What is Considered the Perfect mLearning Onboarding Strategy?

This is the age of Mobility. Wondering what ‘Mobility’ is? Well, are you looking up this post from your mobile device? Or maybe you are on your desktop or laptop, and your tablet or mobile device might be just around you. You might as well read this on your other devices. Yes, it’s that easy and that’s mobility for you. Mobility is intricately woven into our existence today. Further, it is impossible to build a successful business framework in the post-millennial age without taking into consideration mobile devices and mobility. In this article, we talk all about how to create the perfect onboarding strategy.

According to Statista, over one billion smartphones ship around the globe every year and analysts at Gartner, Inc. predict that almost 70% working professionals will perform work-related tasks from their own devices by following year. Towards Maturity proclaimed that nearly half of the organizations world-wide today use mobile devices as part of their training and eLearning activities. The research firm MarketsandMarkets has predicted that the world-wide mobile learning market will increase from .98 billion in 2015 to 7.60 billion by 2020. So, it’s no wonder that mobile learning has been rapidly absorbed in learning and development over the past decade to complement and support traditional eLearning.

What is Mobile Learning or mLearning?

Mobile learning refers to training offered on mobile devices so that the learners can progress through it at their own pace, place, and on-the-go. It is typically designed to play across all devices like desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphones. As digital natives start to dominate the workforce, the traditional methods of motivating employees are going to become increasingly ineffective. However, with the advent of microlearning, mobile learning has proved to improve our capacity to get the right information to the learners at the right time.

One of the best-known approaches to learning and development is the 70:20:10 approach. It says that seventy percent of knowledge is accumulated through experiential circumstances, twenty percent is accomplished through social interactions, and ten percent resides in the tried and true approach of instructor-led, classroom-based environments. Now, mobility is supporting the twenty percent, allowing learners and experienced folk in the workplace to interact with each other across social channels.

Opportunities and Attributes Enjoyed by a Mobile-forward Organization

Learners are already mobile and particularly evident that millennials love their smartphones. Hence, there is absolutely no reason for you to not adopt a mobile model for your business framework. Some of its key benefits to enjoy are:

• A learner-centric approach
• Engaged learners
• Improved velocity of knowledge exchange through social channels
• Availability of knowledge at the point of need in the form of job aids
• Improved speed of communication
• Better completion rates
• Leverages microlearning, gamification and game-based techniques.

The 10 Factors of a Perfect Mobile Learning Onboarding Strategy

Mobile learning is here to stay and can give your organization the cutting edge it requires to succeed. While the trend is growing, don’t panic if you have not yet jumped on the bandwagon, it’s not too late. We are about to share with you the perfect strategy that will help you onboard mobile learning to be truly competitive.

1. Define the real problem

What has triggered the need for mobile learning? Is it because of the right reasons like your workforce comprises of the digital natives and you want a training that’s just right for them? And because of a gap in user experience, between the applications and software used at work and during personal time, is widening at an unprecedented rate? Or, is it simply triggered by your wish to want to follow the current trend? It is important to make sure it is for the right reasons otherwise it’s a colossal waste of time and effort. Create your mobile learning focused on learning, not on the current trend.

2. Identify the learning gap

Discuss with stakeholders, team members and anyone else involved to find out what the learners are not doing now that they should be doing in terms of the identified real problem. This is the gap between the desired behavior and the current behavior.

3. List the learning outcomes

Gain an agreement from the stakeholders on what the learners should be able to do once the mobile learning is complete. This will ensure that you measure every development decision against the desired learning outcome.

4. Align mobile learning approach and outcomes with overall business objectives

Ensure that the proposed approach is grounded in measurable and actionable metrics, such that it is aligned with the business objectives. It will often be the key to secure sponsorship for the mobile learning initiative.

5. Perform audience analysis

Since you are reading this post, you most probably want to create a mobile learning for your millennial workforce. However, it is equally important to know their depth of technical know-how, familiarity with eLearning and/ mobile learning, reading level, knowledge level of subject matter, and length of time in the organization. All this information will help you design the appropriate learning program.

6. List the technical requirements

Whether you are developing the mobile learning in-house or outsourcing it to a vendor, ensure that your project has the required mobile solutions. Know if the learning will be rolled out to your learners through mobile devices only or even on desktop, laptop, tablet. Consider the authoring tool to be used to develop the learning. Involve your IT folks at an early stage to avoid facing problems later. Determine the required LMS features. Will the mobile learning require internet connectivity, or can it be played offline as well? Is there a need to consider SCORM or Experience API? Answer these questions right at the onset and ensure all stakeholders are on the same page.

7. Determine whether your organization mobile learning policy will use a BYOD approach or provide users with devices

Digital natives insist on access to their personal tablet devices and smart phones, that is part of the reason that organizations are adapting mobile learning strategies. Organizations today are willing to allow access to organization applications outside their workspace. However, make sure that there are no privacy and security concerns that may drive the need of work-sanctioned devices.

8. Form a champion team

It is extremely important to have a reliable team to undertake the mobile learning strategy; to drive it, measure it, and ensure its regular improvement. A project like this is likely to have new demands, for instance, you have to constantly self-train, every day is a new set of optimization problems, creative demands, frustration, and joy in accomplishment. A champion team will ensure you enjoy the journey as well as the destination.

9. Design for mobile UI/UX

One very costly mistake organizations make while onboarding mobile learning is that they try to fit eLearning content into mLearning framework. That’s a very dear mistake. When developing for mobile devices ensure that your design and engineering team creates a consistent and smooth-flowing user experience. Pay significant time and attention to minimize potential issues that users are likely to encounter in a mobile device. Undergo several iterations of user-experience study and user-interaction refinements to ensure that the user experience is intuitive and seamless.

10. Document and measure the mobile learning program

Regardless of what process is used, you will require use of some types of design documents to articulate the design goals, strategy, flow, and outcome both within the project team and outside. These documents have proven to play important roles both during the project cycle and at a later date, time and again. Ensure you measure the learning through analytics, which can provide detailed reports. Decision-makers will want assurance about the measurability of learning outcomes and whether they align with the business objectives. After all, any learning and development initiative is good as long as it meets real-time business needs.

I hope you will find some or all of this to be useful for you when you plan to onboard mobile learning into your organization. Mobile learning is here to stay for years to come, make sure you use of technology, data and experience to make the most out of it.

If you would like to learn more about how to build the most effective onboarding strategy!

If you’d like to know more about how SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s mobile learning platform can help your internal training practices, get in touch at enquiries@edapp.com. You can also try SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s Mobile LMS and authoring tool for free by signing up here.

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