Models for enhancing the development of experiential learning approaches within mobile health technologies.

The explosion of technological applications in health care has provided new avenues for clinical change to occur. Mobile health (mHealth) apps, which include clinical tools that run on smartphones, are one such demonstration of these technologies. Benefits of mHealth apps are numerous, but potential limitations include poorer understanding of material due to the lack of real-time support from providers, limited scope and depth of interventions, and absence of theoretical grounding and/or empirical support. A potential reason for these limitations is that treatment experts and app developers lack a common theory-based conceptual model to inform the objectives of mHealth interventions. We discuss how clinicians and app developers can use models of learning processes, such as Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) and Bloom’s Taxonomy, to facilitate collaboration among professionals and to increase experiential learning within mHealth interventions. First, we present ELT and Bloom’s Taxonomy as frameworks to aid in the development of mHealth apps for behavioral health. Next, we outline some key ingredients of experiential learning to consider during the development stages of mHealth interventions, namely concrete experience, interactivity, experimentation, scaffolding, and integration (i.e., including affective, behavioral, and cognitive elements). Within these key ingredients, we consider how such factors can enhance outcomes for mHealth apps through processes such as engagement, shaping of beliefs, skills development, generalization, and scope of learning.