For a remote workforce such as flight attendants, who travel all over the country, eLearning is effective, necessary, and widely enjoyed. However, there are no computers on the airplane, which serves as their office. Due to the lifestyle of the work group, many do not have computers at home; this leads to a large percentage’s trying to complete non-mobile courses on their tablets or smartphones, causing a poor user experience.

The challenge with the majority of learning that goes on in organizations is that it is quickly forgotten. Modern neuroscience tells us that in an increasingly complex digital world, with so much competing for our attention, a majority of what we learn in organizational training is forgotten within days. With the amount of time, money, and energy spent on developing these learning experiences, it is critical that organizations find ways to maximize their investment by ensuring learners retain the information they are given.

American Honda Motor Company identified a need to create a consistent and credible customer service experience for a highly technical product—across all employee skill and experience levels. Service employees were not uniformly educating customers, leading to potential lost sales and lower customer satisfaction.

Many companies have legacy content that is text-heavy, hard to navigate, impossible to control once out “in the wild,” and ultimately not very effective. Connecting those static documents within a larger training pathway, and keeping that content up to date, can be very difficult. Additionally, getting information about who might be using that content, or how it is being used, is pretty much impossible. Sound familiar?

Mobile is the new way of learning. Learners want it, and companies want to provide it. But app development can be expensive, especially if you are starting from a mostly print or standard eLearning model. Finding a way to give learners and organizations the mobile learning they want without breaking the bank is a must in today’s training market, especially for companies with populations of mobile learners (e.g., sales).

Formal online learning doesn’t work like it used to. Attention spans are decreasing, and mobile access is more critical than ever. So how do you create mobile learning without hiring experts or spending a fortune? And how do you get part-time employees to care about making shakes and smoothies?

Implementing an effective mobile user experience is challenging. How do you deliver useful information at the time of need without being disruptive to the employee’s workflow? How do you integrate the content effectively within the context of the user’s task at hand? How do you leverage the available technology to reach the target audience? How can you create a mobile app that is “sticky”?

Do you feel like you’re not taking advantage of your tablet or smartphone outside of email, text messaging, and a couple apps? Mobile devices can be much more than tools to consume content and conduct conversations. Your mobile device is armed and ready to not only uncover learning opportunities but also help create them.

It’s difficult to create an eLearning course that is optimized for all devices (phone, tablet, laptop, etc.). There’s a reason that, although most of the web is now designed responsively, there are still few instances of good responsive design in eLearning. Many of today’s eLearning courses do not function and flow like the other apps that people use every day. The result? A learning experience that is full of friction.

You are trying to reach the untethered modern learner: someone who rarely comes into the office and won’t sit for any eLearning module longer than five minutes. These learners want learning and performance support to be on demand, like Netflix, and conveniently located on their mobile devices, like Airbnb and Uber. To reach this audience, you want to encourage their learning to be as habitual as checking their phones. So why not provide effective learning experiences through a simple, easy and habitual tool they use every day: Short Message Service (SMS)?