Microlearning and Roadmapping Voigt Et Al 2012

7/31/2019 Microlearning and Roadmapping Voigt Et Al 2012

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Roadmapping enterprise (micro-)learning:

Needs, trends and potential game changersChristian Voigt1; Teresa Holocher-Ertl1; Fabrizio Giorgini2

1 Centre for Social Innovation (Austria), 2 eXact Learning (Italy)

Abstract: The influential role of contextual factors in determining success or failure of e-learning initiatives is widelyacknowledged, yet systematic approaches to catpture, analyse and possibly instrumentalise these factors are still rare. Thispaper presents a three stages roadmapping process including : (1) the appreciation of existing needs, visions and challenges,(2) the alignment of locally perceived drivers and globally unfolding trends and (3)the anticipation of potential gamechangers. Each stage is illustrated with data from the corporate sector, discussing the conditions under which microlearninghas to assert itself in the future.

1 IntroductionFive years ago, Teemu Leinonen (Leinonen, 2007) started his contribution to the 2007 microlearning conferencewith the observation that many e-learning investments seem to resemble a series of failures rather thansuccesses. Leinonen concludes his critical evaluation, adding that, after all, technology can only make a

relatively small contribution to the success of learning. This might sound familiar to all who have taught orlearned online. It seems that although barriers to large scale success keep disappearing (e.g. ever moreincreasing access to bandwidth and mobile devices, touch- and gesture based technologies improving userexperiences or many web 2.0 applications empowering end-users) the expected break-through is not coming.

In this paper, we describe and present first results of a roadmapping approach to technology enhanced learning(TEL), which is meant to ensure the taking into account of latest findings concerning new technologies trends aswell as societal reactions to these new technologies. The former is crucial to our ability to take advantages ofupcoming opportunities (e.g. Web2.0-like user engagement) and avoid blind alleys (e.g. discontinued standards,disappearing operating systems or devices). The latter reflects the increasing need for stakeholder involvement,as in our experience, generic TEL roadmaps tend to be somewhat arbitrary in the selection of visions, trends andbarriers they include.

The underlying idea is to produce stakeholder specific roadmaps, where the deployment area is still large

enough to generate a sizeable impact and confined enough to keep the complexity of contextual factorsmanageable (e.g. a roadmap for Microlearning in corporations). However, the process of roadmappingdepends more on the roadmaps application area (e.g. the corporate, public or non-profit sector) and less on anovel paradigm such as microlearning. Hence, the title of this paper contains only a bracketed micro- beforelearning, as contextual factors are likely to apply to other learning formats as well.

Recalling Leinonens observation, we argue that our experiences of success and failure depend largely on ourprior expectations and knowledge of what will be feasible in the future. Hence, roadmaps serve as strategiclenses, magnifying future threads and opportunities, as well as outlining various possible scenarios (Phaal,Farrukh, & Probert, 2010). However, this magnifying function requires a) frequent exchanges concerningpotential game changers and b) views and background knowledge of multiple stakeholders.

The paper makes use of some initial results: interviewing SMEs, surveying TEL providers, and mining TELrelated blog posts to illustrate the various stages of the suggested roadmapping process. The paper starts out byintroducing the two main roadmapping principles: interactivity and contextualisation. Both principles lead to aroadmapping process with three phases: (1) capturing existing needs and visions as a starting point; (2) aligninglocal drivers and sectorial / global developments and (3) thinking about less likely but still crucial changes.

