Benefits of mobile learning

Corporate education is becoming an increasingly important element of the business culture. To be fully efficient, it should be seamlessly integrated with the work processes so that all educational activities can be instantly implemented in practice. We’ll explore various aspects of mobile learning and see how its benefits follow from them directly. Also, we’ll see how learning management systems, such as CleverLMS, help companies deploy mobile education and how to choose the most suitable one.

This article has a focus on corporate education, despite mobile learning being excellent for personal and school/university learning as well. As you’ll see, workplaces especially benefit from such an approach, as it enables learning without detachment from the workflows, saving time, money, and nerves. Let’s start!

Mobile education in various contexts

At work, time is extremely valuable. While it would never be utilized at the expense of employees’ health or quality loss, it’s still better not to waste it. Ideally, it’s when an employee learns something and then does their work based on what they learned or, if possible, learns right during the work. Mobile learning is what works extremely well here!

For example, in sales teams, people can study everything about the product they’re selling via their smartphones and then focus on practicing the best sales approaches. After that, they work directly with customers while having access to all theoretical materials, product data, and contact with a supervisor who’ll always give advice and help in case of trouble. 

It’ll maximize knowledge reinforcement and work efficiency while taking no extra time from employees.

Learning anywhere: Developing the strategy

So, what is mobile learning?

You have a smartphone and a learning management system (LMS) installed on it. On it, a company’s management, together with experts and mentors, develops a set of courses based on the company’s workflows and corporate culture. They choose a variety of educational materials, from books to videos and infographics, that will explain what to do to obtain the desired result. Lastly, tasks and quizzes are assigned to learners to reinforce the material and use it in practice.

The mobile learning strategy is a set of specific plans and actions based on skills that must be uplifted and chosen learning materials.

• Blended learning is the combination of online and offline education when learners complete offline tasks while learning their material online. It’s a good setting for regular education, as it creates an innovative environment where learners can learn something new and apply it in their practice quickly.
• Classroom learning is a more traditional approach when you have regular meetings with teachers and mentors to share knowledge and then practice skills. It can be applied, for example, to improve employee qualification.
• Just-in-time approach is the ultra-practical one, when learners obtain information about how to do something, learn it, and then practice until they can perform it well. It’s based on the organization’s needs, so it’s ideal at workplaces when there is a clear set of skills, such as industrial safety, nursing, or sales, that should be taught quickly, routinely, and just in time.
• Microlearning implies obtaining small chunks of information: no more than 5-10 minute videos, small video presentations, clear instructions, and infographics. It’s very universal and can be used in tandem with all other strategies.

In addition to the strategy, you should choose the right learning management system. Let’s overview several parameters shortly. You can use CleverLMS features as an example, and at the end of the article, we’ll evaluate several others.

• How does it motivate employees? One of the most important LMS tasks is maintaining high employee motivation and tracking their performance. For that, platforms provide various reward systems, interactive course menus, and gamification features, so choose those that are suitable for your corporate culture.
• How does it realize the project management features? Another crucial task is organization of the learning process and its integration with the workflow. Platforms allow task scheduling, event planning, discussion forums, and various tracking options to measure learners’ productivity.
• How can it be customized? If you need your own learning platform, choose those that can customize everything, from the number of features to including your brand colors and design.
• Does it provide advanced features? Evaluate whether you need such options as generative AI for course creation, chatbots, or big data analytics. They’ll make an app more expensive and harder to install, but can be extremely useful.
• How is it supported? Lastly, see whether an app has 24/7 support, how it cooperates with the customers during the installation and maintenance, and whether it has a blog with a knowledge base. Also, check customer reviews to have a full picture.

Let’s now proceed to the practical implementation of mobile learning and overview its aspects.

Learning during the work: Some statistics

Mobile education can be applied right during the work process. 

As you’ve seen, one of the actual mobile learning trends is microlearning. It’s the approach when you learn something with small chunks of relevant knowledge, which you then instantly apply in practice. So, you avoid long theoretical lectures, reflections, and seminar tasks, while focusing on short video demonstrations and explanations with practical lessons. 

No wonder it’s so popular, as it saves so much time and nerves, clarifying everything about what to do. According to the Statista survey of 284 respondents worldwide, most of them use personal devices for education frequently. 

Source: Statista

According to the research by the educational platform Lynda, mobile learning users complete their tasks in a variety of locations, and overall learning productivity increases by more than 40%. Utilizing the power of smartphones’ interactivity enhances the company’s workforce greatly while reducing the negative effects of smartphones, such as distractions.

Double benefit, actually!

Summarizing benefits

So, let’s summarize the value that all these practices may bring to your company in case of choosing and following the right strategy.

• The universality of mobile learning is tremendous. While there are many tasks that cannot be done on a smartphone and require a PC, a smartphone can be used in places where the usage of a PC is hard or impossible. Examples are manufacturies and sales in stores. In both cases, employees need to perform very specific actions in real time and so have no time to sit at the computer. The mobile e-learning platform saves the situation, enabling learning in real-time, just as they work.
• Better work integration is connected with the previous point. As you see, employees may complete their tasks on their smartphones and implement the knowledge at work right after that. For example, they can learn industrial safety theory while operating engines at the plant, seeing directly how they should use the obtained knowledge to work efficiently and avoid injuries.
• Easiness of deployment and usage of mobile learning tools follows from their optimized size for mobile devices. Instead of installing the whole system on corporate servers, you obtain a personalized mobile application for your needs and install it on your employees’ phones. 

You can see in these examples how mobile education can help in various situations and apply them to your own case. To summarize what is mobile learning in education, we’ll show you several examples of learning management systems for different destinations. Let’s see!

Mobile learning platforms

Now you know the mobile education benefits and implementation methods. Here are the best mobile learning apps for various cases, so you’ll know which platform is good for which purposes.

• CleverLMS offers robust organizational capabilities, including an event planning and task scheduling feature integrated into its course creation interface.

It can be installed as a mobile application or deployed on corporate servers and can be tailored to meet the customer’s requirements and branding, making it an exceptionally versatile choice.

• Absorb is prominent due to advanced functionalities, such as generative AI for course development and big data analytics for performance monitoring.

It serves well for enterprises operating in knowledge-intensive sectors that require its advanced functionality.

• Docebo Learning Suite presents a multitude of advanced functions that can be individually installed for content creation, data analysis, customer relations, and more.

It proves ideal for large corporations with intricate workflows and extensive networks but isn’t suitable for smaller businesses due to its high pricing and complexity.

• TalentLMS’s features focus on improving the company’s workflows and seamlessly integrating it with various content libraries.

It offers several subscription models for different business sizes, and is particularly well-suited for content creation studios and companies engaged in direct customer interactions, such as sales teams.

• Moodle is a freely available tool for general educational use. However, it lacks essential functionalities and adequate support, so the installation of paid and/or complex add-ons is necessary for full functionality.

While it can be employed to explore various LMS features, it cannot effectively replace a purpose-built corporate LMS.

Conclusion

Mobile education is all about utilizing the power of your smartphone for good while reducing its bad aspects. The interactivity, universality, and real-time nature of smartphones are especially advantageous for business. All mobile education strategies utilize these features and focus on obtaining quick practical results.

The best mobile learning software for you depends on the needs of your environment. Answering the questions about the motivation and project management options, advanced features, price, deployment, support, and mobile app customization will show you which tool to select.

So, by leveraging an LMS for mobile education with the right strategy and diverse learning materials, you’ll uplift your company’s staff greatly. Good luck!

Author: by Veronika Sinitsa

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