Despite decades of research and years of touchscreen mobile phones and tablets being in use, there’s still a great deal of myth and disinformation in place about how these devices work, and how best to design touch-based interfaces. Mobile technology is now mature enough to mandate that we design mLearning solutions in a way that better matches the ways our learners actually interact with these devices. Too much mLearning design involves scaled-down desktop interfaces, or makes incorrect assumptions about how people’s thumbs work. We can’t design with poor foundational knowledge, and expect good outcomes.

Everyone seems to have an app these days. Many organizations are interested in developing an app, but do not have an understanding of what such a project entails. Before you spend time and money creating an app, it’s important to become familiar with terms, resources, and app-user behaviors.

As a mobile usage grows, we no longer get to decide which device learners will use to access learning. Applying responsive design enables your customized, interactive course to display beautifully in both desktop and mobile learning environments. With true responsive design, course content needs to automatically rearrange and reflow depending on screen size and orientation. It is important to take the mobile environment into consideration beginning with the initial storyboarding of design and development.

In the last few years, organizations were busy evaluating whether mobile devices are an effective channel for employee learning needs. However, research suggests that “organizations have moved beyond this stage and are now focused on solving challenges around security, content, bandwidth and cost” (Brandon Hall). Why is it that many organizations excited about mobile learning are yet struggling to start implementing them?

The Brandon Hall Group’s research shows that most organizations are still in the early stages of mobile learning, if they have begun at all. All organizations have some level of a learning strategy in place already, and it can be very challenging to integrate mobile with that and to develop a strategy and identify what works and what doesn’t for your particular company.

Current studies show that more than five billion people will be using mobile devices by 2017, making smartphones and tablets more prevalent and accessible than desktop or laptop computers. Mobile learning has the ability to be a truly global solution for education delivery. At the same time, organizations must develop new knowledge and skills to support this expanded scope of learning.

Like many organizations, Goodwill is facing the challenge of supporting a large mobile workforce. It has over 2,700 retail stores staffed with sales associates and processing staff. There is usually no more than one computer in any single location that is available for training. Due to the premium placed upon retail floor space, expanding the desktop-based PCs that are available is prohibitive. This created a difficult challenge to provide training, share knowledge, and disseminate/gather information for the workforce.