One of the big challenge in crafting a learning experience is figuring out how to engage the learners. This is especially true for a lot of corporate training that is compulsory and not always connected to performance expectations.

Today, we’ll review 5 ways to engage your learners and build a better learning experiences.

Engage Learners with Relevant Content

Engaged learners need content that is relevant to their needs. If it’s not, then they’re less apt to be motivated which leads to less engagement. It forces you have to do a lot more to increase their motivation and guide them through the content.

I discuss relevant content quite a bit throughout the blog and make it one of the key building blocks for interactive elearning.

Engage Learners with Just-in-Time Delivery

At a previous organization, we installed a new phone system. We had to train so many people on the new system that the first groups were trained months before the system rolled out. By the time the phones came online, a lot of what they learned was lost. That was OK, because we had some cheat sheets and quick tips that offered help for the most common tasks.

Instead of a big course delivered months in advance it would have been easier to build lighter modules (similar to the cheat sheets) that delivered the necessary content at the point of need. I like to call these micro-learning modules, coursels (as in course morsels).

With YouTube and similar media services, people are conditioned to search for what they need when they need it. Why can’t the online training follow suit? Focus less on sharing every piece of content and more on context; and then work towards making it easy to search and access bite-sized training at the point of need.

Engage Learners with the Look & Feel

Learners perceive a product as more usable than it may actually be if the design is aesthetically pleasing. This is known as the aesthetic-usability effect. It’s also possible that they may reject a product that is actually better because it may not be as aesthetically pleasing.

Even if you build basic courses, place a lot of focus on getting the right look and feel. There’s a visual context that works for your course as well as a way to create novel and engaging interactions. These don’t replace good instructional design, but they do contribute to the perception the learner has of the course and its value. And that’s critical to the initial engagement.

Engage Learners with Interactive Content

Most courses are linear with little, if any, interactive elements. That’s fine for consuming information. But it doesn’t make for engaging learning experiences. An easy way to engage learners is to add interactive elements to the course.

Generally, there are two facets to interactive elearning. The first is getting the learner to interact with onscreen elements. These interactions are clicking, mouseovers, dragging, and/or data entry. The second is getting the learner to process and interact with the content. Usually this involves some Socratic questions or more involved interactive, branched scenarios.

Engage Learners with Free Navigation

One of my pet peeves is locked navigation. We all know why it happens: the customer wants to make sure that the learner sees all of the information. Otherwise, how else would they learn it?

Obviously, this is a false assumption. People don’t learn just because you expose them to content. And making it mandatory to see content is not an appropriate way to assess knowledge.

Instead of locking content down, give them the freedom to access and explore the content. If you want them to learn more, provide a challenge that causes them to pull in the content and make decisions. This is a much better mechanism than you pushing it out to them.

If you want to ensure they have learned something, then instead of locking the navigation, lock the course at decision points. Give the learner freedom to move around the content and explore. However, for them to advance, provide decision-making scenarios that require an understanding of the content. This gives the learner more control and the course owner some assurance that the learners know the content.

There are many ways to implement these tips to create engaging and interactive learning. The key is to engage the learner and create an experience that is memorable and enjoyable as well as educational.

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Organizations operate at the speed of business and don’t like to waste time or money. That’s especially true when it comes to pulling people away from their daily tasks. And this is something that happens every time a person is asked to complete an e-learning course. So it’s important to create the most cost-effective process possible and still meet the organization’s goals.

One way to make e-learning courses cost-effective is by sorting your learners and then pushing them to a successful learning path. Some who take the courses are more experienced and don’t need the same course that the new person does. And the new person probably needs a lot more context and content.

Understand Your Learners Before Building a Pre-Assessment Scenario

People come to the courses with varying levels of experience, skills, and understanding. In an ideal world, you can craft an adaptive learning process where everyone gets a unique learning experience, but that’s usually not an option. Most of the time, you have to create one course that meets the needs of everyone.

