A mobile learning management system (LMS) helps you deliver and manage online training courses, as well as instructor-led training, on mobile devices.

As more and more millennials primarily access information on mobile devices, businesses need to leverage this trend. Mobile LMSs help accomplish this, while also helping businesses enhance their workforce training and employee development.

We created this guide to help you understand this type of software and review the available solutions. This buyer's guide will help you make a more informed purchase decision as you search for the most suitable solution out of the many in the market.

In this guide, we'll cover:

What Is Mobile LMS Software?

Common Features of Mobile LMS Software

What Type of Buyer are You?

Market Trends to Understand

What Is Mobile LMS Software?

Mobile LMSs let users access learning materials on portable wireless devices such as smartphones and tablets. They allows employees—or students—to learn on the go and help them manage their learning schedules (i.e., location, time and device of their choice) more easily.

A mobile-responsive LMS allows trainers to adapt and personalize their teaching styles to mobile devices. Trainers can receive real-time updates on a learner's progress, create bite-sized courses and add gamification elements to increase student engagement.

Here are some of the reasons to opt for mobile LMS software:

• Interact with peers or teams on a course forum

• Create courses as bite-sized modules that are easy to absorb

• Provide users with compliance and certifications

• Track employee/student progress

• Create reports to measure the success of a training program

The primary benefit of a mobile LMS platform is that the courses are available in bite-sized pieces, and it enables users to complete courses in short intervals regardless of time or place. Additionally, trainers can view and track the status of course completion by students or employees on their mobiles.

Users are notified on their mobile phones about future training events or course submission deadlines. Moreover, users can easily access these courses on tablets or smartphones, as they are intimately familiar with mobile interfaces.

PlayerLync's mobile dashboard where users can view available training courses (Source)

Common Features of Mobile LMS Software

This section looks at some of the common features of mobile LMS software that small businesses may need. Most small businesses and educational institutes will need some (or all) of these features for mobile courses:

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Different organizations have different learning requirements. For that reason, there is not necessarily one solution that will work for everyone. For instance, educational institutions have different business needs from a corporate office. This makes it important to differentiate the buyer types and understand which category you fall into.

Here are the two major categories of mobile LMS software buyers:

Educational buyers: If you have remote students (i.e., those enrolled in e-learning courses) and professionals enrolled in continuing education courses, a mobile LMS will help your students access the syllabus, assignments and assessments on their mobile devices.

In particular, look for social learning features, which allow students to interact (discuss, share, comment) with each other on course forums.

This category of buyers would benefit from purchasing stand-alone mobile LMS software. A stand-alone mobile LMS can work offline as well, which allows students to download the courses and access them anywhere without the need of network connection.

The second option would be purchasing an LMS suite that offers mobile capability, as well as several other applications.

Corporate buyers: A mobile LMS solution is ideal for training employees who work in the field most of the year. For instance, pharmaceutical sales reps need to constantly stay updated about changing health care regulations and comply with them. Mobile LMS would help them gain the requisite certifications and licenses remotely.

Corporate buyers who want to provide continuing education to their employees should look for course authoring features to create short, custom lessons. If you're in this buyer category, you could either purchase mobile LMS as a stand-alone solution or choose an HR solution that offers mobile LMS as a core feature.

Market Trends to Understand

The demand for mobile learning is rising steadily to the point that having a mobile LMS is becoming more essential, whereas in the past, it was more of a nice-to-have option or add-on. To keep up with the quickly evolving mobile LMS space, you should be aware of the following market trends:

Shift to mobile-first LMS: Businesses are leaning more toward the mobile-first learning approach, in which an LMS is designed for the mobile platforms first, and then (if required), scaled up for the desktop version.

This approach allows employees to engage in training regardless of time and place, using any device to increase course completion rate and knowledge retention.

Gamification integration to increase ROI: Employees are more productive and motivated when their learning environment feels more like a game. Gamification elements increase employee engagement, efficiency, and ultimately, reduce employee turnover. Adding this feature to your mobile LMS will positively impact your ROI.

Microlearning to improve learner engagement: Microlearning is an emerging trend in the e-learning industry. In this approach, courses are deliberately kept short as the focus is on delivering very specific information in the least amount of time.

A Software Advice survey indicates that 58 percent of learners would prefer to use a learning system that provides several short lessons (two to five-minute videos) that are broken up over time over attending day-long training sessions. Learners are able to retain more when they take short lessons and learn one specific skill at a time.

Also, trainers prefer microlearning as it's easier and cheaper for them to create content in shorter formats.