Learning professionals have long battled what is allowable from an organization’s IT group. Understanding why IT has these issues is the best method of lowering these barriers. In today’s world, data theft has become big business. The IT group sees allowing personal laptops and mobile devices onto organizational networks as a surefire method to data disaster. As such, IT groups often shut all the doors to minimize risks. Opening those doors can yield huge benefits and can be relatively easy, if you know how.

There are so many variables to consider when L&D professionals or learning vendors try to decide how to best use mobile methods to boost the success of their learning initiatives. One critical element is understanding how to balance the amount of content and functionality you should include. Our recent experiences with testing several apps over the last three years has led us to some findings that will shape the role of how the Ken Blanchard Companies will use mobile tools and materials going forward.

According to ASTD Research, the most common forms of training across all industries are management and supervisory. These also represent a large percentage of training budgets in many organizations. Finding ways to address these training needs in a cost-effective way is critical, as is the need to integrate the social aspect that will unlock knowledge and share personal experience.

Every year, thousands of America’s service members separate from the military to start a new chapter in life as civilians. The re-entry into civilian life can be a difficult phase that results in unfamiliar challenges. The increased number of separations from the military strains the current infrastructure, resources, and techniques to prepare for post-military life.

As a mobile usage grows, we no longer get to decide which device learners will use to access learning. Applying responsive design enables your customized, interactive course to display beautifully in both desktop and mobile learning environments. With true responsive design, course content needs to automatically rearrange and reflow depending on screen size and orientation. It is important to take the mobile environment into consideration beginning with the initial storyboarding of design and development.

Onboarding is a universal issue for all organizations. Employee-orientation programs raise awareness about people, practice, and processes, but there are lingering challenges that a new employee faces to acclimate to their new job: Each workplace brings a different vocabulary set, often unique to the organization, and quite commonly heard in both formal and informal conversations. How do newcomers learn different lingos and acronyms to become part of the conversations?

The use of smart phones, tablets, and the apps they utilize has grown quickly in the corporate space. These devices provide educators and developers with an exciting new way of reaching audiences, but the skills needed to develop mobile-learning programs are very different from those for desktop-based eLearning. How much knowledge and expertise is required to develop mLearning?

Making the move to mobile can be overwhelming. There are many obstacles organizations fear that give them pause about making the shift. Some organizations doubt they have the budget, design, and delivery skills, or even the devices required to support multi-device delivery. The good news is that most of the perceived obstacles to making the move to multi-device learning can actually be easily overcome.

The amount of attention the topic of game-based learning is receiving in our industry makes the average practitioner who hasn’t implemented game-based learning in their curriculum feel like they are falling far behind the curve. Many professionals also feel as though they lack thorough understanding, necessary experience, human resources, and/or budget to get a game-based program up and running.

Online students and faculty are demanding mobile access to their online courses and institutional resources. Focus groups with our students and faculty have shown that mobile skins for the LMS, student portal, and library are not enough to satisfy mobile users.

Research shows that only 20 percent of corporate learning happens during formal training, regardless of the delivery modality. However, 70 percent of learning occurs during on the job experiences. One way of bringing more job experience into formal training is through online role-play simulations. The challenge most organizations have is a belief that simulations are too expensive, take too long to build, or require skill sets we cannot support.

Video has long been respected as a great tool for training, but has often been dismissed due to costs. That is changing, and a dramatic drop in production costs and a wide array of YouTube-framework solutions has accelerated the role of video in corporate training. The challenge for eLearning developers is to move beyond traditional linear experiences and incorporate engaging interactions on top of traditional video.