Almost one-third of the globalinformation workforce can work at any time, in any place they happen to be. Therest of the workforce have moments in their day when they ought to go mobile,and would if they could.
Look at sales, medical care,emergency services, transportation, repair and maintenance services, law, oranywhere else, for that matter. More and more, workers are on the move, andmobile provides the means for untethering them from the confines of a specificworkspace. According to Gartner, over the next two years the number of PC(desk-based and notebook) devices will drop (14 percent), while at the sametime, the number of mobile phones will grow from 1.9 billion to 2.1 billion,and tablets in the workplace will more than double.
Although this mobile elephant’sbeen in the room for a while, it’s becoming enormous. No organization can orshould ignore it. Nor should we limit mobile’s usefulness with anmLearning-only mindset. We have understandably been mesmerized by theglimmering promise of mLearning for some time now. But mLearning barely tapsmobile’s capacity to deliver business benefit. Add mSupport to the mix, and youdeliver immediate and measurable business impact and actually pave the way fora more sustainable mobile learning strategy.
Delivering measurable business impact
Training has always struggled to directly connect anorganization’s learning investment to its profitability. ROI is elusive totraining, whether mobile or not. This isn’t the case with performance support. Thedifference? Performance support (PS) is, by its very nature, embedded withinthe workflow. This is especially the case when PS goes mobile. It’s on thescene all the time, everywhere, while people are performing the work of theorganization. This allowsreal-time measurement of business impact (See Show Me the ROI!).
When it comes to mobile, mSupportis a rising star. If an organization is intent on supporting workerswhenever and wherever they are—exactly at their moment of need—then mSupport needsto be a key component in its performance-support strategy. It shouldn’t be theonly option, though. Learning and performance support need to be able to spanthe many mobile and not-so-mobile devices. (See From Scattered Information to TransformationalPerformance Support.)
Pave the way for a sustainablemobile learning strategy
Actually, if you take a hard lookat existing mLearning solutions today and check their functionality against thefive moments of need, you will most likely find that many donot map to the moments of learn new and learn more. Instead they primarilyaddress the moments of apply, change, and solve—which is mSupport. The reason?mSupport is the fast track to business impact, and it is a very effectiveforerunner for mLearning.
If you are thinking about pursuingmobile learning ahead of mobile performance support, you take on some real challengesbeyond measuring business impact. For example, we know the following principlesgovern effective learning:
- Gain andmaintain attention
- Deliver content
- Provide meaningfulexamples
- Model skills
- Provide guidedand unguided practice
- Integrate review
- Give meaningfulfeedback
- Check for masteryand remediate
Years ago, we developed a tool for assessing theintegrity of eLearning courses against these principles. As measured by thetool, most eLearning falls short of fully supporting the principles. The sameholds true with mLearning. Engaging these principles to facilitate optimum learningoutcomes on any device is no small task. It can be especially so for mobile. It’sdifficult to balance methodology requirements with development and maintenancecosts across mobile’s many form factors—cloud and all. Certainly it can and isbeing done, but no matter how effectively you orchestrate these principles intoan mLearning solution it will fail to deliver strategically.
Learning solutions, regardless of their mode of delivery(classroom, desktop, mobile) need to provide three things to an organization:
- Measurable financial and strategicbenefit
- Optimum time to effective on-the-jobperformance
- Sustained competency in anever-changing work environment
Without performance support, even the mostinstructionally sound courses fail here (see MakeEffective Performance Your Reality). Hence the need to consider mSupport alongwith mLearning.
Actually, the best-practice path is to let mSupport pavethe way for mLearning. Doing this establishes the framework needed to facilitatemeasurement, the speed of skill transfer, and the ongoing adaptation oflearning outcomes. What’s more, mSupport can help secure the institutional willto make, and sustain, the investment required for effective mLearning.
