Five Tips for Introducing Mobile Learning

The potential for mobile learning is to engage employees on their terms and provide useful learningin a format that they recognize and want. But we know this, because we’remobile users ourselves, and that realization can be the inspiration for abetter understanding of how to make mobile learning successful. Here are fivetips that will help you as you identify your mobile learning content.

Look atyourself first

Analyzeyourself and how you use your mobile devices for learning. It’s interestingthat our mobile content consumption habits are rarely about learning but oftenabout finding things out, preparing to perform, anddiscovery. The worst sin of corporate online learning has been creating orsourcing eLearning that we ourselves wouldn’t choose. So, first of all, payattention to what you do and then askpeers, colleagues, and friends what they do, too.

Deliver learning content in a format that people want to engagewith

YouTube is the world’s most popular content website, with “how to” searches increasing by 70 percent every year,so learn from them and use video whenever you can. Industry expert Mary Meeker predicts that by 2017, 74 percent of all internet trafficwill be video. But don’t be daunted or paralyzed by the thought of not gettingvideo right. YouTube isn’t all about high-quality production either. There’snothing quite like getting the right people in front of a camera to sharehigh-value messages and instruction.

YouTube is also easy and pleasing to use. The UX (userexperience) of your mobile learning platform could be even more important thanyour content, as today’s users simply won’t tolerate poor UX.

Anticipate moments of need

We now knowthat video is king. But what do you record? To capitalize on how we find whatwe need online when we need it, think about the micro-moments that employees might beexperiencing. According to Google, micro-moments are the “I-want-to-go,I-want-to-do, I-want-to-buy, or I-want-to-know moments when people are turningto devices to find answers, discover new things, or make decisions.” Try tocome at this from two different angles: what do you want employees to do and toknow, and what do they want to do and to know?

Don’t feel you have to mobilize all your learning at once

It’s greatthat you’ve mobilized your first initiative but your people won’t be clamoringfor all their learning to be immediately available to them on their devices.Often, the pressure we feel comes only from within ourselves. By all means, you’llreceive requests and recommendations, but the trick is to create morecontextually relevant content over timeand put together a schedule to deliver it. And while you’re planning…

Get others involved

There will be somecontent that you create because you own the initiative but create is just one of YouTube’s three C’s of content creation named inthe link above. In addition tothis, you should seek opportunities to collaboratewith others too. Whether they be colleagues, peers, partners, vendors, orclients. In fact, it’s the experts and specialists you want to collaborate with—andempower them to own some of thecreation too. The third opportunity of the three C’s is to curate. Again, ask for help from others you work with to suggestcontent that already exists: online and within the organization. Remember thatthe value in curated content is making it clear why it’s important to thelearner—the context.