2 Context-aware roadmapping of microlearning using PESTL categoriesMicrolearning is often defined in terms of time spent on learning, size of content involved as well as theease with which the underlying infrastructure connects learners and content, adding a third dimension type andfrequency of interactions(Hug & Friesen, 2007). Nonetheless, microlearning is often assumed to bepedagogically agnostic multiple choice exercises fit the bill just as well as self-directed knowledge questsbased on blog posts, images, events, URLs or videos (Leene, 2006). Lindner (2007) suggests a number ofcharacteristics that figure microlearning as a new learning paradigm, steering disruptive behaviours aroundmicro-content:

a) seamless integration: learning is part of everyday work and live practices, so that micro-content is notperceived as disjoint or incomplete;


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b) peripherical consumption: rather than demanding learners full attention, microlearning acknowledgesthat many tasks actually consist of multiple, partially overlapping tasks which include searching,filtering and evaluating information as well as producing and disseminating self-authored information;

c) emergent motivation: learning situations are less predictable even at a relatively high level so thatfew points of reference exist to generate built-in motivation, the most likely fix-point remains to bethe user interface;

Those attempts to define microlearning are not yet exhaustive, especially in light of the often highlighted multi-perspective, polyvocal and international discourse around the concept but they are a good starting point toargue for the need of context-aware roadmapping. For a systematic coverage of context, an often usedinstrument are PESTL categories (political, economic, societal, technological and legal) (Burt, Wright,Bradfield, Cairns, & van der Heijden, 2006). Most PESTL dimensions are already in use, so we are notsuggesting something entirely new, rather we call for a more systematic and balanced consideration of multiplefactors influencing learning.

For example, the above views on microlearning reveal very concrete assumptions about the changing nature ofknowledge and knowledge sources: short-lived, less coherent and more distributed then before (Hug & Friesen,2007). Learning under these circumstances is meant to become an integral part of (short) task flows or a networkof tasks, executed simultaneously, across multiple media, following continuously shifting foci (ibid.). However,if we bring in assumptions about the knowledge needed in todays knowledge economy (social dimension) andprevailing conditions for knowledge acquisition we will have a debate about the economic andpoliticaldimensions of learning as well.

A case in point has been described in Fiedler and Kieslingers (2006) discussion of institutional setups impedingaccess to technologies or peers in ways which are neither technologically nor didactically necessary. More andmore experts call for putting individuals in charge of their networks as in personal learning environments orbringing their own devices (Attwell, 2007). However, for organisations such as enterprises or schools thesedecisions have concrete economical consequences, as learners depend on providers, maintainers and managersof services which more often than not are part of the institutional setting (Hug & Friesen, 2007).

3 Interactive roadmappingInteractive roadmapping creates purpose-built, dynamically updated roadmaps, it is meant to be a response to

ever faster changes in organisations environments (Cetindamar, Phaal, & Probert, 2009). Companies surveyedabout the success factors of roadmapping, highlighted factors such as involving the right people, access torequired information and a clear understanding of linking options to business impacts (Phaal, Farrukh, &Probert, 2001). Key to addressing these factors is understanding roadmapping as an iterative, collaborativeprocess.

Figure 1 depicts a simplified, iterative roadmapping process where a sectors specific vision is mapped againstthreats and opportunities at a larger scale. Mapping means (a) capturing current visions about the future ofTEL in a sector / organisation and (b) feeding a vision building process with global developments (e.g. emergingmarkets, demographic developments, political agendas).

Figure 1: Interactive roadmapping

An aknowledged challenge of interactive roadmapping is maintaining the interest of the people involved (Phaal,et al., 2001). There is a substantial difference between industry roadmaps (setting inter-company agendas) and ageneric technology roadmap (combining organisational goals with marketplace trends) (Kappel, 2001). The

roadmapping process described in this paper comes closest to an industry roadmap: learning technology in acorporate environment.


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4 Roadmapping stages: Apreciation, allignment and anticipationA more concrete outline of the actual steps leading up to the final roadmap are depicted in Figure 2 describingthree phases: (1) raising awareness (appreciation) of existing needs, visions and challenges, (2) the alignment oflocally perceived drivers and globally unfolding forces and (3) making an extra effort to anticipate gamechangers. The latter is a necessary addition as roadmaps fit well with predictable change but are notoriously badhandling disruptive changes (Kappel, 2001).