• Experienced learners already have a lot of contexts. And often the e-learning courses act more like a certification process than new learning experience. So, in that sense, let them prove what they know and move on to completion.
• New learners are new and don’t have a record of accomplishment of experience. Often, they don’t know what they don’t know. Some may know more than others. And some may think they already know the content.

Let Learners Test Out Instead of Using a Pre-Assessment Scenario

A common option is to let learners test out by successfully completing a pre-test. Present an assessment upfront. If they pass it, they go to the end and are done. If they don’t pass it, they go to the beginning and take the course. This is a viable model and works great for simple compliance training where an annual course completion certificate is the main objective.

However, many of those pre-assessment tests are very basic and what do they really prove? They may prove the person knows the content, but it doesn’t mean that they know how to apply it. Or it may prove that they’re good guessers. In either case, they generally don’t prove understanding, especially in a performance environment.

Create a Pre-Assessment Scenario

Functionally a pre-assessment scenario is the same as a pre-test. The goal is to sort the learners and move the experienced and novice learners down different paths. However, the core difference is that the assessment scenario attempts to assess deeper understanding of the content and its proper application.

Pre-tests typically ask a series of multiple-choice questions. And again, this is fine for a simple end-of-year certification. However, if the course is more performance-based, then the scenario allows you to stage an event that lets the learner demonstrate that they can meet the performance requirements by successfully navigating the pre-assessment scenario.

A couple of additional benefits is that a pre-assessment scenario helps remind the experienced person of what they need to do and for the new person it helps expose deficient understanding and the types of situations they may encounter in the real world. The pre-assessment scenarios also help cement the objectives for the course. When a person isn’t successful, they’re more apt to pay attention to the course content since they’ve already been proven to lack some of the expected understanding.

A few production tips:

• Keep it short. Instead of big, long scenarios which take more time to produce, create a series of quick hit scenarios.
• This is a pre-assessment. So don’t feel obligated to do much to set up or support the assessment with resource content. If they can demonstrate their understanding, they can pass the pre-assessment. If they can’t, well, that’s why you created the course.
• Create templates. You can create interactive scenario templates and reuse them for quicker production.

Pre-tests are a great way to efficiently and effectively move learners through the training process. However, they are limited in what they can assess. Switching to a real-world pre-assessment scenario provides a better way to assess understanding and application of the training content. It also lets those who don’t pass understand why they need to take the course.

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“Help! My client just dumped a 200-slide PowerPoint file on my desk and wants me to turn it into an elearning course.  What do I do?”

Do you feel his pain?  If you’ve been building elearning courses for any length of time, then you know exactly what he’s going through.  In fact, this is one of the questions I’m asked the most.  Everyone wants to know how to weed through all of the text and data that the client wants to throw into the course and still make it a good course.

In this post, I’ll go through a few considerations when you’re reviewing the course content and give you some ideas on how to weed out the unnecessary data.

Define the Objectives

Your client wants an elearning course for a reason and your job is to figure out what that is.  I put courses in one of two buckets.  The course objective is to change behaviors for performance improvement or the objective is to share information.

Performance-based courses have some sort of measurable goal that lets you know if behaviors have changed and what impact it had on performance.  Information-based courses are a little trickier.  Typically, the objective is to share the information without explicit behavioral change and the measure of success is a report of completion.  This is typical of compulsory training.

By identifying the objectives of the course, you’re able to figure out what content you need to meet them.

If It Doesn’t Help Meet the Objective, Take it Out of the Course

Your subject matter experts will always give you more information than you need.  But, you don’t need every piece of information they have to share.  As an instructional designer, your job is to determine what to keep and what to leave out?  These three questions help you make that determination.

1. What’s the learner supposed to do?

Design the course from the learners’ perspective.  What are they supposed to do at the end of the course?  Typically the learners are expected to accomplish a specific task or be able to solve certain problems.

Training focused on just sharing information gets tricky because the focus is less on doing so the measurable expectations are not as evident.  In those cases you need to ask how the learner is expected to use the information in the course.  This helps you shift the compliance content out of the information bucket and into the performance bucket to make it relevant to the learner’s performance expectations.

