Did you know that a majority of students surveyed access their learning content while on the move on a regular basis? If that learning content is on a Learning Management System (LMS, e.g. Moodle or Blackboard) then we need to begin thinking about how to ensure that course pages, activities and resources are viewable and easy to interact with on mobile devices.
With Medschool and Health Sciences Moodle, we get a head start as the theme is designed to be mobile friendly so the default course page design works well on mobile devices. However, how we choose to organise resources and activities can improve on the default design. For example, using buttons at the top of the screen means students can quickly jump to the section they want without scrolling down too far on their phones or tablets.
Keeping text on your main screen short and using LMS designed pages and books are a great way to simplify the view for students on mobile devices. Remember too that pdfs are often easier to read on mobile compared to word documents or powerpoint slides which students may not be able to view on their phone or tablet.
Another way to improve student access on mobile devices is to ensure that images are appropriately sized before loading them on your course (large images use more data to load which costs students money). In fact, consider the overall size of your course in general. The larger your course the more data it will use to load on their mobile browser. Not sure how large your course is? You can backup your course at anytime and this will give you an idea of its size. Your whole course should aim to be less than 200MB. If it is significantly larger than that, contact you eLearning Facilitator to discuss ways to make your course smaller while maintaining its usefulness for students.
Finally, did you know that Moodle has its own app, the Moodle Mobile App. It is available for Android and iOS devices and allows students to access their courses while on the go. Currently it only works well with default Moodle plugins so some of our specialised plugins may not work. However, it is worth considering how to improve the look of your course for Moodle Mobile as that will ensure that your course will work well for students however they access your course while on the go.