Figure 2: Pull and push perspective on the roadmapping process

Each phase is matched with a particular data collection method. This matching is somewhat opportunistic,

reflecting our access to the data and alternative ways of operationalizing the three phases would be possible. Theparticular steps will be described in more detail in the next section, however, the combination of push and pullactivities is crucial for establishing appropriate knowledge flows within the participating organisations, linkingthe internal and external context of the roadmapping process (Phaal, et al., 2001).

The data used to illustrate the three stages are all related to the corporate sector. As outlined in Figure 2, weanticipate 3 phases for each iteration. For the first phase we use data from an informal survey concerninge-learning need in areas as different as the packaging industry in Spain or the tourism industry in Austria. Thesecond phase involves a survey of 45 TEL providers about the drivers as they see it and lastly, phase three,includes crow sourcing TEL related blog posts.

4.1 Stage 1: Raising awareness of needs and issuesIn preparation of a project bid involving microlearning technologies we interviewed four different sectors andtheir representative associations about their e-learning needs. We asked them, where in their respectiveindustries e-learning would have the greatest impact.

Travel Agencies (Austria): Austrian small and medium travel agencies and their umbrella organization considerthemselves first of all as handicraft businesses offering high quality, personalised services in contrast tolarger industrialised tourism suppliers. They see a huge potential for e-learning based on two reasons:(1) There is the quickly changing and challenging field of computational support available to travel agencies andcustomers themselves are more technologically savvy and expect services to be extended into the virtual realmas well. (2) Given the existence of alternative services, there is a constant need for innovative products. Here alively community of practice could be very helpful. Some SMEs have already such communities operatinginformally as professionals gather to talk about innovations, exchanging experiences and also producing theoccasional tutorial to disseminate lessons learned more widely.

Packaging Industry (Spain): Plastic transforming SMEs in Spain saw a huge need for specialised training

targeting novel process and materials in the industry but also learning about relevant markets was mentionedas an important issue to be addressed often, companies need complementary services and skills in order toinnovate and develop new niche markets (e.g. nano-materials or biodegradable plastics).

Tourism for Leisure Industry (Italy): The tourism & entertainment industry is continuously growing and sawmajor tasks for e-learning in the training of new and temporary employees in areas such as marketing, food &restaurant, management, attractions, etc.

Photovoltaic Industry (Greece) Greece has the highest density of solar energy in Europe, and there is a biginterest for further investment on that field. Companies in that sector are dedicated to wafer production,inverters, installation and tracking systems installation, in order to maximize the solar energy exploitation. Theirlearning needs focused on learning about new materials or new methods concerning installation, maintenanceand smart metric technologies. However, a challenge to their industry are rapidly changing market trends andinvestment fund policies, playing an important role when technical personal is confronted with questions

concerning future business.Impllications for microlearning at the workplace


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The literature on workplace learning points to a few challenges in general, which havent been mentionedexplicitly in our interviews but which need to be accounted for when implementing corporate e-learning. Skillsdevelopment is often more of a by-product of work rather than the focus of a dedicated learning process itself.Much of the learning that is present in businesses can be characterised as informal learning. From amicrolearning point of view, informality is reflected in the self-directed ways with which learners access micro-content or contact peers. From the point of view of the employer, such short learning activities are often the

most appropriate and rational responses to ensuring that employees have sufficient skills to meet the currentrequirements of their jobs (Johnson, 2002). According to Cross (2006) knowledge workers receive theirknowledge to 70-90% informally on the job.

Another aspect of corporate learning is the lack of adequate and cost-effective learning resources. Smallerorganisations which are specialized in niche markets tend to find existing training material insufficientlyadequate for their learning needs as it was the case with the spannish packaging industry. Hence micro-learning applications need to provide tools and formats for user driven content production. Whilesimultaneously taking care of trust and quality assurance issues (Procter, Williams, & Stewart, 2009).

