Best practice forum (Archived)

Designing elearning for Mobile devices

Hi There

I work for an NHS Trust in Suffolk and we use Articulate to design our elearning and we have Totara as our LMS. For best practice i would like to ask if anyone when designing their eLearning also thinks about the language they will use for those accessing the content on a mobile device?

For example do you use "right click" for Desktop usage and laptops, but when using a tablet or mobile device do you use a generic terminology. Alternatively have you had to design eLearning relevant for a computer/laptop and another for a tablet/Smartphone?

Are there best practices available to understand this better?

My Team train out the use of Clinical systems so it is very difficult to substitute "right click" for "tap here" without having to fill the screen with additional explanations.

If anyone has any experience with this i would be eager to hear, or can even point me in the direction of some good examples.

Kind regards

Seema Moss

IT Training Manager

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Seema: This is an excellent question and I hope you get some meaningful replies. I work for the National Park Service in Boise, ID. We create online content using Articulate Storyline 360 and deliver it with Totara Learn; however, during development I simply use the Modern player which enables me to create courses that are mobile-friendly,

Honestly? I rely on mobile uses to translate applicable directions to their specific smart phone. However, I would be very interested if there are any Best Practices and research conducted on how to effectively deliver mobile content.

Thanks again for your question.

Robert Hambrick
National Interagency Fire Center
Boise, Idaho

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Hi Robert

We use Storyline 3, but i am not familiar with the "Modern player" is that in 360?

regards

Seema

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Hello Seema: There are two players in Articulate Storyline 360: Modern and Classic.

When you select the Modern player, Storyline 360 automatically formats your responsive course with a range of options/views: desktop, tablet landscape, tablet portrait, phone landscape, and phone portrait. These various views illustrate exactly how your course will appear when viewed on a desktop, tablet, and phone. 360 is a very different product from Articulate 3. If you use Storyline for all of your course production, I think it would be a good investment to make the jump to Storyline 360. You won't be disappointed.

Kind regards,
Robert

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Hi Seema,

Great question! You're right that it's really important to think about the differences in how your learners will access your training on different devices. In my experience, it's best practice to use more generic instructions when creating learning for varied devices - my default is to use 'select' (as in 'Select the icon') which works on both mobile and desktop. It's also useful to think about whether on-screen items you're pointing to will always be in the same position - something might appear on the right of a desktop screen but be moved underneath in a responsive mobile view.

We have a tutorial on Mobile learning best practice which you might find useful - it's in the 'Skill up' section of our Totara mobile app course. The guidance in the tutorial isn't specific to the Totara mobile app so may be of interest however you're planning to deliver your mobile learning.

Do let us know how you get on - I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on this too.

Rachel

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Thanks Rachel

Yes i had seen the Tutorial and we do use many of these options but i need more in-depth really. we do use the word "Select" but are there more general terms used? We train out clinical systems so the instructions are very much right click, left click, etc..i need to know if there are any examples that can be shared that may help us to understand our design better?

Regards

Seema

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