2. What course content will help the learner meet the course objectives? 

Once you understand the objectives and performance expectations, sort the the course content and identify what information the learner needs to meet the course goals?

For example, I once did an elearning project for a financial institution where the learners were trained on completing a financial form.  However the training not only covered the process of completing the form, it also covered the whole history of the financial industry through a series of Congressional reforms and various regulations.

While the background information was important, it wasn’t critical when it came to the performance expectations of completing the form accurately.  And that’s the key point.  You’re trying to find the content that is critical to meeting the objectives.  The rest of it is just extra information.  There’s a place for it, just not as the essential course content.

3. How will the learner use this in the real world?

Effective elearning connects the course’s information to the learner’s world.  Knowing what that connection is will help you build the right course and sort through the pages of subject matter information.

Why does the learner need to know this information?  Which situations does the learner experience in the real world that requires knowing the course content?  How will the learner use the information?

Going back to the lending course, unless Alex Trebek shows up to get a loan, most likely the learner only needs to know how to collect the right information from the borrowers to accurately complete the form.  And, that’s what the course content should focus on.  All of the contextual information about the industry and the various regulations can be added as resource data to augment the course, but it’s not critical to completing the form.  So in that case, you’d build an elearning course that mirrors the lending process so that the learner understands why the course is relevant to meeting performance expectations.

Put the Course Content into the Learner’s World

As you sort the content, you’ll end up with two piles.  One pile has “need to know” information and the other pile has “nice to know.”  The “need to know” is used to build learning activities to help change the learner’s behaviors.  The “nice to know” is resource data to provide additional information if the learner wants or needs it.

Have the learner use the “need to know” information in a real world context.  Instead of doing an information dump with multiple slides of bullet points and text, create a situation where the learner needs to use the new information.  Generally, you’d do something like this to share the information with the learners:

• Set up the real-world scenario and then provide critical background information.
• The learner will go through a decision-making process.  At that point you can provide additional information.
• After the learner makes a decision, you can provide even more information as feedback.

As you can see, this simple approach gives you three ways to pump information into the course that you might have previously just put on a few screens with bullet points.

Use the “nice to know” information as a way to augment the course content.  Some learners like to know more before they make decisions.  They’ll want some of the information you pulled out of the course.

There are a number of ways you can provide access to the additional content without dragging down the course or interfering with the learning process.  Here are a few ideas.

• Link to a help line.  This could be a link to an intranet site or if you want to get creative you can create a virtual helper like an HR assistant who can provide more information.  It could be as simple as a clip art image of “Sally the HR Manager” that links to a screen with additional information.
• Compress the data into resource tabs.  For example, using an Engage interaction you can build FAQs or a Glossary that can easily hold all of the contextual information that you weeded out of the main course content.  They sit on the top of the player as drop down tabs and whenever you need more information, you can click on them without losing your place in the course.
• Create additional documentation that the user can access.  You can put it online as a simple web page or publish a PDF that the learner can download a
  nd use as a resource later.

You’re always going to have more information than you need for the course.  Clear learning objectives (tied to performance expectations) provide a framework for filtering out the critical information from all of the extra information.  Keep focused on how the learners use the course content and build activities that let them get the information in a way that’s real to their world.  In this way, you’ll streamline your course content and build courses that have a positive impact on your organization.

I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.  Feel free to add them by clicking on the comments link.

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Last week we looked at some of the issues with compliance-based elearning and how taking a different approach to its design can save your organization time and money.  And of course an additional benefit is that it makes your employees happier.  There are a number of good comments to the post and some ideas that you can explore.

Many times, how we approach building our compliance training is based on hearsay or regulatory urban legends.  So we end up with bloated and time consuming courses that only serve the purposes of sleep-deprived insomniacs.

One of the key points of last week’s post was to contact your legal department and find out what are the real requirements for your organization.  Then build your training around them rather than what you think the regulations say.

