Mobile Learning

The benefits of mobile learning

A definition of mobile learning

Already in 2012, the Unesco was defining mobile learning as “an education which involves the use of mobile devices to ensure learning at any time and in any place.”

The focus concentrates on the learning opportunities offered by the mobility inherent to the tools and devices like smartphones, tablets … The objective of mobile learning lies in an easy and rapid – but always full and efficient – access to the resources by the learners- users. Time and location constraints are put away in exchange for a light and spontaneous learning.

Mobile learning often pair with short and fun formats. Actually, it ensures that the learner context is taken into account (an “in-between” or in movement situation  where the latter only have a few minutes) to capture his/her attention and to offer him/her a feasible and accessible objective in such allocated time.

Of course, this type of learning is not less efficient. Technologies ensures a precise tracking of each learner’s path, and an adjustments to his/her needs. The mobile learning ensures a personalized training.

At the heart of mobile learning there is the concept of ATWAD AnyTime, AnyWhere, AnyDevice. The training pathes can be followed at any time, any where on any device, offering therefore freedom, flexibility and comfort to learners.

Mobile learning offers many advantages because it mixes formal and informal learning. Formal by providing practical resources and technical elements in the content of its modules. And informal because it will integrate learning in a daily context, the use of his mobile phone for instance, which is familiar and mastered. Also, because the mobile format fits very well social connection, interactions and communication with the others. These two aspects ensure an intuitive and almost “harmless” training. The attention is captured, feedbacks are fast, and the repetition of information is easy. The learners are stimulated, engagement and memorize better the information.

The advantages of mobile learning

For organizations

Mobile learning training offers a wide range of benefits for an organization. Actually, mobile learning is both

• Cost-saving: providing a smartphone to your employees is sometimes cheaper than appointing instructors and finding locations to arrange training sessions. In many organizations, a smartphone is also part of the package for other reasons. Besides, such training modules in microlearning are often quicker and cheaper to develop and iterate for organizations than other training formats.
• General: mobile learning training is a safe way to make everyone happy. Employees interested in working from home (and they are more numerous since the Covid-19 health crisis) or employees working in the field and who are often on the move, everyone enjoys this ATAWAD offer. It speaks to all generations from baby-boomers to gen Z passing by gen X and Y.
• International: like all digital learning offers, the mobile learning also comes in several languages and can be used on several continents at the same time.
• Tracking and personalization: this approach designed by essence to collect data on the learners’ progress ensures a tracking and an analysis of their learning. It’s always possible to personalize and adjust more the training to one individual
• Flexible and continuous: mixed with the principle of microlearning (see below), mobile learning helps to offer a continuous training, at the time and the place chosen by the learner. The employee controls his/her learning, which makes him/her more engaged and motivated.

However, mobile learner doesn’t come without pitfalls, and the specific needs of the users have to be kept in mind. For that, two elements have to be carefully taken into account:

• Is it truly the best training format? All topics do not fit a mobile training, some require more time, or deeper thoughtful moments than the one allowed by a mobile device. If learning concerns a full and new process, the employees may probably need more time for the training. A Serious Game is likely to be a more appropriate option. Conversely, if they are well aware of the context and must only “rehearse” some elements, or learn a new concept which mixes up with the environment they master already, then mobile learning will be perfectly suited to your need.
• Has the format been designed correctly and sufficiently in advance? In order to ensure accessibility to the resources at any time, it’s necessary to make sure to design since the beginning a platform which will work offline and which will adjust to all the mobile tools of the users.

For employees

According to Emeraude Escape’s 2021 study (carried out in France, Italy, Spain, UK, Germany, USA, Canada among 1000 employees working from home), 72% want to see their training modernized thanks to gamification.

Mobile learning is a perfect fit and offers several attractive features:

• Customizable: like for organization, the personalization and customization aspect of mobile learning is a strong argument for learners. They get to choose the moment, the location and the duration of their training and the programs adjust to their progress.
• Accessible: mobility makes learning easy to access and flexible. A tailor-made designed content for a mobile use will by essence (if it has been thought carefully) more ergonomic, intuitive and user-friendly.
• Practical and relevant: mobile learning helps immersing employees in a fictional scenario of a real situation. The assimilation of knowledge will be facilitated by the proximity with a reality of their daily life.
• Collaborative: the mobile tool ensures a smooth communication with the others around and shared, collective learning thus becomes more stimulating and engaging.

