8 Ways to Revamp Your Mobile-Friendly eLearning Course for Modern Learners
6 min readToday, online learners instantly get all the information they require, thanks to their mobile conveniences. Mobile learning happens anytime, anywhere. There are no geographical, cultural or social limitations to acquiring training and information. Mobile learning is effective – it involves achieving something with as few resources as possible, in the least possible time. While efficiency is the extent to which the goals are achieved, and the target problems are solved. Thus, a mobile-friendly eLearning course allows us to get a lot of information with just one click and provides effective study material, enhancing our knowledge and clearing hidden doubts.
Mobile Learning Is Effective
Now, more than ever, people have the opportunity to tap, swipe, and glide their way to task knowledge and mastery. However, despite mobile’s ability to remove geo-restrictions, there are some limitations to mobile learning. Here are eight tips on how to overcome these challenges and create truly memorable, engaging, and mobile-friendly e-learning courses.
1. Start from the end
Before giving your idea the green light, take a step back and consider the following three factors that will determine the final version of your training:
- Target audience
- Training content
- Distribution channels – especially platform and specific devices
Consider the inherent limitations of mobile phones, such as small screens, slower internet speeds, differences between mobile operating systems (e.g. Android, iOS) and the technical level of the audience. Make sure you choose technology that allows you to deliver a high-quality and secure experience on your target devices. This step is important, as the technical constraints of your distribution platform will ultimately drive the content development process.
2. Keep it focused, clear and concise
After you have researched your target group and outlined the general concept of the course, think about the course structure and make sure that the content is easy to digest. For example, you can break it down into moderate knowledge to avoid cognitive overload; separate more complex topics into separate e-learning modules and activities for learners to easily systematize knowledge; focus on a single learning goal to avoid rambling dilute knowledge. It is equally important to identify “points of need” where further training may be needed and provide links to additional resources (downloadable manuals, PPT files, external websites, …). Then do regular iterations and evaluations, continually upgrading and adjusting to being minimalistic and concise.
3. Keep it clean
Don’t forget that the end-user will be exposed to the overall look of the course before attempting to grasp its content. You want your course to look nice and aesthetically clean:
- Don’t be afraid of whitespace.
- Use bullet points instead of long sentences.
- Avoid bulky graphics, icons and graphs that require a lot of scrolling.
- Use navigation icons – Instead of traditional navigation menus, choose a menu icon with a drop-down list. This minimizes the amount of space required without affecting navigation.
- Keep the number of custom fonts to a minimum, as they may not be compatible with some devices.
Navigating your eLearning should be uncluttered and intuitive. This usually involves buttons and icons that are easy to click and display. Online learners don’t have to search the page with a magnifying glass when it’s time to move on to the next section. Social media, blogs, and contact icons are also essential. You should also consider a mobile-optimized menu with drop-down options. Online learners simply click the menu icon, then select the page or activity they need to complete.
5. Provide Downloadable eLearning Content
Many Learning Management Systems now offer you the opportunity to deliver downloadable eLearning content to your mobile audience. They can simply download the file, complete it offline whenever time permits, and then re-sync it to the system. LMS automatically updates their profile and gives them credit for completing an eLearning activity or scoring their assessment for immediate feedback.
It is the ideal solution for mobile learners who have unreliable internet connections or are venturing into areas without Wi-Fi. For example, one of your employees is at a hotel while attending a major industry conference. They want to improve their product knowledge to fully prepare for the networking opportunities that await them. Downloadable eLearning content allows them to refresh their memory and learn about your latest product line, even if the motel rooms don’t offer free Internet.
6. Optimize eLearning content to reduce download time
Some of your mobile learners may be working with slower download speeds. That’s why you should optimize your E-Learning content to avoid time loss and ultimately the frustration of mobile learners. Make sure all your videos and images are compressed so that videos and images with slow Wi-Fi connections still benefit from your eLearning course.
You should also delete larger files and replace them with links or buttons that mobile learners can later access. For example, they may not necessarily participate in a serious 20-minute game or participate in a simulation on their device. Instead, they can wait until there is more space in their schedule and log into the LMS platform from their PC or laptop. At that point, they can devote all their time and attention to eLearning without having to worry about bulky files slowing down their mobile learning experience.
7. Customer service
It’s Necessary To Create 24/7 Instant Support
Your advanced course is ready to use on mobile devices, and you’re happy with every aspect of the course design. But before deploying, you should do at least one test run on different devices. For a realistic user experience, when you have a technical problem, you can expect immediate support, and most of all, you certainly never want your application to crash. Many responsive design tools are built into the previewer. This allows you to test-drive your advanced cross-platform course and fine-tune your layout. It would be best to consider viewing the system on an actual smartphone and tablet to get a feel for the learner experience.
Creating a 24/7 Instant Support function for problems related to technical failures, network failures, etc., so that end users can get ongoing support is also a factor in making an LMS more user-friendly.
8. Choose a Responsive Design Friendly Authoring Tool
Last but not least, you want to choose the right authoring tool. As you weigh your options, double-check that the software you want to use has an option to publish content to HTML5. Don’t just believe it! Create some sample content and test it yourself. It may turn out that the result is unsatisfactory. In that case, consider developing your course using HTML5 or building a native app. Regardless of your final choice:
- Create a master layout that automatically adjusts to fit the phone’s screen
- Think about an option to support downloadable e-learning content, allowing mobile learners to view e-learning content offline and then sync backups to the
- LMS afterward Consider the different inputs on the device you are designing (keyboard, roller, touch, a directional pad, …)
Summary
Mobile-friendly elearning courses make it possible for online learners to get the knowledge they need wherever they are. Distraction is no longer a major obstacle, as learning on mobile devices is quick and convenient. And you can use these 8 tips to develop courses that are mobile-friendly, convenient, effective, and memorable. Most of these improvements are budget-conscious and implemented quickly, meaning you can start converting your eLearning course as soon as possible so modern learners get the maximum benefit.
Mobile-Friendly Courses Offer More Benefits To Learners
With its experience in software engineering, Groove Technology has helped many partners – mainly small and medium-sized businesses, succeed with high-quality software products, thereby conquering and serving customers better. The range of services that we are providing stretches from finance, healthcare, banking, logistics, etc., with customers from powerful countries such as the US, Australia, Germany, Singapore,… Groove Technology is constantly dedicated to bringing good values to the international IT industry in general and Vietnam in particular. Do you have questions, ideas, or plans you are cherishing? Let us listen, advise and support you.
