Mobile learning is one of the fastest growing trends in higher education. As mobile learning becomes more mainstream, educators and developers are looking for innovative ways to engage students on their mobile devices.
What makes a course engaging? How can you make your courses mobile-friendly? How can you create a high-quality learning experience for your students, no matter where they are?
Here are some things you can do now to make sure your e-learning courses are ready for this growth:
1) Keep your content brief and bite-sized
With all of today’s distractions (cough Facebook cough), learners have very little patience for lengthy e-learning courses. Your content should be easily digestible, with short videos or sections of text that take no more than a few minutes to read or watch.
Don’t make them wait until they get back to their desktops to get started on their work; if you can’t say it in less than 10 seconds, then don’t say it at all.
2) Include links to supplementary content
If you have an important piece of information that you want learners to remember, give them a link to a more detailed explanation on your website. This way, they can quickly and easily get the information they need without having to go through the entire course again.
3) Make sure your videos are mobile-friendly
Videos are one of the most effective ways to get your message across in e-learning courses. However, they don’t work well on mobile devices if they’re too long or high quality.
So make sure you keep your videos short and simple; a couple of minutes is usually enough for most learning activities. And keep in mind that some learners may be accessing your course using a low-bandwidth connection; try to avoid videos that take forever to load or require too much bandwidth for playback.
You can also choose lower-quality video files for playback on mobile devices, which will save bandwidth and make your videos load faster on slow connections. (Just make sure you know what file formats your learners will be using.)
4) Don’t assume everyone has the same hardware
While mobile devices have gotten more powerful over the years, there are still plenty of older devices out there. So make sure your e-learning courses work on everything from high-end smartphones to low-end feature phones. If you have the budget, it’s a good idea to test your course on as many different devices as possible.
