The 13 Best eLearning Apps for Businesses

Originally Published by The Capterra Training Technology Blog

According to technology research firm Gartner, by 2018 70% of mobile professionals will conduct work on their personal smart devices.

With worldwide smartphone shipments topping one billion per year it’s not surprising that businesses and employees are putting these tools to use with forward thinking BYOD policies and mobile-accessible resources.

The question is, how are you putting corporate and employee mobile devices to work for your training program?

If you’re not yet ready to dedicate the resources to a homegrown native or online mobile eLearning app, don’t worry. There’s already plenty out there that you can use out-of-box to help with your business eLearning efforts.

Here are ten great apps for eLearning that you should already be using within your organization:

Udemy

With their introduction of Udemy for Organizations, and pivot towards offering corporate training and more business-focused classes, Udemy’s app is a must for any business looking to incorporate MOOCs into their training process.

Accessible in both iOS and Android versions, the app will allow your learners to take any of thousands of courses available through Udemy. Users can watch presentations on the go, view articles, and save courses to view offline. Unfortunately to create courses you’ll still have to use Udemy’s website interface, and the app doesn’t allow you to track learners or progress.

The app is free, though many courses are not.

DesignJot

Built specifically for instructional designers, trainers, and performance consultants, this app allows you to plan, design, and build training courses. It’s optimized for use with an iPad, and is only available in an iOS version. You may find limited ability to customize needs analysis questions in the planning phase.

The app is $4.99.

Skill Pill

With options for iOS, Android, Windows phones, and Blackberry, the Skill Pill app allows you to provide bite-sized training videos (the eponymous “pills”) for your learners. Topics range from customer service, to management, to sales and marketing, and can be mixed and matched to provide a unique course per learner. Skill Pill also develops custom courses.

While the app is free, and some “Skill Pills” are included on download, to access the entire course library requires you to pay for a login with Skill Pill.

My Moodle

The official app from Moodle will only be useful for you if you currently use Moodle but, given that it’s the most popular LMS out there, bar none, there’s a good chance you already do.

The My Moodle app, available for both iOS and Android devices, while not a full-blown replacement for the Moodle interface, does allow you to upload files, download course resources for offline viewing, send messages, and track course participants. If you’re using an older version of Moodle however, beware, as issues have been reported with versions 1.9 and below.

This app is free.

ASTD Trainer’s Toolkit

The American Society of Training and Development is one of the most important resources out there for trainers and instructional designers.

This app is a kind of performance support tool that helps you create activities to get learners more engaged, motivated, and help them retain content better. It also allows you to take notes, bookmark, and create new activities. Available in both Android and iOS flavors.

While the app is free, if you want more than the standard activities you can purchase them starting at $1.99.

Chief Learning Officer magazine

CLO magazine is one of the leading industry sources on news, trends, and thought leadership in the training and business learning space. Their app, on iOS and Android, automatically sends you each new issue, with the ability to see up to three months of back issues, save and bookmark articles, and view CLO blog articles in addition to magazine issues.

The apps are free, as is a subscription to Chief Learning Officer magazine.

Blackboard Collaborate Mobile

Given that the fourth most popular LMS is Blackboard, and that it’s got a lot of utility for corporate learning, this app is a great addition to your existing Blackboard implementation. With the ability to join web conferencing sessions, chat, view whiteboard content and presentations, and answer multiple choice questions, you can download this app on either an iOS device, or Android.

The app is free to download, but requires a hosted enterprise Blackboard Collaborate license to use.

Educreations Interactive Whiteboard

This is essentially a simple course content creation tool for iPads. While you can’t share whiteboards in real-time, the app does allow you to build and record different lessons, videos, and annotated images which you can then share with your learners via social media networks or email.

Ideal for instructional designers on the go, or when you need to whip up a quick performance support lesson for employees or techs in the field. The app is free.

lynda.com

Access lynda.com’s catalog of 564 business courses, including things like content marketing, management training, advanced Adwords tutorials, and accounting fundamentals. The app, on iOS and Android, allows you to access courses, save and share courses for offline viewing, create course playlists, and stream course videos to a TV using airplay and chromecast, respectively.

The app is free, and lynda.com offers some free courses accessible through the app, but access to the full Lynda library of courses is $25 a month.

BizMobile

With a library of 6,000 courses focused exclusively on business training, the BizMobile app for BizLibrary offers access to a lot of content for training managers. The app can be downloaded for both iOS and Android, and lets employees view course videos, read supplemental course materials like PDFs, and comes with full database search functionality.

The app is free to download, but access to the course library costs around $5 a month per employee.

Kineo E-learning Top Tips

This app, by eLearning vendor Kineo, is a download exclusively for iOS devices. Essentially a treasure trove of tips and advice for instructional designers, this is a great little resource to have handy when you’re starting out designing eLearning courses. The latest tips are automatically updated as well, which is a plus.

This app is free.

E.Learning Age

This mobile version of the popular UK-based E.Learning Age magazine comes in both iOS and Android flavors. The magazine covers news, case studies, and research from the eLearning space, and all of these can be accessed through the app. You can read the latest edition and bookmark articles, as well as highlight and save them for later.

This app is free.

Apple Keynote

An unfortunate oversight in the previous version of our list, Apple’s own presentation app is ideal for building course content on-the-go. Similar to PowerPoint, Keynote allows you to create presentations on your iPhone, Touch, and iPad (and even integrates with Apple Watch now). Easy saving via iCloud or Dropbox, and the ability to export in multiple formats, make Keynote a great tool for building basic course content wherever you are.

This app is $9.99.

Bonus app

iTunes U

Though included for free on all iOS devices, this Apple app is sorely overlooked by instructional designers. Not only does it grant users access to a huge library of free and paid instructional content, including hundreds (or thousands) of business and skills courses, it also allows you to create your own courses to be used on learner’s iPads. While marketed at schools, vocational and professional learning is still an option with this tool.

What else?

What’s your favorite eLearning app? Add the good ones in the comments below!