­tants (PDAs) and can shoot a digital movie with our mobile phone and then post it to a personal Web site while waiting at a stoplight. We have real-time on­line chats with colleagues, as well as with family and friends, in the middle of meet­ings. Global positioning services (GPS) make sure we will never be lost again. Text messaging and mobile instant messaging services raise expectations for new vari­eties of telephone and Web services alike. Presence-sensing technologies and peer-to-peer networks take the notion of the "next best thing to being there" to new levels. Connected, converged media surround us in everyday life. The vision of a world where ubiquitous, pervasive, and fully interactive access to information is available for all citizens becomes more real every day.

No vision for the future of learning is complete until we can imagine the power of converged digital and mobile technologies for education, training, and performance support. The potential reach of the mobile and personal device mar­ket alone makes it worth considering the size and range of the opportunities. Malik (2004) recently noted that the 620 million cell phones sold annually are cre­ating insatiable demand for applications and content. When also considering the more than 500 million personal computers estimated to be in use on a global basis (International Data Corporation, 2004), more than 1 billion devices have the potential to create, store, display, and distribute digital content.

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The Handbook of Blended Learning

Significant opportunities currently exist for creators, publishers, distributors, and managers of digital content for industries such as news, media business pub­lishing, and education and training. With the promise of digital device ubiquity, high-quality multimedia content must also be available for mobile phones and PDAs, upping the ante on digital skills competencies in industries beyond art and design. Anecdotal evidence that only 10 percent of the world's population is currently "online" (W. Hodgins, personal communication, August 30, 2004) sug­gests that we are standing at the front edge of a significant adoption curve.

The broad extension of wireless networks continues to raise expectations for what a well-connected world should look like and what should be expected from one's personal—and business—personal communication and computing tools. Civic initiatives, such as OneCleveland (http://ramble.case.edu/its/news/ archives/000103.html), an initiative launched by Case Western Reserve Univer­sity in 2003 to provide public access to broadband wireless computer networks, are now being met by responses from other cities. For example, in June 2004, Mayor John Street of Philadelphia announced plans to make wireless access available for the entire city of Philadelphia (http://www.imakenews.com/ innovationphiladelphia/e_article000300850.cfm?x=b3vn5LM,blNyrLJC).

Clearly, with capabilities for Web conferencing and digital television, stream­ing audio and video, voice-over-IP or digital telephony emerging at the time when the world of cellular communications stands on the early curve of product ubiq­uity, it seems likely that anytime, anywhere access to information is about to be­come the norm. And when considered in the context of continually expanding use of wireless computer networks and the emergence of personal digital devices and handheld computers that provide the necessary power for successful mobile computing, the promise for fully integrated technology in the service of true life­long learning seems within reach.

What kind of demand will there be for digital content for learning? Will flexible digital content make it possible to truly personalize blended learning experiences? Will blended learning give universities and colleges the means of participating in the upcoming digital content revolution?

Digital content currently available for mobile and personal devices tends to feature online services such as news, sports, entertainment, and weather. Down­loads for tones, songs, and digital images are popular with consumers. Two very successful digital content offerings are aimed at personal entertainment, featuring music services and gaming. Mobile device users increasingly demand rich user experiences from the mobile telephone and network services providers.

So where can one find digital educational content? Federated repositories, including but certainly not limited to such initiatives as MERLOT (the Multi­media Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching; www.merlot.org),

On Designing Interaction Experiences for Blended Learning 43

the ARIADNE European Knowledge Pool (http://www.ariadne-eu.org/), and EdNA, the Education Network Australia (http://www.edna.edu.au) continue to grow. Repositories formed around a shared interest encourage discipline-specific content. These repositories feature many file and form types and are created by subject matter experts for peers and students to be available by and for relevant communities of interest and practice. Publishers have created extensive collections of digital learning content to accompany textbooks and are now finding that demand is growing for content that works as a component inside a learning management system. Digital marketplaces such as Macromedia Central (http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/) also look to promote and en­able the exchange of files, applets, and applications for a range of devices including computers, PDAs, communicators, and mobile phones. And while all this activity occurs, connected communication networks continue to extend their reach and capacity, spurring future growth.

The Next Wave of Blended Learning: Education Unplugged

Welcome to a world of occasionally connected, fully interactive digital learning ex­periences. Rich Internet applications for learning take advantage of distribution media such as WiFi and cellular, ethernet and cable, and radio and television and provide rich learning content for the deployment on a variety of digital devices. Whether integrated into face-to-face, formal classes on campus or connected to on­line, self-paced learning (or some combination of both), education unplugged rep­resents an evolution of blended learning that leverages the portability and utility of notebook and tablet computers, Palms and pocket PCs, telephones, communica­tors, and IPods, enabling rich multimedia experiences in a variety of forms.

What instructional paradigm could be better suited for exploiting the potential of education unplugged than blended learning? As education unplugged comes to stand for the body of practice that takes full advantage of digital content for learning, those ever-expanding converged networks will enable rich new opportunities for personal­izing learning to emerge. Portable personal digital devices and flexible learning content represent opportunities for individualizing learning experiences by extend­ing the blended learning paradigm. Now it includes courses and modular content, including both face-to-face and online learning experiences, in whatever combina­tion makes the most sense given the audience, the context, and the criticality. Next-generation blended learning experiences, marked by the integration of mobile and personal devices, will evolve from face-to-face and online instructional blends toward a blend that also features modular content objects for personalizing, customizing, and enriching learning at times, and increasingly on terms, defined by the learner.