The way consumers buy cars is changing. Customers are now far better informed prior to entering a dealership, and the rise of the use of the Internet and mobile browsing is a major factor in this change. There is often a disconnect between the high-tech customer’s online browsing experience and the traditional in-dealership buying experience in which sales occur right by the vehicle itself. Jaguar Land Rover decided to leverage mobile technology as a means to address this challenge.

In order to develop a learning strategy that responds to the rapidly evolving world, learning professionals need to look at the business environment differently. On the one hand, the traditional business needs of the organization will continue to be critical and must be served. On the other hand, the next generation of learning strategies must place equal importance on the actual performance and learning needs of employees. Future learning strategies will look different, be delivered differently, and be led by a new breed of learning professional.

The space restrictions on mobile devices and the increasing demand for translated content by global users makes every word we put on a screen count. Choosing the wrong words can define the difference between a successful product and a failure.

mLearning is about much more than just mobile technology. mLearning is a different experience than desktop-based eLearning, coming with its own unique set of design considerations and challenges. Organizations considering making the move to mobile need to understand the challenges of creating content for mobile devices if they want their mobile learning strategy to be successful.

Citrix leverages a DITA-based solution for mobile learning that rapidly adapts to changing business, technology, and customer requirements. We want to ensure our source content is future-proofed against changes in delivery technologies in order to avoid vendor lock-in and retain tight control of the types of activities we include in training and how we present them to learners. It was also important that we minimize code maintenance and automate aspects of quality assurance by mining our content as data for metrics related to language and engagement.

There’s a great deal of discussion about HTML5 and how it is changing the future of the web. While there is tremendous potential in place, there is still much confusion about what its impact is on technology-based learning, and what steps learning professionals should be taking to develop specifically for HTML5.

Learning from the lessons of the past is critical in order to make the future better. This truth of life also applies to the world of mobile learning. There have been a large number of organizations that have gone down the mLearning path and an enormous amount of resources generated from lessons learned. There’s great potential to learn from the lessons shared in this mountain of data, if we have the tools and capabilities with which to analyze it.

One of TELUS’ key goals is to have a majority of its workforce work in a flexible mobile work environment. Learning strategies had to adapt to this goal. Learning could no longer simply be available on one’s laptop or in a face-to-face class. Our learning strategy had to be enhanced and updated to accommodate our growing mobile workforce.

In today’s fast-moving world it is increasingly difficult for individuals to allocate time to a long-duration learning event. In fact, the amount of time learners can allocate and maintain attention to a single learning event seems to shrink all the time. More and more, learning professionals are expected to deliver solutions that are minimally disruptive to work while still providing the support needed for performance.

Mobile learning is about more than technology. Too often organizations simply move bad practice to new technology. Before we step forward and look at the next best-technology or coolest new gadget in our field we need to step back to basics and consider our design. Before organizations can make the move to mobile, they need to ensure they have strong visual-design practices that work for myriad devices and audiences.

From the first desktop PCs to today’s cutting-edge smartphones, technology has a history of fundamentally changing the expectations of learning and development programs. We are now on the cusp of another technological advance, one that will once again change some of our definitions and how we address performance issues: wearable technology. This technology will come in various forms, but the one that is blazing the path is Google Glass.

When building web or native applications, it can be daunting trying to learn new coding languages for various platforms. Even if you are just targeting web applications, there is still a lot of CSS to get the HTML to look good on both phones and tablets. To get the effect you want you may have to spend hours learning CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. The integration with jQuery Mobile has been a lifesaver for the non-techie or even the techie that wants to get the task done quickly and efficiently.