Smartphones are near ubiquitous today. With over 2.5 billion smartphone users worldwide there is hardly anyone these days who doesn’t have one buzzing with texts and notifications.

Beyond transforming communication, the mobility revolution has had a dramatic impact on businesses. eLearning has also seen a significant shift thanks to the growing importance of mlearning.

A Mobile First Approach
Using mobility for learning is not entirely new. Learning and development (L&D) professionals have been incorporating mobile devices into their training plans by making it a supplementary format for accessing eLearning content.

But today the trend is shifting from a ‘mobile friendly’ approach towards a ‘mobile first’ approach.

Under the mobile friendly approach, the concern was only to make eLearning channels mobile responsive. But ‘mobile first’ approach acknowledges the importance of mlearning and the places it at the core of eLearning strategy. This encourages the creation of dedicated apps, specialised learning paths and instructional designs specific to the format,

Mobile Learning – Not good-to-have, but a must-have

The recent maturing of mobile learning is not just because of the increasing role of smartphones in our lives but also due to the clear business benefits it provides.

Top 7 reasons why every business must adopt mlearning as a part of their L&D plans:

• Deliver learn-on-the-go experience
  Employees have their devices on them all the time. Making your eLearning content accessible via smartphones encourages them to catch up whenever they have some downtime, making it a boon for the busy distracted learner
• Appeal to changing generational attitudes
  The new workforce is largely mobile and the tech-savvy millennial generation, in particular, doesn’t like to be tethered to PCs. Mobile-focused content gives employees more control over how and when they consume content, increasing their interest.
• Accommodation of all learning styles
  Everyone has a different preference for learning. Mobile devices make it possible to deliver content in a variety of formats including video, text, gamified, or social collaboration. This goes a long way in making the training material appealing to employees
• Better learner engagement and motivation
  By reimagining the training content for the mobile platform, it can be made far more appealing and relevant. This boosts learning engagement and motivates learners to finish the course. Features like push notifications also help in reducing abandonment and retaining interest.
• Higher completion rates
  Easy accessibility, stimulating content and the just-in-time nature of mlearning raises learner interest and transforms their attitude towards training from ‘have-to-do’ to ‘want-to-do’!
• Allows Learning paths personalization – post training assessment
  Mobile learning offers the flexibility to bring in personalizing of learning paths. mLearning services can create targeted course content and in preferred learning formats that appeal to learners.
• Suitable for microlearning
  One of the top trends for boosting recall and retention of training material is using microlearning – imparting information in bite-sized chunks. mLearning is perfect for sharing easily digestible snapshots of information that can be quickly consumed.

Undoubtedly, a mobile-specific instructional approach is critical for creating highly effective JIT learning that enhances learner engagement.