Global eLearning is a growth market, driven by its benefits of cost reduction, flexibility, and operational ease of use. The creation of a truly global training strategy requires synergy between several areas of expertise. You've invested heavily in instructional design and recruited the best mobile app developers. Now you’ve created a powerful product and you want to offer it across the world in other languages.

How can you prepare for tomorrow when you spend so much of today addressing the needs of yesterday? Mobile technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Historically, the technologies themselves have always preceded L&D by two to four years. This is the time it takes for solid user trialing, new vendor products, and widespread platform adoption. Unfortunately, this lack of forward visibility makes it challenging to keep up with learner expectations and map out future learning technology strategies.

The modern learner complains that they don’t have enough time to do their job, let alone make time for formal training. Many workers are developing their skills and knowledge one problem at a time. They are untethered, empowered, and looking for on-demand access to learning—how do we get them the content they are demanding? 

Accessing learning or performance support assets when on the move is challenging to the learner as well as the expert or provider. We are all moving around the office, complex, country, or world. We need to access information or guidance exactly when needed without leaving our location or process. However, we also need to provide or push information when learners need it without even knowing they do. The speed of business dictates our learning needs, and these days the need for speed is overwhelming.

In recent mobile learning research, college-bound students initially showed a preference for learning environmental science in the classroom through lecture or reading assignments rather than through hands-on learning activities. Though students had access to mobile technologies, they used the mobile technologies for classwork the same way they could use a desktop: searching and reading electronic documents. The classroom teacher and researcher intended to leverage mobile learning technologies to break out of this mold, helping students engage the subject of environmental science first-hand through using mobile tools in the natural environment.

The use of personal mobile devices is a rapidly growing trend in clinical practice and in nursing education. Recent years have seen an increase in the use of personal digital devices (PDDs) by healthcare professionals as well as by the general public. In addition to being small and easy to carry, these technologies combine communications and computing abilities, facilitating mobility as well as information retrieval at the point of care.

More and more companies are creating mobile strategies and mobile applications to integrate with their existing businesses. Training groups are being tasked with getting users up-to-speed on mobile applications and are facing unique challenges with incorporating mobile devices and applications into the traditional classroom setting.

In the transportation industry, many pieces of outdated equipment are being replaced with new, more efficient models. Changes like this can be very disruptive to affected workers. In today’s digital world this problem is becoming ever more common as mobile technologies move processes from levers and handles to buttons and touch screens.

Although microlearning videos are often described as less boring and tedious than their longer workplace training counterparts, brevity alone does not accomplish this. The key is to begin with really good scripts that spell out precisely what you plan to produce, including visuals, narration, dialogue, action, and more. They are essentially design documents with content rolled into one. 

Two of the most popular technologies used to engage learners today are video and mobile. Videos are becoming increasingly interactive—even on mobile devices—but developing these videos can be complex. Where does an organization start?