Learn what makes a digital learning course engaging and interactive, that helps connect with your learners, and ultimately delivers better learning.
The biggest advantage of traditional classroom training is the presence of an instructor or teacher. This person, using his or her skills in eloquence, subject matter expertise, and presentation techniques, effectively engages the entire classroom in the topic at hand. Skilled instructors don’t let learners sit passively in the learning session. By using question-answer sessions, group discussions, role-plays, etc., the instructor makes learners part of the learning process. This facilitates knowledge transfer, retention and recall, which in turn helps employees perform their duties more efficiently.
But that is not the case in digital learning, where the instructor is absent from the entire process. This means, it is the responsibility of the content itself to interact and engage with the learners. That’s why you really need to optimize the strengths of the digital learning medium to create an engaging and interactive digital learning environment. Just like teachers, your digital content too should involve employees in the learning process and ‘communicate’ with them for their better understanding of the subject. Let’s now explore some methods to make your e-learning courses more interactive.
Anytime Learning Solutions
One of the best features of a digital learning program is that the engagement doesn’t end when the employee moves away from the computer. Due to their responsive design, e-learning modules work flawlessly on any smartphone or tablet device. Combine that with bite-sized, just-in-time learning modules, and your employees can access the training content from almost anywhere. The beauty of just-in-time learning modules is that they deal with just one topic quickly, making them the perfect choice for brushing up knowledge, right before performing an important activity.
Game-based Content
This is perhaps the most interactive digital learning format, where the learning content is embedded in a fully-playable game. Employees can absorb all the knowledge they need while playing the game. Game-based content continuously communicates with learners by demanding their actions to proceed. Including such modules in your e-learning program can really provide your employees with an immersive learning experience. Also, since everyone likes playing games, learning becomes a fun and interesting activity.
Decision-making Modules
A teacher or instructor in the classroom can change the course of a conversation or discussion depending on the learners’ responses. Can we replicate the same in a digital environment? Yes, we can! With scenario-based learning you can replicate a real-life work situation in your digital program, wherein learners interact with relatable characters using preset dialogues. You can enhance such modules to make them more interactive by creating branched dialogues. Your employees will be free to make their choices based on their understanding, and see where it will lead to in the scenario.
Innovative Assessments
Rapid authoring tools allow you to move away from the conventional question-answer format for assessments. Using interactivities such as drag-and-drop, sliders or dialer-based data manipulators, click-and-reveal, and many more, you can come up with innovate assessment techniques. This way you can add a fun element to your tests, removing the stress quotient from them. Such interactive tests stay longer with your learners and allow them to apply their knowledge rather than just recall facts to answer questions.
Diverse Microlearning Assets
Delivering content in shorter bursts has proven to be highly effective when it comes to engaging the modern learner in a digital medium. You can optimize the duration of the course by incorporating multimedia elements instead of the standard text-based ones. Audio clips, short videos, infographics, animations, etc. are perfect catalysts to engage learners in the short time they have. Such multimedia-rich resources allow you to deliver more knowledge in less time.
Going digital with your corporate training program does not make sense unless you can make the courses engaging. Don’t know where to start? Hire an experienced e-learning vendor who can create courses that engage your learners as well as a classroom instructor does.