The ideal is to meet your compliance needs and at the same time identify legitimate gaps in understanding.  This allows you to address those gaps and provide the type of intervention that gets people up to the desired skill and performance level.

While there are many ways to design your elearning courses, today’s post features three simple strategies that will help you meet your certification needs and get your people back to work.

1. Create a Pre-Assessment

Put the certification test at the beginning of your course.  Make it a very comprehensive assessment so that you can truly identify their knowledge and skill level.  If the user passes the test, he jumps to the end and is certified.  If the user doesn’t pass, then you direct him to the course where he can get remedial training and additional assistance.

Keep in mind that even though it’s an assessment doesn’t mean it has to be a standard multiple choice or true/false quiz.  You can do an assessment as a series of case studies or scenarios, as well as a traditional quiz.

How you design the assessment and course is up to you.  You can use a simple linear approach, or create a dynamic scenario-based process.  It really doesn’t matter.  The point is that even if you use a simple structure like this, you can make the assessment more than a click-and-read process and, instead, make it as engaging as you want.

2. Empower the User

The first idea is to create the assessment up front and then direct the user based on the assessment result.  While it is a simple approach and easy to design, this can be intimidating for some users.  Here’s a way to soften it up and empower them at the same time.

Instead of just starting with the assessment, give the user a choice.  Tell them that they can go through the course and at any time they like, attempt to take the assessment.  Then unlock the course so the user can navigate it and see what’s covered.

Think of it this way.  You go to a book store and look through the pages of a good book on elearning.  Most likely, you’ll look at the table of contents, and then perhaps go to the index and look for specific areas of interest.  If you’re visual, you’ll flip through the pages to see what type of illustrations and examples are in the book.  It’s your way of assessing the book’s value and relevance.

In a similar sense, when it comes to elearning courses, many people like to skim through the course content to get a sense of what’s in it.  Once they see the content and how it’s laid out, they get a sense of what they know and can determine if they need the course or not to help them pass the assessment.  This is why it’s important to unlock the course and give the learners room to explore.

Remember, these are courses for people who most likely already know the content and just need to demonstrate it and be certified.  It’s kind of like an experienced driver getting a new license.  The driver doesn’t need to take a driving class.  Instead, she takes a driver’s test.  If she passes, she gets a license.  If she can’t pass the test, she takes a class and practices until she can.

Using this approach lets the user see what’s required and mentally assess what he does or doesn’t know.  He can jump into a few sections to test his knowledge and comfort level and then take the assessment at any time.  In addition, odds are that he will self-assess and identify the area where he needs to know more and then review those sections.

3. Break the Content into Sections

Even if you can create courses with pre-tests, I’ve found that some organizations still won’t do it.  They’ll still request a formal “course.”  I’ve had customers tell me that even if people already know the information, it doesn’t hurt them to go through the course anyway.  I assume they think the information is going to stick to the learners like a static cling sock right out of the dryer.

In addition, some customers just aren’t comfortable with this type of approach where the user can self-navigate and choose when to take the assessment.  They don’t like the fact that people can test out.  Instead, they want them exposed to something that resembles a course.

While some customers shy away from a pre-test and still want a formal course, I’ve found that many are flexible enough to embrace the following approach.

Break the course content into distinct sections.  At the beginning of each section, give the user a choice to assess or go through the content.  At the end of all of the sections, do a final assessment.

You can still capture some time savings because a knowledgeable person can go through each section and test out quickly.  However, by breaking it into sections you can be more specific in the assessment process and catch areas where people might not be as fluent.

For example, if you only had one assessment for a course, a person might pass at 80% and be certified.  However, what happens if the 20% she didn’t get correct was all from the same area?  That could be a potential problem.

The advice in this post probably doesn’t work for courses where you’re trying to teach new skills.  However, if you do a lot of certification or annual refresher training, these three approaches should come in handy.

If you do something different or have an approach that you’d like to share with the community, feel free to do so.

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Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.