The Role of Mobile in Learning

When eLearning first appeared in the workplace, it was aninnovative new way of reaching people. Employees learned at work in a way thatfew had learned before.

The difference with mobile learning (or mLearning) is that it’sarrived in the workplace with a familiar set of habits that had been honed byeach device owner. Learning and development (L&D) is now just catching upto capitalize on the opportunity that’s presented.

At a time when the majority of us have integrated mobile technology into our daily lives the questionshouldn’t just be: how do we get ourlearning content onto mobile? But, howdo we (L&D) integrate into our employees’ digital lives—being where theyare and capitalizing on their digital content consumption habits? This isbecause mobile habits aren’t all about stopping what we’re doing to concentrateon our device. They are often about combining what we’re doing with immediateaccess to information, know-how, or entertainment. It’s about making the mostof downtime in order to work, connect, amuse, or inform ourselves. And it’sabout getting from not-knowing to knowing and then carrying on.

The distinction to be made here is that mobile content consumptionhabits are rarely about “learning” but about finding things out and preparingto perform. Whether that’s by tailoring news feeds; accessing industryinsights; connecting with friends, peers, colleagues, and experts; seeking “how-to”support; browsing for inspiration; or finding out specific information “in themoment.”

On top of this, the growing popularity of online video contenthas led to industry expert Mary Meeker to predict that by 2017, 74percent of all Internet traffic will be video.

Thinking strategically

So, what does this all then mean for L&D?

The potential for mobile learning is to engage employees on theirterms and provide content in a form that they recognize and want. But we knowthis, because we’re mobile content consumers ourselves.

Whendeveloping a mobile content strategy for L&D, think about the micro-moments that employees might beexperiencing. According to Kim Larson, global director of Google BrandLab, 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.” Of course,these moments will be different for different employee groups, whether they benew-starters, new managers, experienced managers, budget-holders, salespeople,marketers, etc. One thing’s for sure, there are going to be plenty of them—andfar too many for one person (or one small team) to plug with content.

With so manydifferent employee groups, how can you execute a mobile learning strategy atscale?

The trickis to create contextually relevant content over time—and to get a little helpwhile you’re at it.

Learning from YouTube, the world’s most engaged-with content website,you can employ their “CCC content framework” to create content, collaborate,and curate in order to collect your mLearningcontent to support your clients in their micro-moments of need.

Create

Of course, to get things started, you and your team might create some how-to content for some of those I-want-to-do and I-want-to-knowmoments. Pick a pain-point and answer the questions being asked with short-formvideo, wherever you can. Organizations are now doing this for induction, performancemanagement, management tips, selling techniques, and all sorts of internalsystems training.

Collaborate

Ultimately,the goal here is to help you broaden the relevance and reach of your mobilelearning while leveraging the expertise and experience of additional creators.For this, you might work with your finance department to create content on whatbudget-holders will need in their micro-moments of: running a P&L for thefirst time, forecasting, processing payments, re-forecasting, year-endactivities, etc. You might collaborate more remotely and seek expertisegathered from across the business. Collect want-to-knowand want-to-do video clips (recordedon mobiles or webcams) and screen-recordings (using online tools such as QuickTime,Camtasia, Screencast-o-Matic, etc.). In doing so, you collect content asquickly as it takes to say-it and show-it.

In a recentsurvey by Towards Maturity, 84 percent of respondents werepotentially willing to use technology to share what they know with their peers.

Curate

The final content type in the CCC framework is curate. This means making good use of the wealth of great contentthat already exists and making this available in micro-moments of need. Thiscould be information that sits on the company website, intranet, policy notes,or any other content that could (and should) be as easy to find as a web-search—perhapsrepackaged as a video clip.

It might be content from the Internet that can be referenced, alongsideorganizational context. There are many tools you can use to find and filterrelevant online content sources. But better still, let others in your businessknow that you plan to curate and invite them to provide relevant content (andcontext) too.

Capitalize on successful onlinehabits

It’s a no-brainer to get where your learners are and that’s why mobilelearning is such a hot topic right now. But it’s half the job to only be there.The opportunity is to capitalize on habits that are already successfullyemployed online.

Technology we now have at our fingertips empowers us all to create videocontent as quickly as it takes to say a messageand show a task. It’s not expected tobe high-production quality these days. What matters more is that, in theirmicro-moments of need, your people are able to quickly and easily find thecontextually relevant resources they want to engage with, when they need to know and perform.