Director, Online and Emerging Product Strategy

Early in 2010, I was thinking a lot about the forthcoming device that Apple was going to introduce that April later to become known as the iPad. There was a huge build-up of angst in the digerati on everything from rumored features to its use potential. No one even knew what to call it or how to classify the product with the three most popular potential categories being: slate, tablet and pad. Eventually, tablet won out. Everyone knew it was going to have a touch screen, but most were unsure of things like whether it would have a camera, or whether it was going to run iPhone’s iOS or big brother Mac OS. The build up was a marketer’s dream.

Since the world had been introduced to the phenomenally-successful iPhone (and iPod Touch) in June 2007, we had a lot to go on – or so we thought. Like so many other products, the iPhone was a thing of design beauty. Apple had once again made the killer consumer device that everyone had to have, or wished they could afford. The app world was off and running with Apple blazing the trail! For educators, the iPhone was the real beginning of mobile learning.

The iPhone put mobile learning on the map and in the palm of your hand. But the iPad was different. I remember thinking…it’s just going to be a big iPhone. How naïve I was. Yes, in some sense it is a big iPhone, but I failed to recognize how the form factor ultimately set in motion a paradigm shift in mobile learning. The screen size, the responsiveness, and the Apple ecosystem had just blown up online learning.

My colleague, Todd Hitchcock, and I wrote in the article Learning On The Run about this disruption. In summary, we believe tablets will transform learning across four key areas:

 Connectivity/Access While traditional online learning means being tethered to a computer, the mobile device truly provides for everywhere learning.

 Immediacy The speed at which the iPad and iPhone power on gives students the ability to jump into learning instantaneously.

 Learning Modality These devices are part of a new class and do bring a new array of tools that are effective for learning. Touch screens, location awareness, sensors, etc can all be utilized in challenge-based or experiential learning.

 Continuous Learning simply put, the rigid towers of education are tumbling down. Mobile devices foment the sea of change from traditional education to new forms of education that will take place largely outside of the ivory towers.

To those ends, we see the evolution of our CourseConnect™ e-learning product as an exercise in continuous innovation. Besides constantly improving the content and educational model, we need to make sure the learner using new and innovative device technologies can experience it.

CourseConnect™ had always only been accessible via a web browser on a traditional computer. Recently, the team enabled the ability for an iPad user to experience the Lesson Presentations at the heart of CourseConnect™ in an optimized presentation. Fully-interactive and beautifully-designed, it draws the learner into the personal learning experience for which we believe the iPad is so well-suited. Perhaps the most significant alignment to the four areas of change above is that of learning modality. The iPad, with its array of capabilities allows for learning in new ways using the GPS, the sensors, and the hundreds of thousands of apps. The iPad-optimized learning experience adds a new dimension to CourseConnect™ previously unavailable. The intense, personal experiences that the iPad allows for can only be viewed with dramatic positive outcomes for learners.

Join the conversation: What do you think about the iPad as a mobile learning tool?