M-Learning Through CareerHub: Moving Workforce Light Years Ahead

Greetings Everyone-

We have been VERY busy the last few months at Pathways Consultants. One of the things that really troubles us in the field of workforce development is how little we use technology to effectively engage our clients, and we lack a smart solution to verifying employment. Introducing CareerHub, our brand new web app! CareerHub texts, emails, and calls our clients to:

1. get employment data;
2. keep them engaged and provide coaching, reminders for events and mobile learning.

CareerHub is also a platform to deliver digital gift cards, called eBoosts, sent via email and text for top brands (Starbucks, Walmart, Staples, Dominos Pizza, and Best Buy) to reward and encourage participation. 

We have been lucky to be part of the California Workforce Investment Board Accelerator Pilot Projects to determine effective strategies for virtual service delivery. We are partnering with Opportunity Junction and Bay Area Community Resources to design and pilot a number of virtual services, including M-Learning (mobile learning) strategies delivered via CareerHub. We thought we'd share some of initial learnings on global M-Learning efforts. Follow our progress on Twitter and watch for our upcoming crowd-funding campaign.

What is M-Learning? M-learning refers to the use of mobile devices such as tablets, mobile phones and smart phones for pedagogical purposes. Phrases such as “handheld learning” and “handheld technology” are also encountered; their semantic focus on the hand stresses the shift from traditional e-learning which focuses more on desktop or laptop computing.

Types of M-Learning

Contact and Communication: Reminders, rescheduling, updates, late or missing students

Direct Teaching: Asking questions, sharing, quizzes, tasks

Teaching Related: Personalized support, motivational messages, feedback on lectures, alerts

Examples

Mobil Skole: Olso, Norway

http://www.mobilskole.no/ Contact and Communication

SMS messages are used to provide a secure channel for communication between the school and parents, particularly in relation to truancy and other behavioral issues. The school uses a positive approach to communication, providing parents with supportive messages and positive reinforcement about their children’s performance and behavior, rather than negative feedback. The school has reported that using Mobil Skole has had a positive impact on attendance in all grades. Approximately 200 schools in Norway are currently using the Mobil Skole system to streamline communication in a variety of ways. The schools have noted that parental cooperation has improved since the Mobil Skole system was implemented, and attendance at parent evenings has risen from around 60% to over 80%.

Student Messenger: University of Ulster, Ireland	http://www.ulster.ac.uk/ Contact and Communication;  Teaching Related
Student messenger, a computer program that allows university staff to contact students via SMS text messaging. Student Messenger was used to send administrative and ‘supportive’ text messages to a cohort of first year students.

Poll Everywhere	http://www.polleverywhere.com/ Direct Teaching Interactions
Faculty in large university classrooms can set up instant and polls to question their class. Students can respond to polls via a web browser, text and twitter. Professors can ask both open and closed questions and get instant student feedback to check for understanding or engage reluctant learners.

Grassroots Soccer, Generation Skillz, South Africa	http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/ Direct Teaching Interactions
Grassroot Soccer uses SMS technology to reach students with HIV prevention messaging. In collaboration with Witwatersrand’s Reproduction Health and HIV Institute and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. GRS is studying the uses of SMS texting as a way to reinforce key themes in a health education curriculum for girls.

Mobile-Based Post Literacy Programme, Pakistan

http://www.unesco.org.pk/education/mlp.html Direct Teaching Interactions

The main objective of the project is to develop a mobile-based literacy programme where the newly literates receive literacy materials as programme is designed not only to provide appropriate reading materials to learners in order to maintain and develop their literacy skills through a messages on a mobile phone, which they read and then respond to. This medium which has become an indispensable means of communication among youths today, but also to promote knowledge concerning many aspects of life and to teach learners about and familiarize them with technological advancements. Messages containing pedagogically correct, but fun and interesting, topics will be sent to post-literates. Girls receive up to 6 messages in Urdu per day.

Youth Empowerment Through Mobile Learning, Thailand

https://www.facebook.com/youthpowers Teaching Related

More than 1,600 young Thais have been receiving short messages from UNESCO Bangkok every day through Facebook and telephone SMS. The messages contain quotes from well-known people around the world from successful business executives and movie stars to scientists.  Translated into Thai, the messages focus on three elements: mental skills (life and happiness, attitude, work and learning); cognitive skills (our own strength and weakness, personal values, goals and leadership); and technical skills (communication and relationship).  UNESCO Bangkok has been implementing “Youth Empowerment through Mobile Learning Project” in collaboration with the Office of the Non-Formal and Informal Education, Ministry of Education, Thailand to encourage youth, especially students in Non-Formal Education to build self-motivation and essential life skills, find competencies, purpose in life and internal peace, and to introduce to them the concept of lifelong learning.

Presemo, University of Helsinki Pilot

http://presemo.helsinki.fi/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acgnl2yJIEc All categories

Presemo is an easy-to-use tool that allows university faculty to activate the audience at various events. Presemon allows faculty to create surveys, collect feedback, to test the level of expertise, to create polls or organize community-based chat conversations.  Presemo is suitable for use in teaching, for example, mass lectures, teaching sessions, group meetings, conferences, functions and events.  The system works using keywords. Students send a text message to the college’s SMS number, which triggers an email to the appropriate person or department depending on the keywords used. For example, a text message from a student containing the word ‘safe’ will automatically generate an email to the college welfare team, which enables the welfare team to contact the student quickly and directly. Teachers can use the system to set up class mailing lists that distribute information to students on their mobile phones. The system is synchronized with the college’s information management system, so that teachers can send text messages to students without having to log in separately to the SMS system. The timing of texts can be set in advance, so that reminders about homework and exams can be sent to students automatically. Messages from students are sent as both emails and texts, so teachers can receive and access messages from their personal computer as well as their mobile device.