Chances are that by now you have at least heard of mobile learning, though you may still be confused as to what that actually means.

In the early years of mlearning there was some confusion but now this is an industry all its own with clear technology and instructional design methodology.

It isn’t going anywhere, that much we know.

With over 50% of the United States accessing the internet via a mobile device in 2015, it is imperative that the learning technology plays “nice” with mobile formats.

In other words: ignore mobile learning at your own peril!

The ELearning Guild, a leading professional organization in the field of elearning, has released a whitepaper that discusses the growing opportunity and influence of the mobile learning sector.

This concise report (roughly 27 pages in length) makes the case for mobile learning in today’s digital learning age.

Particularly interesting to me was the section on “business impact”.

For years elearning has taken a beating from business leaders because it was thought to be difficult to measure ROI of an elearning implementation.

It’s a battle that still wages on but it’s not as challenging as it once was given the breadth of studies, facts, and figures available all pointing to positive impacts of elearning on an organization.

Still, I foresee a similar challenge with mobile learning.

The business impact section of this whitepaper recognizes this challenge on page 15:

It is tough to demonstrate specific return on investment (ROI) for learning tools and courses. But since mobile technology places learning and performance support at the heart of the workflow and is with the learner all the time, it’s easier to collect relevant analytics.

The report essentially is saying that we should be prepared to face opposition to mobile learning initiatives similar to what we have seen in the traditional elearning space.

That’s the bad news.

However, the good news is that we know this is a challenge that can be overcome given what we have seen with elearning. It will take time and due diligence but we’ll get there.

The whitepaper is a quick and interesting read. If you’re at all curious about mobile learning then it’s worth checking out.