Can Organizations Benefit from Mobile Learning?

Mobile devices have become an integral part of our daily lives – this is nothing new. Organizations today have recognized how comfortable people are with mobiles and are planning to shift training material to mobile devices because they want learners to access learning material anytime, anywhere. There is no denying it’s a huge benefit for learners, but employee benefit is not the only thing to be considered for such initiatives. The question here is, do organizations benefit from this training method?

Of course, they do. Here’s how organizations can benefit from mobile learning:

1. Improved consistency in training

Employees today often work away from their desks, even in remote locations. They may not have access to PCs or laptops to access courses. Similarly, employees working on the shop floor may not have easy access to computers. Mobile learning ensures that employees – no matter where they are – receive consistent training through their mobiles.

2. Improved completion rates and information retention

The attention span of humans is shrinking; learners find it difficult to complete training sessions or retain information for longer periods. The content delivered in a mobile learning course is quite less, but very specific. These courses are small and easily digestible. Learners can quickly complete a mobile learning course in a few minutes, rather than sitting through a day long classroom session. Learners find it easy to remember information for long and will not mind taking up the next course as well. This improves both training completion rates and information retention.

3. Improved on-the-job support

Employees like learning methods that don’t interrupt their daily work. For this, organizations invest in creating special job-aids. As mobile learning courses are accessible on mobile devices, and are short and specific, learners can easily access them as performance support tools. As these mobile learning courses help learners with their workplace performance, the probability of their usage and retrieval will be greater.

4. Improved productivity with better retention of information

By the time an e-learning course is designed, developed, tested, and rolled out, chances are the information is outdated. But as mobile learning is short, crisp, and specific, information can be quickly developed, edited, or completely replaced. This ensures employees are up-to-date with training and put it into practice. With small updated chunks of training provided regularly, information sticks better. They don’t just retain information, they retain better.

5. Reduced investment in infrastructure

Most learners today own at least one mobile device. You can implement the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy at work. Employees can access mobile learning courses on their own devices, saving quite a few dollars of your training budget. You need not invest in infrastructure such as mobile devices to deliver mobile learning courses.