M-Learning Goes Corporate and Succeeds

As an advocate for corporate mobile learning, I’m always encouraged when I hear about a company that takes it seriously. Lots of companies have experimented with podcasts and some have even produced html based learning content for their customers or employees, but it has yet to win broad acceptance in the corporate training community. However, there are a few exceptions, companies that have taken the plunge and they are realizing the benefits of their investment in mobile learning.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Mobile Learning at Merrill Lynch, where they’ve adopted m-Learning as a serious option for training their employees. In another, similar success story, Accenture (a large consulting firm) has embraced mobile learning for their employees and their senior executives in particular. Here’s a link to an article in Training Magazine where they discuss the mobile learning program at Accenture.

Accenture chose to use mobile learning as an augmentation to it’s normal e-Learning platform, specifically for compliance training on a number of topics. Results from their internal surveys indicate that learners liked the new mobile training modality and they plan to offer more of it in the future. Highlights from their internal survey of learners include the following observations:

– more than 1000 completions of 7 courses
– overall satisfaction rating of 4.4 out of 5, compared to 4.0 out of 5 for traditional e-Learning
– 92% of those surveyed would like to use their mobile device for training
– most executives who took the training would prefer their mobile learning in chunks of 10-15 minutes
– over half of the respondents would prefer an option to download their courses so they could take them when not connected to the Internet

An important thing to note here is the fact that some of the findings reinforce many of the guidelines we’ve been given when designing mobile learning assets. Those guidelines include keeping your mobile learning assets between 5-15 minutes (small chunks) and the suggestion that you consider the fact that the learner may not have a good connection/or any connection to the Internet. It’s good to see that the designers in this case took the time to consider these guidelines when designing their courses. You can read the whole article (here), make sure you read the “Quick Tips” section for some valuable insight into their design process, perhaps it can help you with your own designs. I really liked the idea of bookmarking all the pages, that makes a lot of sense for a mobile learner who may be intermittently engaged in your training.

Thanks to Training Magazine and author Sarah Boehle for this article.

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