With the combination of highly engaging content and on-the-go availability through mobile, eLearning is now reaching wider audiences. This reflects the power of mobile learning, but its combination with the xAPI is still evolving and is in its infancy. At the same time, mobile learning capabilities like collaboration, messaging, and offline use have yet to be harnessed by many learning platforms. Moreover, the analytical data collected using the xAPI are also underutilized.

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?

The Experience API is an eLearning software specification that allows learning content and learning systems to communicate with each other. The xAPI is appealing to mLearning developers who seek accessible solutions for learner activity tracking. At the same time, considering how diversified the mLearning and training ecosystem is, solutions such as PhoneGap can enable cross-platform delivery. Combining both tools allows for the delivery of a cross-platform solution with the ability to track learners’ experience.

Subject matter experts (SMEs) have expert knowledge to share. For rapid development situations or just-in-time training, SMEs can contribute good, solid content videos that can be shared with learners—and they can create the videos when they have the time or when a situation arises that would be a great video example, such as demonstrating a process or recalling a dangerous situation.

The convergence of mobile delivery, micro-learning, and new authoring tools provides great opportunities to innovate where limited time and budget are available. Much mobile-delivered micro-learning focuses on spaced repetition and memorization. Micro-sims go beyond knowledge and comprehension and require learners to synthesize and apply concepts in realistic contexts.

Online video-based instruction can be just as ineffective as traditional face-to-face lectures when learners are passive recipients of information. The “testing effect” describes the observation that the process of remembering concepts or facts increases long-term retention of those concepts or facts. The creation of question-embedded videos offers a practical way to increase user engagement and increase long-term retention.

Adobe Captivate is a widely used authoring tool for eLearning courseware and mobile learning experiences. Now Adobe offers developers the opportunity to create responsive animations to their mobile learning projects.

Screencasts can be a powerful tool for eLearning developers. Well-produced screencasts can be great for software simulation, process demonstration, or providing background and context within an eLearning course. Screencasts are relatively easy and cheap to produce. However, poorly produced screencasts can be, at best, boring—and, at worst, injurious to your learning goals. While many take the idea of screencasts for granted, there are a number of techniques that can improve screencast quality and engage learners more deeply and for longer periods of time.

Concise visual metaphors facilitate the best learning. Think back to high school, college, or a meeting where you experienced that “aha” moment while someone was drawing on a whiteboard. How can you reproduce this learning experience online with a small budget and without an art degree? Whiteboard-style recordings can be just as effective as the fancy Flash or HTML5 videos you might produce with more expensive software.

With the release of the “granite” version of cmi5, the next generation of SCORM has finally arrived. To take advantage of cmi5, you will need a new tool set in your development kit. First, you need to know how to send xAPI statements that conform to the cmi5 specification. Then you need to know how to read and write to the xAPI State and Agent services following the cmi5 rules.

For trainers or educators who need to stay relevant and maintain their creative edge, a fundamental knowledge of basic video production and editing is essential. Creating effective, professional-quality video training for delivery on multiple devices, including smartphones and tablets, presents a variety of design challenges that require specialized planning with attention to image composition, duration, script writing, recording methods, and editing techniques.

Capturing intellectual property has become imperative as more employees job hop or retire, taking the company “secret sauce” with them. L&D pros need to adopt efficiencies for SME video interviews in order to leverage their wisdom for state-of-the-art knowledge transfer.

Incorporating video in a responsive performance support project can be daunting. Video done for vertical delivery comes with specific dos and don’ts. This session shows how to use vertical video, the new Adobe Animate CC, and Adobe Captivate to make cost-effective, rapid mobile performance support modules.

Creating a mobile app for training can be hard. Tracking user progress and completion in your mobile app? Harder. There is a lot to consider when looking to create and leverage mobile applications for training purposes, but the tools and techniques are available.

There’s no question that video is trending upward and becoming more viable as a workplace learning and development (L&D) solution. Still, one significant barrier is focusing on the video itself—the videography and/or animation and editing that leads to the final product. Like all solutions from an L&D perspective, it still needs design. For video, that design document is a script, and it’s one of the most vital and most often ignored steps in the video production process. But how does someone with an L&D background learn to write better scripts?