Emeraude Escape and mobile learning

Our situations & formats recommended for mobile learning

Our expertise in mobile learning training

The expertise of Emeraude Escape on the corporate digital game market made us successfully address issues about corporate training. Our team daily work to adjust its offer to meet all the expectations of our clients while keeping up with new (techy or not) developments in terms of gamification, learning and training. We demonstrate it by offering tailor-made and premium Serious Games to several of our international clients.

Similarly, our promise for you is a mobile learning training offer which is:

• Tailor-made: we listen to your needs and we respect your DNA. The scenarios, the puzzles and quizzes we create are unique and they take into account both your challenges and your identity.
• Internalized: you own 100% of your mobile learning training with no licence cost or no cost per user.  it may integrate any type of LMS. It can welcome up to 200,000 players simultaneously.
• Secured: our IT team of experts ensures that our games respect the highest security standards (confidentiality policy, security of network, infrastructure, back-up, GDPR, … etc…)

A few situations suitable for mobile learning

Several situations are particularly suitable for a mobile learning training.

• Onboarding and welcoming new employees – a short mobile learning training when a new employee arrives may be very useful to convey in small short sessions the essential corporate values and culture required he/she needs for a good onboarding. Or else, to review critical basic but essential skills. It’s also interesting to welcome freelances who often participate remotely to the corporate life.
• Continuous training of the sales teams. Sales men and women in the field for instance often have to face a lack of equipment and a strong mobility. Some operational and commercial reflexes need to be punctually and regularly reminded. The training of this category of employees becomes much easier with the mobile and flexible access to the resources.
• Compliance training namely training sessions on ethics, criminal risks involved by some topics: organizations  protect themselves against some legal risks by such training in which their employees learn how to detect abuses and how to better understand regulations (like for instance bribes and corruption, conflicts of interest and many other …). These tough, sometimes tedious, topics are often complex, but always essential. Regular reminders thanks to microlearning and mobile learning thus appear as a more fun and entertaining solution.

All our formats are suitable for mobile learning

All our games are designed hand in hand with our clients. Our Game Designers and our technical teams can design and develop our game formats to build a pedagogical and recreational activity exclusively in a mobile learning mode or in a digital mode enlarged which let learners access to our games with a training goal via different devices, computers, tablets and in particular smartphones.

Our 4 tips to train your team using mobile learning

1/ “Mobile first”. The mobile format is not a mere responsive adaptation to mobile phones. On the contrary, it is thought since the beginning of a training program made for smartphones for instance with an offline mode included, adapted visuals and audio thought based on your employees’ habits.

2/ “Storytelling second” – the mobile format doesn’t exclude the notion of tales or universe. A logical chain of small customized and company-branded modules around a scenario will enhance information retention.

3/ Adapt your content to the mobile format. The microlearning format is perfect for mobile learning and content will have to be thought and simplifed for sessions going from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. Focus on the essential information, and we will help you displaying them in an attractive and fun way.

4/ Value collaboration and cohesion. Focus on social learning thanks to multiplayer modes, chats … sharing between the participants is a motivation and engagement lever.

Our mobile learning case studies

Discover in this video, the testimonial of Delphine Achour, International Training Manager at Diptyque on this successful project. To learn more, click here.

LANCÔME: tailor-made digital and mobile training escape rooms

Emeraude Escape has collaborated with the brand LANCÔME several times on issues related to gamification, digital and mobile training.
Our team has in particular designed and developed a tailor-made training Escape Room for 15000 beauty advisors across Lancôme’s  partner POS. Discover here the testimonial of Louise Charley, Digital Manager Education at Lancôme on this successful project. To learn more, click here.

The guiding principles of Mobile Learning

A short story of mobile learning: from in-presence training to digital learning

Let’s set aside here school and university learning and its evolution, and let’s focus on professional training. The organizations have always been aware of the critical importance of continuous and personalized training for their employees.

With the advent of Internet and new digital solutions in the years 1990s and 2000s, the concept of e-learning emerges. The potential of new digital technologies and digital resources to offer remote training sessions (and no longer in-presence ones) at a lower cost and of upper quality is understood.

