Creating a mobile app for training can be hard. Tracking user progress and completion in your mobile app? Harder. There is a lot to consider when looking to create and leverage mobile applications for training purposes, but the tools and techniques are available.

As organizations realize the value of mobile learning, an increased number are jumping at the opportunity to offer their employees mobile training opportunities. Currently, many mobile learning applications focus on delivering content. However, the most effective learning comes from applying information, especially with peers. How can you create mobile learning opportunities for learners to practice new concepts and receive real-time feedback from peers?

JLG, a leading manufacturer of lift equipment for various industries, needed a way for site supervisors to verify whether an operator had the proper certifications to operate any given piece of equipment, down to the specific model. The company struggled with providing immediate compliance instructions.

The quickening pace of change and increasing learner expectations demand learning approaches that can be produced quickly, at lower cost, and are easily accessible and readily available. Removing employees from the workflow for classroom sessions is not always feasible, nor does it provide the necessary just-in-time support. At the same time, the knowledge and information learners must have to support customers has expanded. Finally, the workforce is more distributed, more virtual.

Video is beginning to dominate the focus of learning and development. The technology and techniques for creating effective video content are now reaching most people responsible for using this medium to improve organizational performance. With a plethora of approaches around animation, motion, and streaming, where is one to begin?

Video is not a new medium, but not every instructional designer or developer intuitively knows how to create video or what makes it good. It’s important to understand the qualities that make for great videos. Organizations need data to drive decisions, and research is available to do just that.

There’s no question that video is trending upward and becoming more viable as a workplace learning and development (L&D) solution. Still, one significant barrier is focusing on the video itself—the videography and/or animation and editing that leads to the final product. Like all solutions from an L&D perspective, it still needs design. For video, that design document is a script, and it’s one of the most vital and most often ignored steps in the video production process. But how does someone with an L&D background learn to write better scripts?

Performance is not just an end result but a continuous flow of interactions between the individual and the environment, leading to a defined goal. Organizations normally try to keep this process in line through periodic evaluations or other methods, but tracking performance at work on a continuous basis with a geographically dispersed workforce is a challenge. This can result in failed objectives or substandard outcomes.

All too often, embedded performance support (EPS) is seen as a technology or a software application to purchase. While both may come into play, EPS is a discipline that drives new skills in L&D as well as new methods and, potentially, new technology. History shows that being ready to pursue adoption of EPS is not the same as being in a state of readiness to sustain the adoption.