What Is mLearning and How It Can Boost L&D: Ultimate Guide in Q&A

We are smartphone-addicted, but what if to modify this problem into an advantage? Mobile learning, or mLearning for short, is just standing for this purpose. It is a new way of training both for the large companies workshops and personal use. Leaving in a smartphones-centered age, this way of learning can revolutionize L&D (learning and development) tremendously. This innovative direction is rapidly picking up steam. Discovering this model now, you certainly reap benefits later.

Question 1: What Is mLearning?

Answering this question in simple words, it is appropriate to say it is an education system that tends to ease a plethora of studying processes. It is a new philosophy of learning that promptly delivers access to training from everywhere and anytime. All you need for this is your smartphone in your hands.

However, phone usage is not the only key moment here, as mLearning is significantly different from the classical approach. The main difference lies not only in the form (mobile device) but also in the provided content. In point of fact, all parts or modules of the training are arranged in a specific scenario, which allows mastering the knowledge more effectively and minimizes the needed time for this.

Question 2: How Does mLearning Work and What Are Its Core Rules?

As it was stated before, mLearning is not only about traditional learning on mobile phones. Here are the dominant distinctive features that naturally make it a more valuable way of learning and not similar to other ones:

1. Short Drills to Increase Our Focus

Content is frequently chunked up into a set of short 3–10 minutes sessions. It is comprised of interactive elements like excellent images, infographics and more. The ideal option is when we use short 2–3 min videos, which are always the most memorable and clearly understood.

2. Flexibility and Self-motivation

mLearning happens naturally, contextually, and is always self-initiated. As far as it happens in an informal environment, mLearning exceeds formal training tremendously. The process of it is more motivating to plunge into the world of gaining new skills. And these are not empty words, according to real data, 90% of our experiences are learned through informal training.

3. Just-in-time Training

Living in a cutting edge digital technologies era, we need quickly become prepared to unlearn and relearn all key competencies. Solely hanging around for the subsequent meeting will no longer work. This is why the classical education model is moving away from understanding and maintenance.

4. Track learning paths

One of the most significant elements of mLearning is the unique ability to track the learning process. You can instantly check and measure what amount of training you have already passed, how many time did you spend on a specific lesson and more. Hence, you can objectively analyze your whole studying process and surmise what is more workable for you and what is not. Most importantly, you can track someone else’s learning paths. For example, you are a big fan of some tech leader or any other prominent person, with mLearning you can track what they grasp every day and so make them be like invisible coaches for you.

Question 3: What Are the Key mLearning Elements in Education?

In overall, there are three types. However, given the will of imagination, you can create new and more suitable approaches for your particular case. In the meantime, get acquainted with traditional cases:

• Providing Material

In its core, it is training by dint of pictures, videos, text and more. Briefly formulated material is absorbed passively, and so it is an ideal choice for home study, or for compliance training. Since this type suggests training without the participation of a teacher, it’s more about individual utilizing.

• Interaction During Education

Curious about how to make your training more interactive? With mLearning it is easy, especially if the specific group of students is considerable. In this case, everyone uses a mobile app that resonates with their responses and allows to communicate with others. This method is ideal in those cases where the teacher is physically unable to hear the questions of each student. And the mobile app, in turn, can sort the same questions and deliver instant feedback.

• Synchronous Training

Synchronism implies the capability to be in touch with a coach and maintain communication. The way of training here is synchronous with the instructions of the coach. A scholar is able to get a direct response while he or she is at home.

Question 4: What Benefits Can You Reap From mLearning?

• A versatile approach for any audience

The utilization of mLearning has no limits, and for practically every audience it will work equally efficiently. For example, for small children, it’s an entertaining interactive learning method, while for large corporations it is a new look at boring compliance training. In practice, it is impossible to determine who will not like it, as everyone wants to be excited about learning.

• Opportunity to demonstrate results

You can carefully weigh all the beneficial and problematic aspects of your training. Therefore, it is more satisfactory to navigate where to go further and progressively improve the situation. mLearning presents impressive and more suitable learning tools that are unavailable anywhere else.

• Wherever and whenever

Sometimes it is really hard to focus on passing a certain course and is great if you can do it at any convenient time. And with mLearning, it’s more than possible. While one learner might be in Paris and the other one is in London, it’s still permissible to collaborate together! This is one of the foremost advantages.

• Ease of use

The use of multimedia drives is interesting. Shortly filtered information will not hang as unpleasant cargo, which takes a lot of time. For this simple reason, there will be more excitement to study in general.

In general, using mLearning you’ll get better engagement, retention and bottom-line results.

Question 5: Isn’t it similar to eLearning?

Although these two categories are slightly similar in terms of style and purpose, mLearning is not just eLearning on a smartphone. Here is a clear explanation of why:

1. Time frame. While longer and broader eLearning modules take up to 30 min, mLearning aims to deliver bite-sized drills lasting 3–15 min.
2. Access. When you have to absorb in-depth knowledge, eLearning is the ideal solution, as it is structured, formal and time-bound. mLearning, however, is more about obtaining material at the moment it is typically required. It is good for brief courses to view them quickly.
3. Context. eLearning, as well as formal education, requires properly establishing the context to grasp the importance of the subject. Here with mLearning, you already have context presented together with the training.
4. Assessment. Assessment is another key area where we have a lot of differences. What do we have with eLearning? First, we learn the material and then go to apply it. With mLearning everything is different, as we can do it simultaneously.

Question 6: Why Businesses Must Adapt mLearning to Survive?

With a fast pace of life and workflow, another corporate meeting for training is a great waste of time. And the question is: will this meeting be effective? We want to make learning swift and engaging, and be able to do it at any time. That’s why mLearning makes regular corporate training and various methodologies old-fashioned.

mLearning is essential for learning and development (L&D) in business arrangements. More and more organizations in the current workforce are choosing remote workers. But, when there is a need to teach them we have a question: how to do it remotely? And here is mLearning comes to play. It will play a huge part in all possible training initiatives.

Here are the main directions on how mLearning can be used in your corporate training:

• Remote workers implementing a specific service
• Customers that need the service immediately
• An online platform connecting the two

Hence, mLearning is a new solution to keep your organizations appropriate, to inspire workforce, and keep top talent.

EndNote: Are you Searching for the Next Wave of Education Innovation?

Are you searching for the next wave of education innovation? If so, mLearning is your salvation. It possesses all the potential to revolutionize the training system. Here are the reasons for this: it’s always with the user; it extends the reach of education, promotes personalized learning, helps learners with disabilities, provides direct feedback and estimation. Enabling anytime and anywhere, mLearning improves seamless training and reduces educational confusion in trouble fields.

From reading to set up your work to entertainment to GPS, our smartphones are multi-purpose devices in our hands. Right now, we can add to this list something more important, like studying, as now it became possible to perform big data and emotional behavior analysis.

I will continue to look further for new ways to combine learning process and technology innovations, practical applications for self-development and simplifying complex tasks. If you also, like me, are burning for this purpose, just let me know. If anyone is interested in my experience, I will be glad to discuss ideas and collaborate on projects on this matter.

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If you have any questions, ask away in the comments section below. I will share my posts on my blog on topics around AI, ML, Data Science and e-Learning. You can also follow me on this journey through my social media platform — Instagram.

Thank you for reading!

What Is mLearning and How It Can Boost L&D: Ultimate Guide in Q&A was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.