Create Mobile Learning That Matters
The number of mobile/smartphone users increases daily. This makes mobile learning a good strategy to use to engage your learners. While many L&D professionals have started incorporating mobile learning strategies, some are still struggling with it.
What Is Mobile Learning?
Mobile learning is the process of accessing learning content using mobiles. With the general, cheaper rate of data connection, everybody can have easy access to your learning via their mobile anytime, at any particular place. Mobile learning does not necessarily mean only smartphones. Today, eLearning can be accessed through many devices, like an iPad or eBook. Make sure you consider this while creating your mobile learning strategy.
Key Benefits Of Designing Mobile Learning
- It presents learning on the go
The best part of mobile learning is the ability to learn at any particular time, irrespective of where you are located. - It offers flexibility to readers
L&D professionals offer their readers flexibility with mLearning. - It supports cross-device
Mobile learning provides support for cross-device. That is, you can enjoy learning from any device.
7 Tips For Creating Mobile Learning
1. Ignore Other Materials, Use Only The Main Materials
The mobile learning platform width is less than a PC and some other devices. Therefore, while ignoring other materials, focus your mobile learning on the main materials of your course. While focusing on the main materials, adjust the Instructional Design to make up for any missing information and enable questions.
2. Make Your Graphics Simple
Some images are very "OK" on the PC screen but not when it's on a small screen. Stay away from images that lack quality on mobile screens. For complex images, if you can't avoid it, you can include it by uploading it using a PDF file. You can also use image editing tools to optimize images.
3. Test Your Learning Before Launching
Until you are sure that the behavior of your eLearning content has been tested for compatibility with all devices, do not launch it. Your content must be compatible even with the device having the least width.
4. Keep Flexibility In Mind When Designing Your Layout
A way of designing mobile learning is to ensure that your layout design is responsive. Ensure that it is more flexible toward different types of screen sizes. You can design your layout by using an output that is compatible with HTML5 or using authoring tools for your design process.
5. Select Your Interactions Wisely
While choosing your interactions, you must consider different screen sizes. Your interactions must be able to work perfectly on the screen size of every device. For instance, high-frequency drag-and-drop pages can make interactions hard for mobile users. You can solve this issue by reducing the frequency. So, always think about your interactions at an early design stage and select the best fit for all mobile devices.
6. Make A Single-Column Design
Instead of adding content tables or sidebars to a separate column, you can add up everything in a single column flow. Mobile users are used to scrolling up and down to get information, so adding several columns could make learning difficult for them.
7. Add Necessary Section Breaks
The reason why section breaks are important when designing your mobile learning is to ensure that every section of your course is read by your readers. Section breaks will help you minimize the rate at which your learners scroll over some important sections of your eLearning course. You can break up your content by adding some relevant and colorful infographics or charts.
Summary
I hope you find this article helpful for your mobile learning design. Mobile learning is not a new topic, and it has been in existence for years. It has helped eLearning in so many ways, including providing usability and easy accessibility to learning—irrespective of one's barriers or needs. While you can use the tips above to design your mLearning, you can always enhance it by also focusing on its content compatibility.