4.2 Stage 2: Alligning local issues global trendsFor the second phase, we used a survey on drivers of TEL in the corporate sector as seen by TEL providers,again reflected against drivers studied in the literature. The survey was disseminated online as well as promoted

during various TEL fairs.

Figure 3: Survey of TEL providers (n=45)

Figure 3 shows who responded and which roles they had in their companies. Respondents come from elevencountries and almost a third had a managerial role. However, in terms of having a vision of the future, thepicture is rather mixed. Asked for their companys products in 5 years time, half of the respondants did notanswer or assumed no changes, another 18% stated they wouldnt know.

When we asked for drivers that would cause TEL to change in the next 5 years, we got a further unbalancedimpression. After classifying the drivers mentioned in the survey according to the PESTL categories, a cleardominance of socio-technical and economic factors became evident (Figure 4). Under the current climate, thismight be an understandable response; however assuming a more strategic roadmapping perspective, a more

balanced coverage of potential drivers is desirable.

Figure 4: Classification of TEL drivers (n=45)


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Table 1 lists examples for the three main categories. Political drivers were seen in the actions from the boardsof education concerning curriculum development (less relevant to corporate learning). Legal drivers includedmandated compliance trainings (health & safety) and learning about data protection.

Table 1: Example response for social, technical and economical drivers

Social Technical Economical

Innovative pedagogicalsolutions (new forms forlearning)

Quick, short, inspirationallearning bits

Self-improvement andcompetitive edge

Social learning & blendedlearning

Emotional connection tolearning materials

ease of use Authoring technology keeps

getting better and thereforesoftware to create virtualreality solutions will help toincrease the importance of thistechnology

Ubiquitous access from alldevices

Cloud services Collaborative workspaces

Human Capital Managementsolutions

Translated into Business goals Better job, more money,

compete with colleagues

learning objectives Employability Cost, Quality

Ease of use EffectivenessSocial networks

Improve performance,prospects, skills

Following a more in-depth discussion of selected drivers for each PESTL category.

Social drivers

We see major social drivers of workplace learning in (a) an ever tighter integration of work and learningactivities and (b) an increasing role of organisational learning for process and product innovation at a corporatelevel.

Work-Integrated learning: Individual employees become increasingly responsible for their self-determinedimprovement of work-relevant knowledge, which is often based on exchanging experience with colleagues. Thenew ways of learning in the workplace require self-motivated and proactive learners, whom Zimmerman (2002)refers to as self-regulated learners.Self-regulated learners identify potentials for the improvement of skillsand/or work practices through constant monitoring of the effectiveness of their learning. However, supportingreflective work practices with learning technologies is still a challenge in business, where much of this reflectionis taking place un-documented, through informal discussions and experiences exchanged between employees.

Organisational learning: Traditionally, three different modes of learning are discussed in the literature:learning through acquisition (the banking model), learning through participation (the experiential learningmodel) and more recently, learning as situated practice (the community of practice model). The situated practiceapproach pays special attention to the fact that knowledge can rarely be transferred from one situation to anotherwithout accounting for the change of context. Even for experienced workers transfer has been shown to be aproblematic task, requiring additional support mechanisms (Eraut, 2004; Fuller, et al., 2003). The integrationof community-based forms of learning is here a proven means to spread contextual knowledge in corporations(Nonaka & Nishiguchi 2000). However, its important to acknowledge the need for both: enabling individuals tolearn facts as well as enabling learning communities to learn about better ways to do their jobs (Engestrm,Kajamaa, Kerosuo, & Laurila, 2010).

Technical drivers

Similar to the social drivers we already mentioned, technical drivers will enable the tighter integration of dataabout possible learning contexts and data describing learning content and learning activities. Underlying theseintegration efforts, are scalable cloud-services who allow even smaller organisations to access sophisticatedTEL infrastructures.

