The Features You Need From A Mobile Learning App

The Features You Need From A Mobile Learning App
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Summary: Mobile learning allows your employees more flexibility in their training. But not all mobile learning apps are created equally. This article reveals the features to look for in a mobile learning app, so that employees enjoy a seamless learning experience on their mobile devices.

7 Features Your Mobile Learning App Needs

Your employees deserve to have ample training and development opportunities. All of them. Those who work in the office, those who are always traveling, and those who have a busy schedule outside of work. With a strong L&D team and the right tools, you can offer everyone training that educates and engages. A mobile learning app is the answer to training your mobile employees and any modern employee who wants to learn at their own pace. The secret to mobile learning success? An intuitive, feature-rich app to deliver your training. These are the 7 features that shouldn’t miss from your mobile learning app:

1. Intuitive User Interface

No one likes to scramble their way through an app trying to make sense of where’s what. So, whether your employees will use the mobile learning app or not depends on how easy that is. An app with an intuitive User Interface will enable employees to search through older and new courses with a few clicks. The mobile app must also have simple visuals and essential-only navigation buttons so that it doesn’t look cluttered and distract learners.

2. Push Notifications

Emails regarding employee training can be lost among more urgent, work-related emails. Push notifications, however, open the channels of communication between you and your learners. They are a non-intrusive way to communicate your message in an instant, since employees don’t even need to open the notification to read it.

Being able to communicate with learners more often without becoming tiresome, you have better chances of keeping employees engaged. You can help them stay in the loop about new courses, as well as send reminders to resume training and quick updates on their progress and the discussions they participate in.

3. Gamification

Mobile usage and game playing are closely associated. So, a mobile learning app that doesn’t support gamification features misses out on a big opportunity. Gamification elements add flavor and fun to learning, encouraging more frequent interactions with the training. And anyway, rewards are known to increase motivation in any setting they are used, so adding them to employee training courses is a huge plus.

Gamification is all the more critical for mobile employees. For them, training is not a formal process that takes place at a specific time and location. It’s something they do on their volition, which makes it hard to stay on track. Points and levels, however, enable mobile employees to monitor their progress in real time and even compare it against others on the leaderboard. This further motivates them to keep up and reach the finish line sooner.

4. Multimedia Content Support

A mobile learning app that supports only one type of media will fail spectacularly not only to impress and engage employees but also to educate them. If the mobile app supports only flashcards and infographics, for example, employees will sooner or later get sick of reading. Apart from that, you need different media for different learning objectives. When you need to explain a process, a microlearning video will do the job much better than a bulk of text—don’t you think?

A mobile learning app should support diverse types of content to achieve higher engagement levels and better learning outcomes. Flashcards, videos, and games are ideal for mobile consumption. These content types can also be used as assessments to monitor knowledge gaps and measure progress in a more fun way than the traditional multiple-choice quizzes.

5. In-App Communication

Learning in an isolated environment is uninspiring and ineffective. Your employees need to support and learn from each other to learn more and better. Therefore, look for a mobile learning app that supports direct messaging and course discussions.

Employees should be able to share opinions and discuss the training topics further without delays in communication. In-app communication will allow for better collaboration for group assignments too. Interactions with online instructors will also be more direct and frequent, which helps employees resolve issues fast and move on.

6. Offline Learning

Mobile learning boasts about being a convenient employee training method that enables learning anytime, anywhere. But, sometimes, there’s no internet connection in “anywhere.” Like in the subway, on the airplane, or even at the backyard of your home. Employees, however, should be able to train without interruptions and delays—even when an internet connection is weak or unavailable.

Any mobile learning app that delivers its promise should allow offline learning. Learners should be able to download content that they can view later even without an internet connection. Removing this last barrier to mobile learning will further help employees incorporate training into their day and turn it into a habit.

7. Progress Syncing

Nobody likes to take steps backward or have their progress disappear (unless it’s the progress you made eating a lovely meal). Therefore, employees should be able to use their mobile learning app and the desktop version interchangeably. The mobile app should take them directly to the session where they left off, and vice versa. Similarly, any progress they make when using the app offline should sync automatically once they connect to the internet.

Employees that use both the desktop and the app will find losing their progress frustrating and confusing. They might stop using the mobile app altogether. And, if their obligations don’t allow them to train on desktop only, they will have a hard time keeping up with training. Don’t jeopardize the effectiveness of your training by missing this essential feature!

Conclusion

Mobile apps are more than part of the current mobile learning trends, they’re part of the modern lifestyle. Combine the power of a full-featured LMS with the flexibility of a native mobile learning app to give your employees the best of training, even when they’re on the go.

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