3 Key Things to do for Creating Engaging eLearning

Part 1

Engaging eLearning!

Now, that’s a term that’s quite pervasive these days. Every custom eLearning development vendor claims to make engaging eLearning. But do we know what engaging eLearning really is? What attributes it needs to exhibit to qualify for being engaging eLearning? And more importantly how do you go about creating eLearning that is not the boring, stereotypical eLearning that the learners hardly ever relate with?

Creating engaging eLearning is a topic large enough to be covered in a workshop spanning a few days. However, I believe there if we can focus on 3 key things we will be able to ensure that the content we create is engaging. In this blog I will discuss the first one.

Purpose

In the corporate world there is no such training being done, which does not have an ultimate purpose of staff’s behaviour change. Whether we achieve that purpose or not, is a different matter altogether, but the fact is that there exists a purpose, which needs to be clearly established before we attempt to create engaging eLearning. To do that I recommend Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping process. It helps simplify the process of identifying the right content and activities to be included in your elearning by focusing on the purpose of the course. The four step process includes:

1. Identifying the business goal:

As she puts it, when creating any eLearning (or performance support), ask – why? ‘Why should this course be created? What is the business need?’ Look for a measurable goal; say for instance, to increase sales by 20% in next 12 months.

2. Identifying what people need to do to reach that goal:

The next step is to ask what behaviour(s) the learners, need to exhibit to be able to achieve this goal?

This would also include assessing the challenges that are standing in the way of the goals currently, or why the desired behaviors are not being achieved.

3. Designing activities that help people practice each behaviour:

For each behaviour find out appropriate practice that can be provided through an intervention (not necessarily a course). This also includes finding remedies for certain behavioural flaws.

4. Identifying the minimum information that people need to complete each activity:

For each practice activity find out the necessary information to be given to the learners – not less, not more, then pair the behavioural flaws with learning activities that can engage your learners.

(source - https://blog.cathy-moore.com/online-learning-conference-anti-handout/)

A combination of these practice activities and information bits could possibly be your eLearning. A huge focus lies on the activity – or the ‘DO’ component, which is critical to an engaging eLearning course we aspire to create. I highly recommend a visit to Cathy’s website for more details and examples.

In the next posts in this series, I’ll be discussing the remaining two things to focus on for creating engaging eLearning.

Part 2

This is part 2 of a 3 part blog series on creating engaging eLearning. In part 1 , I talked of Purpose. In this part I’ll be discussing about Motivation.

If you have spent time watching kids, you must have observed that most things fascinate them. They have a high level of curiosity that drives their learning. However, with us adults, we need motivation to even lift a finger.

Motivation is extremely crucial for any eLearning to happen. Ethan Edwards from Allen Interactions has rightly said that, “eLearning is an isolated activity – So motivation is crucial. It comes from within the learner OR from instructional design.”

Intrinsic motivation, when it comes to adults in corporate environment, is commonly uncommon. We as learning designers need to ensure motivation through Instructional Design. Here are a few things we can do:

a) WIIFM

What’s In It For Me?

We adults evaluate this almost instinctively before doing any task. The same is true for any training or eLearning you wish your staff to undergo. It is absolutely crucial to answer that question for our learners and preferably upfront. Doing it as part of objectives of the course is probably too late. It would be best to do this in your roll out/ communication plan.

b) Make it Purposeful & Conversational

We need to appreciate that our staff is busy. They have jobs to do and are probably looking to get over with any assigned eLearning ASAP. Support their desire by making the course purposeful and conversational. For instance, putting 3 screens with welcome, structure of the course, navigation, objectives etc. will only turn them off. So, keeping it short and sweet works better, leaving the choice of course progression to the learner.

c) Keep it Byte-Sized & Searchable

Chances are that some of our eLearning is beginning to be accessed on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets). It is important then to design our eLearning keeping in mind how we use our mobile devices – in short bursts. Hence, designing shorter nuggets which can be searched and consumed on-the-go adds to the motivation of your staff. They will appreciate that these nuggets are helping them get the stuff done.

d) Free Up the Navigation

Nothing annoys learners more than a locked navigation. They feel disrespected when we do that. Free it up and give them control.

e) Build for the Multi-device World

Again if we are indeed targeting delivery on multiple devices, we have to consciously build for multiple devices. It should be responsive, accessible on all devices, and include gestures for touch devices. It is always a good idea to go Mobile-First.

I believe if we can take care of the above points we would be ensuring higher motivation levels in our staff. Hope you find these useful.

Part 3

This is the last post in the series on ‘3 Key Things to do for Creating Engaging eLearning’. In previous posts I talked about Purpose and Motivation (here are part 1 and part 2). In this post I would like to talk about Interactivity.

I think Interactivity is the most hyped element in eLearning. It is also the most misunderstood and misused term – often seen as a panacea for all that ails eLearning. In the eLearning business it is almost a standard to discuss costs of eLearning development as per ‘levels’ of output where higher levels typically denote higher interactivity.

Two main things we need to remember are:

Interactivity is not Engagement

The simplest way to get over this confusion is to consider a great work of fiction – something like the ‘The Da Vinci Code’.

It is thoroughly engaging even though it has no interactivity. In fact it has only text and yet is a real ‘page turner’.

Interactivity of the Mind

On second thoughts the above mentioned fiction work actually does have interactivity – but not of the kind that we are used to. The interactivity here is of the mind and not of the hand. And that is precisely what we need to achieve with all interactivities that we wish to include in our eLearning programs.

Creating meaningless interactivity is a waste of time and effort. In fact meaningless interactivities only tend to annoy the learners and deliver little or almost nothing. We should focus on only meaningful interactivities. Here are some ways to do it:

a) Scenarios

Give the learners tasks through a real life scenario/context, and provide them with an elaborate feedback. Feedback is when the learners are most receptive and ready to learn and hence, the most opportune time to give the relevant information. In below example we have a rather dull interactivity around DSE. But, apart from hot spots, there are a few additional items to think and chose. Also the timer and score add to the engagement.

b) Stories

It’s no secret, stories work with adults too. We are interested in stories and tend to remember more from stories as we add our own visualisations to the stories. In below example the story of invention and evolution of the wheel has been used to set the stage and build upon to teach about the evolution of company’s products.

c) Videos

We’ve earlier written about why videos are making a comeback to corporate eLearning (read here). Videos are an effective medium of telling stories and are a great medium when it comes to multi-device solutions – as they are naturally responsive if made well. Short videos can be used as performance support tools too. Interactive videos too hold great promises and are beginning to be explored increasingly in eLearning.

In the below example a short 1 min clip on how to use a particular cleaning agent can be launched by scanning the QR code printed on the cleaning agent bottle. True performance support!

A great example of interactive video is https://life-saver.org.uk/. It was a winner at eLearning Age awards in 2013. Do experience it for yourself.

By incorporating the right kind of interactivities and creating a flow within eLearning courses using the right media and story-telling aspects etc., we can definitely enhance the overall learning experience.

So there you are – Purpose, Motivation, & Interactivity are the 3 Key things to focus on when creating engaging eLearning. I would love to hear your thoughts on these and any other ideas you have.

(This article was originally published on Upside Learning Blog as a 3 part series)