Chief learning officers, learning leaders, and training coordinators everywhere are well aware of the need to increase mobile training programs. After all,  74% of employees say they access resources from their smartphones to do their jobs— and that number is expected to continue to grow. 

Let’s be honest: your employees use smartphones and tablets every day, everywhere — including in your workplace.

A common misconception is that eLearning materials can be simply transferred into mLearning courses. However, during the transfer, it is necessary to rethink the entire instructional design: mobile learning requires minimalism, it focuses on granular design, and it must be instructionally solid to provide a satisfying user experience graphically, navigationally, and cognitively.

If you are a trainer, an HR manager, or an online course designer, you know it is now time to design and develop courses for mobile users. With high-end smartphones that stream at 4K speeds, increased battery life, and bigger screen sizes, you can expect mobile devices to eclipse desktop or laptop computer as the preferred medium to consume virtual content.  Google Insights reported that on average, people use 2.5 connected devices per adult, and “mobile is now central to almost all kinds of internet activity.” You should create eLearning courses keeping in mind that your learners will take them on all kinds of devices, from the desktop computer with its chunky monitor to the mobile device with its palm-sized screen. Get ready to deliver.  In this post, we will tell you how reading on the mobile screen feels different than reading from a larger laptop computer screen. We will also provide tons of tips to help you create a distraction-free mobile viewing experience that aids learning.

YouTube videos are viewed 4 billion times every day. Vimeo videos are viewed a staggering 715 million times every month. And people do not throng these video-sharing sites just to gorge on funny cat videos. Biology and astronomy lessons. Recipes. DIY carpentry hacks. Movies. Breaking news. Artistic performances. These sites house videos on almost any topic under the sun and attract people with varied interests. People watch these videos to learn, laugh, shed tears, be amazed and feel the heartbeat of another person. Moving images pin us down like no other medium. It is not surprising to learn that videos have caught on as a medium of delivering training at the workplace too. According to the Brandon Hall Group, for Learning Pulse Survey, 95 percent of companies around the world use video to train their employees.

Employee engagement is serious business. In 2015, a Gallup study poll found that incredibly, only 30% of employees say that they’re engaged in their job. More than 50% of employees said they weren’t engaged, and almost 20% of employees stated that they were “actively disengaged.” That’s a severe problem in the workplace. This isn’t just a single piece of research, either; other surveys have found that just 25 to 35% of the workforce across the U.S. are engaged in their work. This really is a silent epidemic.  However, all is not lost. There may be a way out. Companies are finding smarter ways to boost employee engagement through the use of technology. 

There is no question about it: now is the time to embrace mobile. Mobile learning (mLearning), is a rapidly growing area for training and development departments in organizations of all industries. It provides companies the opportunity to reach and engage employees in new and striking ways.

There is no question that mobile devices are changing corporate learning forever. However, this doesn’t mean classroom-based training or formal eLearning courses are going away, it just means the mobile movement is demanding companies to rethink their training strategies and to create learning programs especially for mobile devices.