Harvesting context: If we try to adapt learning to physical, informational and organisational boundaries ofworkers, we realize that we need a much better understanding of context before we can target learning toindividual situations at work. Hence, context models can include past actions, locations, proximity to peers orresources, as well as sentiments contained in verbal communications.

Cloud Computing helpsto outsource components that are not directly relevant for the enterprises corebusiness. Apart from saving running costs by following a pay-per-usage-model, business can save humanresources for IT tasks and no longer need to invest upfront in servers. Cloud architectures have furtherimplications: (a) they allow for managed service provision and (b) they can open up cross-organisational

learning where learning content, behavioural patterns and access to experts is shared. After all, many businessdo already use the cloud when integrating Web 2.0 applications such as Twitter or Facebook. A survey by


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Forrester Research Inc. showed that about 40% of the consulted companies assemble 1 to 3 different Web 2.0applications internally or externally (Stobbe, Heng, Kaiser, & Mayer, 2010). Interestingly, another survey foundthat only 25% see the potential for stimulating innovation in social media. More then 50% use social software tomaintain relationship with suppliers and customers, 40% use it for external communication and 38% use socialmedia for the processing of joint projects with external (ZEW, 2009).

Economical drivers

Asking for a return on investments made in TEL is hardly new; however, given the financial crisis in most ofEurope, the question has gained in importance. With regard to the current development of expenditures forinformal and on-the-job-training and staffing Bersin & Associates (OLeonard, 2010) found training budgets ofU.S. companies to be decreasing. While in the years 2006 and 2007 saw a rise of training investments (to theextent of 7% and 6% respectively), a different picture was drawn in 2008 und 2009, when companies cut theirtraining budget by 11%. Hence the drivers we see in the economic dimension concern the development ofcompelling success indicators for TEL activities, including the management of innovative capacities.

Success indicators: Deriving value from learning in a corporate environment requires working across divisionalfrontiers, business units. Training specialists need to identify those areas of their work that are prone to benefitfrom an increase in skills or reflective practices so that adequate performance indicators can be formulated(Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2009). Being on-the-job employees are primarily expected to create value for theorganisation and learning is often seen as a by-product. In order to ensure that informal learning is adequatelysupported and allowed for, a better understanding of the relationship between learning and workplaceperformance is needed and - according to Ashton (2002) - this works best if learning can be tied to concretebusiness measures such as uptime of machinery, throughput of goods and services or utilization rates of costlylaboratories.

Innovation management: From an organisational perspective we can differentiate between learning processesenabling time- and cost-savings and learning to become more innovative. Innovation through learning wascalled double loop learning by Argyris (1977). A double loop requires reflection on how to do different thingsor how to do things differently. Later on, Senge (1997) added that learning is at the core of successfulcompanies who observe their performance and markets and can reinvent themselves as necessary. What we takefrom Argyris and Senge is that learning designs cannot be restricted to the interaction between learners and theirtechnologically enhanced environment, but need to be designed in light of the organisations and the marketsrequirements innovation happens when learning is not only following existing structures but aims to change

them as well.

Political drivers

We consider political drivers operating on two levels: first, there is a debating phase of current issues andsecond, political statements are released which might turn into legislative actions and / or funding measures.Current drivers considered in this section are (a) the ongoing debate on what role knowledge and learningshould take in creating jobs and growths and (b) the debate on how an increasing part of the population canbenefit from new developments in TEL (e-Inclusion).

Growth and Jobs: Knowledge is the driver of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs. In May 2009, theEuropean Councilapproved that efficient investment in human capital through education and training systemsis an essential component of Europes strategy to deliver the high levels of sustainable, knowledge-based growthand jobs that lie at the heart of the Lisbon strategy. (Council of the European Union, 2009). Although the same

Council statement made it clear that, for Europe, education is not simply a useful tool for a more productiveworkforce. Education is to promote personal fulfilment, social cohesion and active citizenship. Several policyinitiatives establish the basis for a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training,summarised in the Education and Training 2020 document. The framework defined four strategic mid- andlong-term objectives: (a) making lifelong learning and mobility a reality, (b) improving the quality andefficiency of education and training, (c) promoting equity, social cohesion and active citizenship; (d) enhancingcreativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training (Council of theEuropean Union, 2009).

