SINGAPORE: Learning at any time through bite-sized and trending content while on the go – that is the aim of a new mobile learning platform for professionals.
Called ULeap, the National Trade Union Congress’ (NTUC) Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) launched the platform on Friday (Nov 17) as part of a six-month-long pilot.
One feature of the app is a learning board, or forum, where users can post questions, start a discussion topic and exchange knowledge with other professionals.
Screenshots of the app through Apple’s App Store.
Gilbert Tan, chief executive officer of e2i said this element of “crowdsourced learning” makes ULeap different from other learning portals or online search engines.
He cited an example of how the platform would be useful for professionals in the situation of the WannaCry ransomware attack which took place earlier this year.
“I’ll be concerned if I’m securing my company from a cyberattack. So, how do I prevent it from happening, how do I learn as much from this incident as possible and if it really happens, how do I recover from it?”
Mr Tan explained that the user can then bring up the topic into the discussion forum to get everyone to start contributing and sharing ideas.
“The key element that stands out is the fact that we can groom learning communities to support each other,” said Mr Tan.
“We don’t only learn from one source like other platforms, but we learn from each other.”
Resources such as videos, articles and PowerPoint slides are also available on the app, contributed by Institutes of Higher Learning and training providers, including polytechnics, the Institute of Technical Education, the Singapore University of Social Science, and the Singapore Institute of Safety Officers.
Instead of learning about a new topic in a span of three to six months, each “e-learning” lesson takes less than 15 minutes to complete and users can download the content onto their mobile devices.
In the app, content is categorised into different areas of work, such as cybersecurity, workplace health and safety and the Internet of things.
Mr Gregory Chew, 46, who’s been in the health, safety and environment industry for about 20 years thought the multimedia content on ULeap was “basic”, due to his years of experience in his profession.
However, he found the crowdsourced learning useful for him.
“To me it’s more of the Q&A where you can ask questions and get feedback, and you can reach out to a lot of people and they are professionals helping you out. If you want to get a quick answer or a quick brief run through of what you need to do, it is a good platform to use,” said Mr Chew.
