10 Best Practices When Creating Learning Courses for Mobiles.
Time and again, mobile learning has
proved that it can stand up to its hype. And with the Millennial generation
surging up in workplaces, m-learning has become indispensable. In fact,
according to recent research, “71% of Millennials say they connect more with
mobile learning than L&D activities delivered via desktop or formal
methods.”
Yes, the modern employee is so used
to the smartphone and accessing information at his/her fingertips. Be it
entertainment, banking, social networking, shopping, or training, mobile phones
rule the globe. Now, since mobile learning is such a necessity, you must have
given some thoughts to implementing it in your organisation. However, simply
making your materials accessible on mobile gadgets won’t do the job. You need
to consider multiple other factors. Hence, to help you out, here are our 10
hand-picked best practices to create learning courses for mobiles.
When it comes to mLearning, you need
to keep your content short. Include only the necessary information and share
additional notes as handouts. Lengthy sessions not only consume precious hours
but do not appeal to the modern on-the-go learner as well.
On a phone, learners are prone to
abandoning a course if it takes too much time to load. Some tips to increase
the loading time include cropping graphics, compressing image sizes, and
replacing large images with image maps. The last option piques the trainee’s
curiosity levels and adds an interactive element to a mobile lesson.
One uses his/her smartphone for
brief time periods. Therefore, from a design POV, you should chunk your mobile
lessons into bite-sized sessions. In other words, you should opt for
microlearning. NOTE: Mobile learning
lessons should range from five to ten minutes in length and never more than
fifteen minutes.
You must consider the value of the
correct placement of your important content. You need to keep in mind that
mobile learners do not expect to see all the critical content as soon as they
land on the screen. You can start creating the course by first introducing the
employee to the course and then, guiding him/her to take more actions.
It is a huge mistake to launch a
mLearning course without having tested it on multiple devices to ensure proper
function and deployment. Now, do not depend only on one person during the
testing process. Test the program with different users — starting from
tech-savvy individuals to freshers. Finally, keep a record of your tests, the
results, and the optimisations, for improvising the course and even future
ones.
When you say responsive design, it
means that the content layout can adapt to any device. The screen could be the
size of an Android phone, iPhone, iPad, or laptop. In each case, a responsive
layout can be optimised as per the screen size — automatically!
To best understand the corporate learning habits of your staff,
talk to your employees and their managers. Gauge their learning habits. Analyse
commonly asked questions, learners’ approaches for gathering information, and
peer-to-peer interactions. When you know your end audience, you can design impactful
mlearning courses that meet their requirements and address their gap areas.
In
mobile learning
management system,
you should refrain from using too many features and options. It will simply end
up confusing the learner. When you add more buttons, graphics, and paragraphs,
the screen appears cluttered and complex. Again, mobile users usually use their
devices with one or two thumbs. Hence, you must design the course while
considering this user behaviour.
While creating mobile-friendly
training modules, use simple menu styles, increase the spatial size of buttons,
and enlarge interface elements like buttons. Again, if you wish to up the
engagement factor, go for gamified learning modules — something that can be
easily achieved with a platform like playablo.
Mobile devices are accessible 24×7
to the learner. You can take advantage of this fact to send out quick messages
and notification about new additions to mobile learning materials and segments.
Learners can then know which modules are unfinished and which classes need more
attention.
Conclusion
eLearning is constantly evolving
with the use of mobile devices. Therefore, you need to be wary of the continual
changes that are introduced in this methodology — so that your corporate
training modules are up-to-date as per the latest trends. Or, you can seek
the guidance of our experts at playablo, who will do all the hard work for you
while you relax and concentrate on other important tasks!
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