There is substantial buzz sweeping through today’s conference rooms and around water coolers about all things mobile and for good reason. With 5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, 72 percent of the U.S. workforce already mobile and 200 percent year-over-year growth for tablet computers, companies are well beyond debating if mobile is a good strategy… and are now laser focused on when and how.[1]
As Christina “CK” Kerley explained through The Mobile Revolution & B2B, “There are no holes left to fill in the business argument for mobile integration, only dots left to connect by today’s executives.” Further illuminating mobile’s profound implications, Google’s Dennis Woodside declared, “This new, huge technology market will transform almost every industry.” Indeed, the business world finds itself transfixed by a remarkable innovation that produces stunning opportunities across marketing, sales, communications, support, and, yes, training.
Yet our experiences suggest that most companies lack a cohesive mobile strategy, let alone one that focuses on learners. And so, this article lays out a 5-step framework—supported by key questions and critical considerations—to guide your development of an mLearning strategy.
Step 1: Determining mLearning Strategy
Wherever your company may find itself in the mLearning adoption curve, creating a well-defined strategy will ensure a more successful outcome. Begin by asking “What exactly is driving mLearning adoption, and what are the perceived benefits of adding this arrow to the learning quiver?” It’s likely the answers will reveal broader assumptions about your company’s learning investment.
For instance, when mLearning is part of a larger business initiative, such as a product launch or compliance training, it’s more likely to be viewed as a “once off” and can quickly lose momentum. Here are some tips for incorporating mobile into your overall strategy:
- Launch a pilot to perfect and promote. Execute a pilot to prepare audiences, build buzz and detect needed optimizations.
- Identify mobile metrics. Define success metrics specific to mLearning initiatives as separate from the larger project.
- Achieve alignment from senior leadership. Gain executive buy-in to secure the requisite resources for execution.
Step 2: Identifying Mobile Infrastructure
Once your mLearning strategy is in place, the largest and most costly part of the adventure awaits: infrastructure. Key in this stage of development is assessing the current state of your mobile infrastructure (device pervasiveness, OS variance, provider reliability, content security) to calculate the gap to your future-state mLearning strategy.
The best place to begin infrastructure planning is with your mobile provider and IT team to determine:
- Can your provider scale to meet the demand and offer content support for the various platforms, all while providing cost incentives for enterprise adoption?
- Do they have content and application partners with offerings you will need?
- Will they keep you up to speed in a market that changes at a speed surpassing its own bandwidth?
Moving beyond technology, it is equally important to pinpoint the governance, financial, content and additional support resources that make up the larger infrastructure—and requisite investment—needed for execution.
Step 3: Developing Mobile-Optimized Content
Content takes on a new dimension and must support a new set of user needs when it goes mobile. It must be easily accessible, snack sized, readily available and support existing learning strategies. It’s anytime, anywhere performance support! On that note, a few ways to re-engineer content for mobile devices include:
- Mobile Apps. Remember those long, linear-based eLearning courses? Shorten and chunk them for mobile delivery. Do you have a flashcard drill that reviews marketplace data or dosing information? Create a series of brief drills to reinforce your larger learning efforts.
- Mobile Gaming. Transform label knowledge check activities into game-based approaches better suited for the mobile environment.
- Mobile Polling. Interested in real-time feedback or identifying a gap? Institute a short mobile survey to solicit feedback on a recent training experience, or leverage polls as part of a communications campaign that illuminates how much learners know about a topic.
Step 4: Instituting mLearning Governance
Since mLearning should fit within an organization’s current learning strategy, it should not be treated separately but instead be integrated into a cohesive Organizational Learning Strategy. Best practices include:
- Involving cross-departmental participation (e.g., HR, Technology, Key Business Stakeholders) so as to extend across the enterprise
- Establishing a learning function
- Maintaining and advancing learning plans based on organizational needs and gaps.
- Offering systematic reviews of technical, legal, regulatory, and medical capabilities
- Providing mechanisms to prioritize needs
- Ensuring plans are in place to evaluate program life cycles based on established metrics
Step 5: Setting mLearning Metrics
As with any learning strategy, metrics are essential for tracking progress and needed optimizations. Begin with identifying what you are looking to measure and what those metrics encompass. Key considerations include:
- Isolated or Comprehensive. Are you evaluating just the mLearning training intervention, or the entire curriculum in which mLearning is one component of the blend?
- Level 1-4. If you are only evaluating an mLearning training intervention, then Level 1 questions around content, connectivity and usability should be asked. However, if you are looking to capture data around the entire curriculum, then a Level 3 or 4 type measurement is best.
- Mobile and Social. As mLearning and social media technologies continue to converge, and informal learning continues to gain in relevance, it is important to consider social media metrics (e.g., virality, engagement duration, recommendations and links).
Conclusion
Beyond all the noise, mLearning has a critical place in integrated learning strategies. As organizations realize this, executing their mLearning strategy may prove to be a competitive advantage through increased engagement and improved performance.
Footnote:
[1] 5 billion subscriptions: ITU/2010, 72% of U.S. workforce: IDC/2010, 200% YOY growth: Display Search/2011.
About the Authors: Shabnam Irfani (Director, Learning Solutions) and Chris Shuster (Business Development Manager) are with ClearPoint, an interactive health education company with headquarters in Hoboken, N.J. and global operations in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Written for TrainingIndustry.com
