The number of mobile phone users increases daily. Hence, it makes mobile learning an excellent way to engage your students. Many L&D professionals have begun incorporating mobile learning strategies into their educational courses, but some still need help.
What is Mobile Learning?
Mobile learning refers to a process where students access learning materials using mobiles. With the general, cheaper data connection rates, almost everybody can access learning via their mobile anytime and anywhere. Also, it is noteworthy that mobile learning doesn’t necessarily mean smartphones. Nowadays, learners can access online learning through many devices, like tablets or laptops. So, ensure that you consider this while devising your mobile learning strategy.
Key Advantages of Designing Mobile Learning
Flexibility
Mobile learning offers its users flexibility by allowing them to study at their own pace. In addition, they can access learning resources anytime and anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection.
Learning On The Go
As mentioned above, the best part about learning on your mobile is that you can study at any particular time, irrespective of your location. Moreover, learners can fit their learning around their schedule, whether on the go, at home, or at work.
Supports Cross Device
Mobile learning supports cross-device use by providing learners with flexibility and access to learning materials and activities regardless of their device. This can help to increase engagement and learning outcomes, as learners can fit their learning around their busy schedules and lifestyles.
Tips To Create Mobile Learning
Use Main Materials
The bandwidth of mobile learning platforms is less than a personal computer and other devices. So, you must ignore other materials and focus your mobile learning around materials that are essential to your course.
Likewise, while concentrating on the main materials, adjust the instructional design to enable queries and make up for any missing information.
Utilize Simple Graphics
Some images are best for the PC screen but not very good on a small screen. Therefore, stay away from images that lack quality on mobile phones. If you can’t avoid complex images, you can upload them using a PDF file. Besides, you can utilize image editing tools to optimize images for mobile screens.
Test Before Launch
Before launch, ensure that the behavior of your online learning content has been tested for compatibility with all devices.
Your e-learning content must be compatible even with the smallest bandwidth device.
Consider Flexibility While Designing Layout
You should create mobile learning to ensure that your layout design is responsive. It should be your utmost priority to make it flexible toward different types of screen sizes. You can design your layout by utilizing an output compatible with HTML5 or using other authoring tools for your layout design process.
Choose Interactions Wisely
When you are selecting your interactions, it is wiser to consider different screen sizes. Your interactions must work perfectly on every device’s screen size. For example, high-frequency drag-and-drop pages make interactions challenging for mobile users.
You can reduce the frequency to solve this issue. Hence, always keep your interactions in mind at an early design stage and choose the best fit for all mobile devices.
Create A Single Column Design
Rather than adding sidebars or content tables to a separate column, you can ideally add up everything in a single-column flow. However, smartphone users typically scroll up and down to get information, so adding various columns would complicate learning.
Add Required Section Breaks
Section breaks are crucial when designing mobile learning to ensure readers read every section. Moreover, section breaks help you reduce the rate at which students scroll over some crucial sections of your online learning course. Hence, you can break up the learning content into sections by adding some relevant and colorful charts or infographics.
Effective Mobile Learning Strategies
Now, let’s discuss the top five mobile learning strategies to help you create an impact. These strategies provide high engagement, ensure higher application of acquired knowledge, enable better retention and recall, demonstrate a gain for students, and encourage social or collaborative learning.
Use Microlearning
Microlearning is an effective mobile learning strategy that delivers short bursts of focused content to students. This approach is best for mobile devices, as it allows students to easily access and consume bite-sized learning modules while on the go.
To efficiently implement this strategy, identify the learning objectives for your mobile learning program. Then, develop short, focused learning modules that can be consumed in 5-10 minutes. Finally, incorporate multimedia elements such as animations, videos, and interactive quizzes to make the learning experience more interactive and engaging.
Likewise, ensure that learners receive feedback on their progress and performance and use this feedback to improve the learning experience. Delivering content in various formats, such as video, text, and audio is also important to cater to different learning styles and interests.
Gamification for Learning
Mobile learning and gamification are the ultimate combinations for giving students control over the learning experience. Gamification offers a learner-centered experience incorporating exploration and decision-making to reach end goals, while mobile learning apps offer students the convenience and flexibility to complete learning anytime and anywhere.
Furthermore, learners can access mobile learning when needed, and gamification helps them to learn in a fun and practical way. Incorporating gamification in mobile learning provides an outstanding simulated practice ground for knowledge application.
Leverage on Video-Based Learning
Everyone today has a smartphone in their hands. And as most videos are mobile-compatible, they are easily accessible on mobile devices. Therefore, combining videos and mobile learning works wonders as a convenient and quick method for learning on the go.
Besides, video-based learning can embellish your conventional e-learning course. For example, you can offer microlearning videos to students as a part of the learning path or use videos to set the context, solve a problem, explain a concept, or as a learning summary.
Facilitate Social Or Collaborative Learning
Collaborative and social learning are two vital components of mobile learning, helping learners to engage with the study material and each other, resulting in a more effective and enjoyable learning experience.
So, utilize mobile devices and groups to share, promote, and recommend learning nuggets. You can use tools like social media platforms, discussion forums, video conferencing, virtual whiteboards, and shared documents to help students collaborate on projects and develop communication as well as teamwork skills to increase their knowledge and understanding of the subject.
Personalization
Offer your students a personalized learning experience through your effective mobile learning strategy. Design your mobile learning layout to allow learners to take control of their learning path, where they can choose how they want to learn, what they want to learn, and when they want to learn.
Your mobile learning strategy must also use artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to adapt the learning experience to students’ learning styles, preferences, and performance. These algorithms can assess students’ past performances, progress, and preferences and provide personalized recommendations on what to learn next, how to learn it, and how long to spend on each key concept. For example, SimpliTaught offers students a personalized learning experience using AI/ML algorithms so that students can make the most of their educational journeys.
Final Thoughts!
In conclusion, mobile learning strategies offer personalization using video-based learning, microlearning, gamification, and social learning techniques. These approaches enable learners to engage with the material in the most relevant and effective ways, resulting in a more personalized and effective learning experience.
