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Documentation and e-Learning (Part 6): Delivering Courses to Cell Phones

Do you want (or need) to deliver courses or documentation directly to your customers’ cell-phone screens? And would you like to do it without making drastic changes to your LMS? Well, you can start right now, with an easy technique that allows learners to receive courseware and support documents anywhere… through their phones.

The technique uses something called “QR (Quick Response) Codes.” You’ll see these quirky square “bar codes” everywhere in Japan and some European countries… on magazine pages, advertisements, coupons, store windows, product packages, billboards, taxis, busses, and even caps, scarves, T-shirts, and tattoos. The Japanese have even covered whole skyscrapers with them. Then when someone points their cell-phone camera at one of these codes (wherever it is) and “scans” or photographs it, their hand-held device launches the web URL, displays the text, calls the number, or shows the Short Message Service (SMS) message that was “linked” to the code.

Many e-Learning Applications

The ways that QR Codes can be used in e-Learning, blended training, and even product documentation are limited only by your imagination. They could, for example:

•    Bring mobile-phone learners directly to your training portal, to enroll in and take online courses.
•    Enable cell-phone users to view assignments, reference/reading lists, and other training-support materials in subways, busses, taxis, or anywhere… without using PCs.
•    Allow classroom attendees to call up building maps, class schedules, and other useful information from QR Codes posted throughout the facility or campus.
•    Permit students in training rooms without PCs to access extra information and resources through their phones.
•    Allow students taking physical training (like fire-fighting and police drills) to receive information on their phones that’s pertinent to where they are and what they are doing at the time.
•    ”Tag” objects in physical training settings, so that students can view usage/safety guidelines and instructional videos about them.
•    Build online training catalogs with both web links (for PC users) and corresponding QR Codes (for mobile users).
•    Let students at training PCs display extra information and resources on their phones, through QR Codes in printed class materials, course screens, Adobe Flash movies, PowerPoint slides, and PDFs.
•    Send students’ cell phones to Google Earth destinations that are pertinent to course material.
•    Take online or class students to assessment pages that run presentations and ask questions about them.
•    Collect course/lesson feedback through SMS messages.
•    Make e-Learning materials accessible to people who don’t have computers or can’t use them (but who can use cell phones).
•    Allow users to view product documentation “in the field”… without using a PC.

A simple four-step process is all that’s needed to pull this off in your e-Learning projects:

•    Create the QR-Codes you’ll need using a free web service.
•    Tell your mobile learners how to get free QR Code reader software into their cell phones.
•    Put your QR-Codes in your training sites, online course pages, and support materials.
•    Tell your mobile learners how to scan the codes.
Here’s more about each of these steps:
Create Codes
You can create QR Codes for your e-Learning screens and materials through many online  generators, including:
•    Adobe AIR
•    I-Nigma
•    Kaywa
•    Snappr.net
For example, to use Kaywa’s generator:
1.    Open  Kaywa’s code generator page.
2.    Select URL, Text, Phone Number, or SMS in the Content type area.
3.    Enter the URL or other content that the QR Code will actually launch in the Content area (http:// is already included… and necessary… for URL content).
4.    Select the Size (M or L is usually fine).
5.    Click Generate!
6.    Right-click the QR Code that appears, save it, and then put it in any Word document, spreadsheet, Adobe Photoshop image, Microsoft PowerPoint slide, online HTML course page, class handout, and so on.
7.    Cell phone users can then launch the encoded content by photographing or scanning the image.
Snappr.net is another interesting generator. After you create your free account, you can link QR Codes to URLs images, polling/voting applications, and music files. Also of interest for e-Learning programs is their:
•    MMS, which supports users whose cell phones don’t have available QR Code readers. They can capture a QR Code with their phone’s camera, email the image to Snappr@Sannpr.net, receive a link back to the content hosted on Snappr.net, and then use their phone’s web browser to launch the link.
•    Geo-targeting controls, which can trigger alternative content based on user location.
So you will also want to tell your mobile learners how easy it is to photograph/scan these codes, wherever they see them during their training.
Load Code Readers
Cell-phone and iPhone users can go to Several Web sites to determine if free QR Code reader software is available for their device. And if so, they can usually download it directly into their device. (In out tests, the “Messenger” scanner  in many BlackBerry devices also launched web content from QR Codes.)

