6 Ways To Use A Mobile Learning App For Better Training

6 Ways To Use A Mobile Learning App For Better Training
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Summary: Mobile learning is a reliable employee training method that can be used either exclusively to train mobile employees or in combination with traditional training. This article shows 6 ways you can use a mobile learning app to engage your learners more and achieve better learning outcomes.

Using A Mobile Learning App To Train Employees

Everyone loves the convenience that comes with an intuitive mobile app. We can shop faster, read the news or a book, play awesome games, chat, and even finish up work. The truth is, we love mobile apps too much. We are rather addicted to them.

The ground has already been prepared for you. One of the latest mobile learning trends, mobile apps, can change the way employees feel about training. If you turn your mobile learning app into a tool they enjoy using, learning will become a habit.

Next, you’ll find 6 ways you can use your mobile learning app to train employees so that they engage with training better and more often and learn more efficiently at the same time.

1. Supplement Formal Training

Not every type of training is suited to be delivered on mobile. For manual tasks, for example, employees will need to do on-the-job training. And you can’t cultivate soft skills from scratch without role-playing either. That said, there are several ways a mobile learning app can supplement any formal training course.

Create a micro-version of your course so that employees can reinforce their learning with microlearning videos, infographics, and games. This simplified version of your formal training works as a learning aid that helps learners understand the content better.

You can also use the mobile learning app for the assessment part of the course. Employees can test and assess their knowledge often through flashcard quizzes and games instead of waiting for that one big assessment at the end of the course.

After the training is over, use the mobile learning app to send employees highlights of the course or quick quizzes. Spaced repetition will refresh their memory and help them retain more information.

2. Create Course Discussions

Course discussions play an important role in eLearning, as they encourage learners to explore a topic further with their peers, thereby stimulating inquisitive thinking. What’s more, they help develop a sense of community and fellowship, which is often missing from eLearning. It’s no exaggeration to say interactions with peers transform the way learners connect with their training and motivate them to stay on track.

Mobile apps, in particular, facilitate online discussions among learners, since they enable real-time communication. Learners get instantly notified when someone has started a new thread or left a comment on their post. This kind of immediacy resembles informal chatting, which makes it so much easier for employees to engage in conversations.

3. Add Gamification Features

Engagement is key to learning. Learners retain more information when they’re actively focused on the course and when they come back to training often. Adding gamification features has been found to motivate learners and enhance the benefits of engaging content. Gamification, if used correctly, can have a deeper impact than just evoking competitiveness and motivation, though. It can help employees view a training topic under a new light.

Take compliance training, for example. On one hand, you have your standard course with animated videos, simulations, and quizzes. It’s not bad at all, actually. On the other, you have a gamified course with the exact same content. This time, however, employees need to uncover a compliance violation going on in the company. Αnd whoever reads the clues right and solves the case first earns a badge! The storytelling element and the reward will not only intrigue employees but also help them realize why compliance training is essential.

4. Offer Job Aids

Mobile learning is, if anything, the most flexible training delivery method. It would be remiss of you not to use your mobile learning app to offer learning at the point of need. And how do you turn your mobile app into a repository of practical job aids? Create an intuitive design that will allow employees to easily search through the course.

The first step is to structure the course smartly. Break your course down into different lessons so that learners can go almost instinctively to the right section. A nurse who wants to look up the side effects of some medication should be able to find relevant information under “drugs and side effects,” not under “newly released drugs.”

Then, use distinct visual elements to help learners spot the information they need. A card-based layout, for example, will work better than a list. It’s also important that the content you include is short and digestible, as your employees won’t have much time to process it. Infographics and microlearning videos are the top choices.

5. Communicate With Your Learners More

A smartphone and a mobile learning app combined provide you with the perfect platform to communicate with your learners. Start by sending popup notifications to draw their attention and let them know about course updates, or send quick tips and reminders to pick up their training. You can also get employees to join new courses by sending them a sneak peek of upcoming courses.

Frequent communication improves employee engagement as well. Feeling part of the company culture plays a tremendous role in motivating employees to pursue lifelong learning so that they can move to new, higher positions within a company. Therefore, company events and news, or even a company newsletter for larger companies, shouldn’t miss from your communications.

6. Choose Interactive Over Passive Learning

Smartphones are great mobile learning devices because they encourage frequent interactions with the screen, which prompts you to use more interactivity in your courses. And you need interactive content to fight back distractions and make the learning process more exciting and effective. For more convenience, add interactions where the learners click or swipe their finger on the screen instead of typing.

A typical example of interactive content is video. This valuable educational tool offers opportunities for the learner to interact with the screen, usually by asking them to choose a path or the right answer. Other interactive activities to include are games, drag-and-drop quizzes, and flashcards. Just remember to add subtitles to your videos in case an employee wants to resume training while commuting.

Conclusion

If you don’t want to choose between effectiveness and flexibility, invest in an LMS with a mobile app. With an LMS, you can build comprehensive courses for all your training needs, and offer employees a lighter version on the mobile app with all the key information and activities they need.

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