mobile
Of Conrad Gottfredson’s five moments of learning needs, the latter three – when trying to remember, when things change, and when something goes wrong – are the ones most pertinent to the workplace. It is these moments that an employee seeks to apply the knowledge and skills they need to do the job. Any learning support that is instantly available and can help is immediately and hugely effective. Cue the mobile device – it’s available, connected and easily used; ergo, it’s performance support. It’s important to make a beginning with mobile learning. Waiting for things to
settle down or merely formulating a long-term strategy won’t help. The strategy can simultaneously fall in place as organisations gain some insights into how it works in their enterprise. Here are some simple options to get started:
M-enablement of existing e-learning Visually, the display areas of tablets are similar to desktop PCs and therefore, from a design perspective, content repurposing is often quite simple. However, the software is another story. Because certain tablets (like iPads) don’t support Flash and a lot of existing e-learning is Flash-based, it’s essential to convert it to an iPad- friendly medium – HTML – to make it tablet-compatible. Flash CS6 Toolkit for CreateJS, Captivate v6, Articulate Storyline and Adobe
Edge are some of the tools that promise quick-fix solutions for converting existing e-learning courseware for tablets. A number of rapid authoring tools, such as Adobe Captivate 5.5 with HTML5 Converter and Lectora Inspire, can also help in quickly converting existing e-learning to HTML5 for mobile delivery, as well as create dynamic video and Flash content. But is just conversion the answer? And will it be as seamless and simple as
everyone says it will be? Well, the short answer is ‘not quite’. It isn’t as simple and certainly not without its own challenges. There might be a need to eliminate some interactivities, stop playing some video or audio files, and possibly make a lot of smaller compromises just because they are not supported by iOS.
Support portal for sales (on-the-go workforce) Field-based staff are the most mobile and need to be kept updated with, for example, the latest information, new developments, changes to operating processes and policies, and any other materials, resources and communication that could help and support them in their day-to-day work. It’s no surprise then that the sales efficiency is a skill that needs particular attention since extending uniform training to a demographically dispersed sales force within the constraints of time and budget remains a challenge. Being always on and always carried, mobile devices are the answers to these challenges. A mobile-optimised website designed exclusively to cater to the needs of the sales workforce could be a great first project – and it is not restricted to learning alone.
Custom app for a specific task Surveying the operations teams to identify any support opportunity that can be provided using mobile devices could be a starting point too. It could involve creating checklists to increase safety compliance or a custom calculator to help process certain tasks faster. Mobile learning is a powerful and exciting medium that lends itself to so many different uses and scenarios that can be used for a variety of solutions. Getting started is key – a simple, easy-to-use mobile learning project will help get your hands dirty and give you some valuable experience of how and where to use it, ideas on who in your organisation would really benefit from it, and help build your strategic roadmap for the future.
Amit Garg is director and co-founder of Upside Learning
e.learning age october 2013
Case study 1
A leading pharmaceutical company wanted to move its classroom training online and at the same time equip its field-based sales team with a performance support tool that would help them understand the subject of migraines and how its product could be used to treat them. The solution had to be available to the sales team when they were in the field and instantly accessible. The team already had iPads but had never used them for learning or support before, but it was the logical choice. And by making it multi-device compatible, the solution was equally available to its office-based employees. Speed and timely delivery were key to the project and Upside Learning developed the solution using Captivate 6, based on the tool’s ease and speed in designing, developing and editing. This also ensured timelines and budgets were met and the product futureproofed for easy localisation into other languages through Captivate’s XML export/import. The course was published as an HTML5 output and was AICC-compliant. The 10in screen size allowed the design to be equally effective across
devices, and the visuals, animations, graphics and tables used in the courses made the learning more engaging for the learners while achieving the objective of providing performance support at that crucial point of need.
Case study 2 Getting senior management to complete compliance courses in work ethics was a major challenge for a global fast-moving consumer goods company. Senior management is always at a premium and, given a punishing schedule of travel and meetings, training invariably gets postponed – often indefinitely. And as the training was on the LMS, which meant logging on to take a course etc, it was just another reason to not do it – they did not realise they were ‘non-compliant’. So the company decided to take the training to them on tablets, mobiles, laptops and desktops, wherever they were and whenever they could look at it; airports, planes, trains – it needed to be available. The company’s existing e-learning course was built in Flash and was to be m-enabled for delivery to iPads and mobile devices. Upside Learning used its SCORM1.2-compliant, HTML-responsive framework to m-enable the content and delivered it using its mobile platform, Upside2Go, unified with its LMS. The course was to provide a learning experience that was easy to read,
navigate and use. Upside Learning used RWD (Responsive Web Design) to design the course, minimising the resizing, panning and scrolling of screens and graphics across the range of devices it would be accessed on. RWD uses CSS3 Media Queries, an extension of the @media rule that allows the layout to be adapted to the viewing environment. The company now has a course that everyone can access, wherever and
whenever. It gives increased reach, both in terms of mobile delivery but also through the increased ability for employees to access their learning. It is the pioneer course for a longer-term mobile strategy and usage for learning in the organisation and a successful use of an increasingly powerful medium of delivery.
l Number of global mobile subscribers prediction from Mobile Factbook 2013 by Portio Research, available at
http://tinyurl.com/portiofactbk l For more on millennials, try the article ‘Three Reasons You Need To Adopt A Millennial Mindset Regardless Of Your Age’ at
http://tinyurl.com/forbesmillennials l For more on the growth of mobile workers, IDC’s 2011-15 forecast is at
http://tinyurl.com/ mobgrowth l You can find the IBM thought leadership whitepaper ‘The New Workplace: Are You Ready?’ at
http://tinyurl.com/IBMworkplace l Conrad Gottfredson’s five moments of learning needs is at
http://tinyurl.com/fivemoments
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