How do you keep your interactive activities updated and relevant in LMS?

Don’t forget about developing learning personas. You can really get a good feel for your learners by creating even the simplest of personas.

On top of knowing your audience, my suggestion is to become your audience. The best insight I've gained inside an LMS, is by having multiple roles, and living each one. This doesn't just mean testing, this means actually experiencing the LMS as a student or faculty member. Learn what an assignment means for a professor and student. What goes into creating it and what hiccups can happen when you're trying to turn it in? Think in terms of access too. What access trouble will faculty vs students have? How can you mitigate these problems. Create a class, teach it, and become a student in another course. There really is no better way to learn the LMS than becoming your end users.

By creating learner personas based on internal data you can build to the audience who will be taking the learning instead of based on your own personal experience.

In my experience, the best first step is to create a draft of the assessment that target audience will be judged by. Then try it out! This helps clarify the audience and the content immediately. Oftentimes, people can pass the assessment with flying colors but without even seeing any content, in which case either there's no need make any content at all, or the audience definition needs work. Don't assume that because someone told you they needed a course, that any amount of training will fix the performance issue. You can test for this upfront before wasting resources making stuff that doesn't matter, or making stuff that does matter but to a different audience.

Knowing your audience(s) is a good way to start, but if time and resources allow, asking a few diagnostic questions at the beginning of a module to learn more about the audience would be good. And based on their answers, there will be a small degree of customisation that will make the learning experience more accessible to them.

Designing a training program based on a competency framework involves: - Core values - Core competencies - Technical and functional competencies - Leadership and management competencies - Mega or future competencies Each organizational group within the enterprise will have its own competency framework, which will define various output standards and objectives. Consequently, the design of the training program will be both practical and tailored to these frameworks.

There are lots of lazy "know this" and "understand that" objectives out there. You can do better! Focus on performance objectives, and how someone would observe that the target audience had taken the desired action. When you make your objectives this obvious and action-oriented, you make them much easier to measure. This helps everything downstream from your work.

A lot of e-learning programmes are essentially self-directed. Learners may only be interested in particular parts of the programme. What I found to be really useful is to ask the learners a question at the beginning of the module, something along the line of "Which learning outcome are you most interested in?" or "What is the number one thing you'd like to get out of this e-learning module?" This sets the tone for them and they will pay more attention to the relevant sections. They will also be more likely to remember them.

To ensure successful learning on LMs, one must be deeply familiar with their chosen development tools. I recommend undergoing tool training repeatedly. As you progress, it’s invaluable to create diverse prototypes corresponding to each content type; this offers a firsthand understanding of what the tool can achieve. For genuine accessibility and usability, content must be rigorously tested across real-world scenarios: different devices, noisy surroundings, shared setups, etc. Ultimately, mastering the tool’s intricacies allows the learning material to efficiently address two primary concerns: defining the desired behavior and outlining the pathway to its attainment.

The ALLAPAA + PLIPPER + COACHING model can be utilized as follows: ALLAPAA: Assessment, Learning, Analysis, Practice, Application. PLIPPER: 1. Conduct self-study before the class. 2. During class, the lecturer will present and analyze scenarios with guidance. 3. Engage in exercises. 4. The teacher will provide corrections to the answers. 5. Participate in advanced discussions. COACHING involves a capstone project.

A learner enjoys activities that are engaging. But not all approaches will work. Personally, I like to tailour my activities based on the kind of learner I have. I need to know my learners’ learning style. It is possible to have a mixed learning style and in this case, plan ahead. Put similar learning styles together for activities or mix them up to learn from each other’s experiences. Have fun with it! But always remember to reflect and learn from your learners. A good teacher is a good learner.

The number of activities counts too. A renowned book called "The Power of Output" suggests an input and output ratio of 30/70. Which means your output should always be greater than your input, so that whatever you input sticks.

Assessment and measurement are conducted using the Rubric method, which includes pre-assessment, ongoing assessment during training, and post-training assessment. This approach ensures that there is sufficient information to evaluate activities accurately. Furthermore, measurement will focus on capacity; if training is initially carried out in line with the competency framework, expertise is expected to improve through practical application.

Activities you create may not work for your learners and that’s ok. It’s important to get learner feedback on this. I personally like to ask my learners about their experience with the activity. What worked for them? What didn’t? A good idea is to note these as self reflection on your lesson plans (if you have them) so other teachers can see and amend as necessary. Another good way to get feedback is to look at how well your learners are engaging with your activities. Look for simple signs like eye contact, smiles, yawning, zoning out etc. and act on it. Have a back up! A good teacher has back up activities or can think of one on the spot! Reflect and adjust because what worked for your learners today, may not work for them tomorrow.

One of the easiest "wins" you can do within a course is to create both an 1. error reporting form and 2. course feedback form. I have email alerts on for course error reporting forms, and it allows me to quickly troubleshoot and fix items before they affect more than one student. Another tip is to put time into your schedule, at minimum quarterly, to audit your course activities. Go through them from the lens of a student. More often than not, you will find something to change.