E-Inclusion: The EU is ambitious in looking at how to make education and training, whether formal, informalor non-formal, more accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ability or social integration. Evidently, educationdoes not stop after leaving school it is a necessary process to keep up with the continuous societal changes aswell as changing demands in peoples jobs. Already in 2006, the Council of Europe adopted a EuropeanFramework for Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (European Commission, 2007), a set of skills and

benchmarks concerning employment opportunities, quality of life, social participation and cohesion. Someconcrete guidelines and indicators include the European Quality Assurance Reference framework for Vocational


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Education and Training (EQAVET) (http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc1134_en.htm),the European guidelines on the validation of non-formal and informal learning (http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/publications/5059.aspx) and the European Framework of Key Competences (http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htm), a framework identifying essential skills necessary to achieveemployment, personal fulfilment, social inclusion and active citizenship.

Legal drivers

With web 2.0 technologies, users have admission to broadly available and increasingly complex tools to create,assemble and distribute digital content, and to interact with content from other users. One important attribute ofuser created content is that users step out of a private sphere, and into the public forum. When raising thequestion whether the creation and dissemination of content is private or public, a number of regulations comeinto effect, e.g. audio-visual and media laws, data protection laws, copyright law or Intellectual property law.

Two drivers seem paramount when thinking about new forms of workplace learning: (a) data privacy lawsconflicting with personalisation approaches and (b) copyright laws conflicting with reusing content inaggregation services or user generated content.

Data privacy: Usually, recommender services in TEL rely on a portfolio of data from end-users to derivelearning paths customised to personal context and preferences. The problem here is twofold: firstly, data used topersonalise learning can also be used for less noble purposes such as supposedly timewasting behaviours, and

secondly, how much personal data can be revealed when workers are introduced to others, be it as experts orpossible learning peers. In principle the data protection law of employees is governed by the directive 95/46/EC(http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/docs/95-46-ce/dir1995-46_part1_en.pdf) on the protection ofpersonal data and includes eight principles, which define how organizations should proceed with the collectedpersonal data of their employees. It requires for instance that the collection purpose should be defined; datacollection should be adequate and relevant, kept up to date and not stored longer as necessary. Employeesshould have the right to access and correct the collected data and appropriate technical and organisationalmeasures shall be put in place to protect it. However, a recent report for the Information Commissioners officein May 2009 highlighted a number of weaknesses for the Data protection directive: unclear objectives,insufficient focus on detriment, risk and practical enforcement, unclear role of individuals, too rigid forinnovative forms of processing personal data, international transfer rules are unrealistic against a backdrop ofhigh-volume, globalised data flows (Robinson, Graux, & Botterman, 2008).

Intellectual property: The production and dissemination of user created content lead to several questionsconcerning the applicability of the rules on copyright law. The following topics need to be taken into account: towhat extent is the work original or simply a version of existing work, are sources adequately mentioned or arethere any limitations attached to reusing published content (Leiba, Angelopoulos, van Hoboken, & Swart, 2008).All in all, the European legal framework in the field of copyright law leaves a lot of uncertainties. The mostimportant source of uncertainties comes from the lack of real harmonization in the area of copyright law withinthe European Union. As a result, it is not clear what kind of content is protected by copyright, and what contentcan be used, produced, mixed and distributed in what way. That this can impede the working of mediaobservation and aggregation services can be seen in the ongoing quarrels between echofon.de and severalnewspaper agencies (SPIEGEL ONLINE, 2012).

