The Shift to Mobile Learning – Business Leaders are not Waiting

By Jim Lundy

Mobile is one of the hottest words when it comes to tech talk.  When it comes to learning, mobile has always been hyped but under-delivered.  Now in 2014, business leaders are looking for and seeking out better ways to deliver learning to their users. Learning and Development leaders need to react. This blog post is about the need to shift to Mobile Learning.

Mobile First

While most Talent and Learning providers now offer a mobile app as part of their Cloud offerings, many do little more than mimic the browser interface in their existing application. Mobile First is about going further and combining capabilities into a new experience.   Mobile First means going further and when an app does that, it often becomes wildly popular with users.

For business users, mobile learning means enabling them to take classes on their tablet – online or offline. For Managers, it’s about tracking the progress of a class. Mobile learning requires getting the right information to a sales or a call center agent right before a call – something we are starting to call predictive learning.

The Content Dilemma

One of the challenges in the shift to Mobile Learning is a legacy content that is often Adobe Flash based, which often means that content will not play on a Tablet, such as an iPad. Legacy Content should not hold back the shift to Mobile, but in most cases, it is the number one reason that L&D departments wait to go mobile.

Business Leaders are Not Waiting to Go Mobile

Enterprise Business Leaders often are not waiting for the L&D leaders to go mobile. In many cases,  they are seeking out alternative solutions to enable mobile. They do this often because their counterparts at their competitors already are.

The good news is that there are ways to leverage mobile so that Mobile First is the priority, and there are ways to solve the content dilemma.  I’ll be discussing this and more at our Mobile Learning Webinar on August 28th. Don’t miss it.