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Hello, Ohio!

That’s what Bruce Springsteen yelled as he entered the stage last November 13 in yet another sold out show in a long tour for zealous fans. He continued to thank his audience from Ohio for the first 30 minutes or so until his guitarist, the flamboyant Miami Steve Van Zandt, whispered into the ear of the Boss that they were in… Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Know your audience is Step One in your efforts to embrace mobile learning. Having a good understanding of your audience will influence almost all of your decisions. It will have a bearing on your curriculum choices, your interactive and instructional design and how you deliver the content. It can even affect your budget, scope and timelines. In other words, don’t overlook this point. It is important to know as you begin to adopt mobile learning in your company or organization that some of the rules have changed. What you know about your audience based on your existing training and eLearning has value but there are other aspects to consider. If you go into it thinking you know everything without getting out and encountering your audience, you are setting yourself up to stumble.

First of all, get out in the field. Don’t rely on surveys and statistics, case studies and your power searching on the web. All of those metrics and research are helpful and they can help frame your thinking as you place yourself in your learner’s world and live their lives. But, your first move is to push yourself away from your desk. Get on the production line. Ride in the truck with a delivery person. Attend a management meeting (if you’re welcome!). Shadow a store salesperson. Tag along on a service call. You will need to see what kind of information they need and when they need it. Experiencing the daily life of your audience will give you a wealth of information about the type of mobile learning you need to deliver.

What we are talking about is the audience’s context. Your mobile learning is only going to be effective if it is appropriate within the context of your learners. It needs to add to their experience – increase their productivity, make them safer, more knowledgeable about their immediate task, more efficient – all of these can be achieved by timely and proper mLearning. Mobile learning is different from eLearning in that it can be delivered in small, bite size chunks. So how does that style of learning fit into the context of your audience? What is the environment of the learner when they receive the information? In a noisy factory? Can’t use audio. Headphones would be unsafe. What kind of mobile devices do they have? What are the limitations of the handsets? If its iPhones, they can’t run Flash. These are all questions that you can have answered by getting on the front lines. Statistical pie charts and surveys won’t give you the very specific information you need.

While you are in the field and rubbing elbows with the hard-working people who will receive your training, there is another radical thing you can do to learn more about them and what they need. Ask. I should put that word in bold and increase the type size. Ask. Your audience will tell you what will help them the most. They will point out the gaps in their learning. They won’t hesitate to let you know what they like and don’t like about the existing training and eLearning so be prepared for some tough love since you probably are the one responsible for delivering it to them. And they are going to want to know, “What’s in this for me?” so be prepared to answer that question. You should be able to present compelling reasons for the mobile learning you want to introduce into their daily lives. Remember, most people are skeptical of change but if they see that they have a role in instituting the change, if they feel like they have ownership in the change, you will be playing to a captive audience when the first mobile learning is rolled out. That may be the best reason to get out and know your audience.

It didn’t take much for Springsteen to ask for forgiveness from his Detroit fans when he was made aware of his mistake. But if you launch a mobile learning strategy without knowing your audience, you may very well lose time, money and credibility. You can’t afford to lose those things and still be successful. Go out on stage knowing you know exactly what your audience wants and needs. And if you are in Ohio, you can say with complete confidence, “Hello, Ohio!”

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