The first LMS (Learning Management Systems) emerge. These tools help handling, managing, supplying and analyzing training programs on a remote basis. So, the used data facilitate a better tracking, and therefore adjusting to the learner individual by offering him/her a more personalized training path based on his results or gaps.

It’s the emergence of digital learning: the organizations use the LMS and the e-learning techniques to adjust their pedagogy and offer better training programs to their teams. There is a real will to use at best all the opportunities offered by the digital and new digital world. The resources are more accessible, more flexible, interaction and collaboration are boosted, and as a result, the global learning quality improves.

Mobile learning is a more recent development of digital learning. It’s no secret smartphone are ubiquitous. The equipment rates in 2020, in France were the following,  97% of the 18-24 Years Old have a smartphone, 98% of the 25-38 Years Old have one and 96% of the 40-59 Years Old. In 2021, in the US, 85% of the adult population has a smartphone, which is 50% more than in 2011. The latter check their phone on average 80 times a day. The culture has changed, the training too. The organizations want to offer their employees the possibility to train in a rapid and accessible manner on their mobile devices. The singularity of mobile learning is actually that it’s not only related to the device, but also to the concept of mobility.

At Emeraude, we know that mobile learning has become a valuable and significant alternative to former forms of digital training. We want to mix pleasure and seriousness in learning with shorter, more fun but still as effective formats which adjust to the learning pace of each individual.

Mobile learning use or combine with other concepts to offer a modern and innovative training:

• It uses the microlearning principle to diversify the learning techniques ;
• Associated with gamification and interaction, it improves attention span and information retention and encourages collaboration ;
• Mixed with in-presence training in blended learning, the mobile learning creates more dynamic learning paths and supplement the more standard training.

Let’s explore these concepts together.

Mobile learning & microlearning

Microlearning consists in short learning sessions with a specific objective. It will cover for instance only one task to handle, or only one element to understand and assimilate. Even if it can be a step next to many others in a more global training framework, this step will focus on one single objective.

Microlearning often goes with mobile learning because smartphones and other mobile devices are perfectly suitable for this type of training. The repetition of a concept during short sessions (3 to 5 minutes) on a familiar and day-to-day tool ensures an optimal retention of such notion. The microlearning also addresses the need for immediate answers, which often exists for employees in the field who will only have their phone with them.

The information is condensed and at-hand. The sessions are short and easily to follow again and as a result it improves the engagement and the information retention by the learner.

Mobile learning & blended learning

Already usual at the beginning of digital learning era, blended learning is the association of in-presence and remote training sessions. The materials and resources are digitally available, the training modules ventilate between sessions with a instructor and online sessions.

Mobile learning is an optimal choice in the framework of a training in a blended learning mode. Indeed, it may serve to anchor the knowledge discovered during the in-presence sessions. So, a rapid quiz may test the employee information retention. Mobile access to the resources will also help everyone to pursue his or her training at his/her own pace when they have room in their schedule or when they wish to.

Mobile learning and gamification

Gamification consists in applying game mechanics, and game principles in areas which are normally not related to games. Corporate training is a classic example. It is not solely about principles of rewards, scores and badges of course … it more especially deals with mastering what makes a game something lively and powerful: the creativity, the strength of the story and the visuals, and an emotional engagement of the user. All this offers new possibilities for learning far away from not very appealing training rooms and usual paper materials.

Thanks to gamification, learning becomes more interactive, more fun, more immersive and more engaging. It’s also known that, if properly built, gamification can be used to address all generations, and to include millennials without excluding the other generations.

Our experts have detailed the interest of gamification for corporate training and the learning processes in this article “How to gamify your corporate training” and there you can find more information on this topic.

One of gamification’s counterparts is social learning namely, the fact to encourage interactions to facilitate learning. Communication, discussion, observation and imitation of others, knowledge sharing are promoted … That way, training is really proactive and collective. Mobile learning is a key tool to ensure such sharing. Sending messages and discussion are facilitated, the learners are active and engaged, they follow their progress and the progress of others. Learning is done as a team, in collaboration.

The combination of all these techniques therefore helps building a motivation, an emulation and a stronger commitment of the learners. Mobile learning mixed with gamification provides a high engagement of employees.