Mobile Learning: Why is it a must-have for organizations?

Viren Kapadia May 10, 2021
Mobile Learning: Why is it a must-have for organizations?

The New Mantra

The Conference Poem of the 28th ICDE World Conference on Online Learning held in Dublin, Ireland in 2019, extract quoted below, is a worthy read if you are interested in anything to do with e-education.

'Learning in the Light'
By Reàltàn Nì Leannàin(2019)

"We no longer stop learning when darkness gathers, Those old webs have crumbled in this era of light. In an age of information, learning squats tight in our grasp, within reach of all"

These lines succinctly capture the essence and spirit of the currently popular and necessary methods for reaching out and spreading learning to everyone. The words express a modern idiom to show that teaching and learning have no boundaries. Access to new technologies is helping in transcending physicality, time, and space. The reality of anytime, Anywhere, Anyone is education's new mantra.

Life Around Mobiles

Statistics on the use of mobile devices overwhelmingly support this fact. The number of mobile devices operating worldwide is expected to reach 17.72 billion by 2024, increasing 3.7 billion devices compared to 2020 levels. Average monthly smartphone data traffic worldwide is forecast to go up from 49 exabytes in 2920 to 143 exabytes by 2024. Therefore, mobiles as a platform for taking learning to the next level is a natural go-to tool for progressive organizations.

Training Matters

The new training landscape is not just for individuals. It applies equally strongly to forward-looking organizations that believe that their people matter; keeping their workforce up-to-date in processes and systems that impact the organization is a long-term strategic investment. Imparting training, skilling, and upskilling via an e-platform is an HR imperative that few organizations can choose to ignore in these time-strapped disrupted times. The work from home ethic has bolstered this requirement and made mobile learning a must-have necessity.

The L&D (learning and development) verticals of organizations are fast-learning towards making m-learning the major component of their employee skilling strategy, a discernible shift from the traditional classroom teaching.

Benefits

Some of the advantages that they see in this strategic move include:

  • Cost-effectiveness
  • Leverages devices already in large use
  • Independent of time and space constraints
  • Can target special relevant skills for specific employee sets
  • A critical mass of workers not required--single or many is of no consequence
  • Ready information available on fingertips
  • Supply of up to date real-time/current information
  • The trainer can deliver content through a variety of alternatives like audio, video, blogs, documents, podcasts, URLs, etc.
  • Convenience and ease of access of information and learning

Power In Hands

A mobile learning management system (LMS) is a powerful tool. It fulfills the twin functions of skilling the workforce for meeting corporate objectives and also of empowering employees by improving talent and making them more engaged. Using the feedback loops in online training allows them to contribute to improvements and be an integral part of the system.

Just-in-time solutions that employees seek to handle day-to-day work situations make them more effective. This is especially handy when the employee is off-site or is working outside office hours. The employee is never at a loss to access information which boosts his confidence and ability to manage marketing, sales, and clinching a deal. A mobile LMS is an indispensable tool in customer engagement.

…... And More

While making employees more professional and productive is a required primary attribute of any LMS, data analytic’s associated benefit from data thrown up by LMS should not be lost sight of. It can be used to measure productivity post-training, linked to performance appraisal, used for placement, and as an incentive tool for promotions.

Preparing the Pitch

To gain larger benefits from implementing a mobile LMS and overcome implementation hurdles, some groundwork is necessary.

  • The target group must be communicated clearly what the organization is expecting to achieve by the mobile LMS. This is a prerequisite for user acceptance and, consequently, a successful implementation.

  • In addition to sharing organization goals, the employees should also be conveyed the organization's expectations in the use of the LMS. The performance metrics that will be monitored and measured, the incentives structure, the non-measurable personal development and growth that will accrue, etc., should be spelled out clearly.

  • Further, once finalized, the framework should undergo beta testing with sample groups to eliminate bugs and kinks, get feedback on content, functionality, and ease of use, etc.

  • The LMS policy should also feature offline and online content available so that the scope of failing is minimized and options exist with the learners to choose what is convenient in a given circumstance.

Content Curation

Since m-learning is learner-centric, in any such system, content curation is of paramount importance. Learners will prefer nugget-sized information presented in an interactive and appealing style using visual tools and elements like infographics, pictorials, gamification, quizzes, etc. This is likely to ensure better learning and internalization of the user acquired knowledge.

Helping Hands

Organizations adopting m-learning or transiting from traditional classroom-type methodologies may find the going tough in the beginning. In-house talent, used to a different technique, is not always equipped with the required know-how with new technologies or suffers from change phobias. Support for a smooth transition to m-learning is now available in the market, and specialized firms with tailor-made solutions exist to do handholding of willing organizations stepping on this journey.

Platforms like Gyrus have the necessary expertise to help build an m-learning strategy and provide educational technologies to implement the same. Their platform has drawn the attention of businesses across industries. Their extensive range of e-learning solutions and the fact that their products meet the international standards of SCORM, AUCC, and XAPI for tracking e-learning activity make Gyrus an attractive proposition. Their impressive and growing client book is a testimony to their market reputation. Gyrus has a wide array of cost-effective LMS solutions for monitoring, tracking, and analytics. Depending on the business's specific needs, Gyrus can help choose and customize the best suitable option. The volume of trainees and users is not a constraining factor for Gyrus user-friendly LMS. The GyrusAim LMS platform can support up to 2 million learners.

Be the Change

Mobile learning is a cost-efficient way to enhance your employee's skills and knowledge. Multiple organizations worldwide have taken the m-learning path with success. It's time to lead the change.