Mobile Learning: Apps vs. Responsive design?

“To App or not to App”, seems to be the question.

We receive a lot of RFP documents that list mandatory requirements such as “Do you have a Mobile App? Yes or No”. Rarely is there an explanation of the use case or context provided for this requirement. In many cases, I’m not sure that the creators of these documents really know that they may be asking the wrong question entirely. It should be “please describe how do you provide mobile access for learners and admins” as the responses will be more nuanced and can prove to be a big differentiator between vendors.

I can’t help but think that somewhere along the way, people are being convinced that native Apps are the only way to provide learners with mobile access to their LMS. The problem is, this is simply not true – unless you have a very specific use case in mind.