Here are just a few sites for finding a reader:

•    Barcode
•    I-Nigma
•    Kaywa
•    Quickmark

Once a reader is activated in the user’s phone, it’s easy to read the codes. Depending on the phone and reader software, the user simply takes a snapshot of the QR Code or scans the phone’s camera across it. The linked content then appears on the phone’s screen.

You can tell your mobile learners about these QR-Code reader sites through emails, ticklers, and your online training portal.
Try it Yourself!
If you’d like to see how all this works, load a QR Code reader into your own cell phone or iPhone. (If you use a BlackBerry, it may already have one.) Then search the web for “QR Code” and scan or shoot some of the samples you’ll find. See where they take you.
Factors to Consider

While QR Codes are easy to set up and use, here are some points to keep in mind:

•    Phones without cameras can’t be used.

•    Mobile devices may soon be able to scan and interpret ordinary text through their cameras. This could make QR Codes unnecessary. But even if this occurs, QR Codes are less tedious to enter than URLs. And they are fun to use! This will always appeal to some, which may be why the BlackBerry includes its own QR-compatible reader… to enhance its youth appeal.

•    Traditional website designs often require too much scrolling, panning, expanding, and squinting for easy navigation on mobile screens. It takes a powerful device with a big display to ease the strain. So some page redesign on your end could help.

Or you could contact someone like Brand Attention (http://www.brandattention.mobi/mobile.php), who redesigns web pages for easier display on mobile screens. When their own page opens, notice how its content and navigation controls run down the left side of the screen in a narrow, mobile-readable band. We viewed it on several phones at SyberWorks, and this technique worked well.

So think about making similar mobile-friendly duplicates of your existing e-Learning pages. Then, convert the page URLs to QR Codes, and learners who scan them will go directly to these pages through their phones.

•    Depending on your target users, your LSM may or may not need to be altered to handle QR codes. Most existing LMS web sites CAN be navigated by cell-phone browsers, though this usually requires a bit of scrolling. If this isn’t a particular problem in your application, then QR Codes can bring users to your existing LMS and pages without major modification. For instance, a retail store where I once worked suffered from an all-too-common training weakness. Training PCs locked behind back-room doors described products that were out on the sales floors. This did not permit real-world reinforcement through touching and testing the products themselves. This training would have become immediately more effective if the LMS just let employees log into the training system through their cell phones. Employees could then walk around the store, scan codes beside products, and view descriptions, usage instructions, sales pointers, and demos during their training sessions. All this material would come from the existing training-page URLs… but it would now reach cell-phone screens through QR Codes throughout the store. (Regular shoppers’ phones would not deliver this data, if it is delivered as part of the password-protected training session.)

But if you really want to give mobile users the easiest possible access to your LMS and course materials, you probably WILL need to redesign your e-Learning pages for mobile use. Your own in-house experts (or firms like Brand Attention, mentioned above) can do that… though it will require both need and commitment! For example, let’s say that you need to train customer reps to repair PCs, cars, or other consumer products. Like the above retail store, you could run them through a battery of online pages in some remote training room… and let them try to practice from notes and memory out in the shop floor. Or, you could redesign your LMS functions and layouts for easy access in the shop floor where practice units are located. Then, students can begin training by scanning a QR Code that calls up the login screen, and then view demo videos on their phones through QR Codes for each procedural step.

About the Author

Dave Powell is Documentation Manager for SyberWorks Inc., a privately-held supplier of e-Learning software and training. For the past 15 years, he has written award-winning marketing collateral and user documentation for hardware/software companies like PictureTel, 3Com, Philips Medical Systems, Polaroid, and SyberWorks. Prior to that, he edited and wrote for publications like Computerworld, Infosecurity News, Networking Management, Digital Design, LightWave, Popular Computing, Harvard Business Review, and Leaders. (During that time, he also served as an author and Editorial Advisor for Sesame Street.)

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