4.3 Stage 3: Anticipating game-changersThe third and last phase of our pull-push roadmapping process is concerned with identifying potential game-

changers, that is, changes that are difficult to foretell but which could substantially change the outline of aparticular roadmap. Potential ways of identifying likely game-changers, also called weak signals (Voigt,Unterfrauner, & Kieslinger, 2011), include crowd sourcing or text mining of large data sets. The latter has beendescribed in Voigt and Cooper (2012) and led to the highlighting of blog post such as the ones displayed inTable 2.

Table 2: TEL blog post with a high index of legal or economic content(Numbers in brackets indicate percentages of domain specific terminology)

Legal Aspects Economic Aspects

1 Injunction against MS Word (XML spec) (0.097) More Productive Outside the Office (0.242)

2 Prof. Dev. Videos re equity in schools (0.092)Not-So-Radical Ideas to Save Ed with $100Million Bucks (0.235)

3 Lawsuit - Apple fixing price of e-books (0.031) Education voucher systems and profit (0.212)
http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc1134_en.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc1134_en.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc1134_en.htmhttp://www.cedefop.europa.eu/%0bEN/publications/5059.aspxhttp://www.cedefop.europa.eu/%0bEN/publications/5059.aspxhttp://www.cedefop.europa.eu/%0bEN/publications/5059.aspxhttp://www.cedefop.europa.eu/%0bEN/publications/5059.aspxhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/%0blifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/%0blifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/%0blifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/%0blifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/docs/95-46-ce/dir1995-46_part1_en.pdfhttp://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/docs/95-46-ce/dir1995-46_part1_en.pdfhttp://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/docs/95-46-ce/dir1995-46_part1_en.pdfhttp://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/docs/95-46-ce/dir1995-46_part1_en.pdfhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/%0blifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htmhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/%0blifelong-learning-policy/doc42_en.htmhttp://www.cedefop.europa.eu/%0bEN/publications/5059.aspxhttp://www.cedefop.europa.eu/%0bEN/publications/5059.aspxhttp://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-policy/doc1134_en.htm


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4No Child Left Behind legislation & special needslearner (0.026)

Virtual education - cost savings and academicgain in Texas (0.200)

5NCLB legal definition of a highly qualifiedteacher (0.023)

Financing a technology driveneducation reform (0.109)

Table 2 is meant to raise issues which might pass unnoticed to a roadmapping team such as licensing issues,

equity regulations or shifting power distributions in particular marketplaces such as e-book distributionplatforms.

5 ConclusionEarlier agendas for microlearning have been formulated by Gabrielli et al.(2005) and Hug & Friesen (2007),focusing on technological or didactical requirements based on the authors expert knowledge. The roadmappingprocess presented in this paper, however, makes a different assumption. Microlearning is seen as something tobe implemented under specific organizational or sectorial conditions and to be used by people with specificexperiences with TEL or training in general. Hence, rather than suggesting a generic roadmap formicrolearning, we tried to suggest building blocks for a collaborative, contextualized roadmapping process taking into account existing local knowledge as well as global developments.

The data used to illustrate this process come from different sources, so that we cannot yet report on collaborative

roadmapping process emerging from a single sector. Hence the resulting roadmap for enterprise learning is onlya first step towards a more comprehensive microlearning agenda. Theo Hug argued for microlearning being auseful relational cross-over concept microlearning offers flexible and dynamic alternatives which are neededin view of medial, societal and environmental changes (Hug, 2010). We hope that the roadmapping process wepresented can help with unravelling the medial, societal and environmental changes to be expected, so thatorganisations willing to implement microlearning are able to avoid potential pitfalls and take advantage ofemerging opportunities as they roadmap future developments in microlearning.

6 AcknowledgementsThis work has been financially supported by the ICT Programme of the Seventh Framework Programme of theEuropean Commission FP7-257822 TEL-Map. We thank Adam Cooper for the implementation of the PESTLclassification script.

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Documents

Microlearning and Roadmapping Voigt Et Al 2012