How can you ensure an engaging program and guarantee that learners are learning, not just looking at some lectured content?

Studies show that presenting some random content on the screen is not effective. In fact, learners tend to get bored and lose motivation. For a more engaging e-learning experience, here are some tips to follow.

Be different:

Identify your teams’ needs and then create the content accordingly. The latter has to be unique and looking smooth for the learners. Learners tend to learn more when the information is taught in a spontaneous and informal way. “According to Esher, the best mentoring programs offer flexibility and opportunities for multiple forms of mentoring, and the most successful mentoring relationships need to look and feel informal or spontaneously developed relationships.” (Goodman, 2020). Keep the content relevant and of high quality, and make sure to include visual and audio aids even. This has to be easy to navigate to guarantee that the learner won’t get lost in the middle. You have to maintain not only a rich course but also an entertaining one. You can use Smart Courses for Confluence as it guarantees you all of the mentioned above.

Give & Receive:

As we called it, “Give & Receive”, this rule is about feedback. Giving and receiving feedback to and from learners is very important and here’s why:

• Give feedback to learners:

Completing a course is not enough nor for the learner neither for you. The important part about the course is to make sure the learners got the objective of it and comprehend it well. Not because it’s e-learning, then it’s not possible to provide feedback. It’s the opposite. It’s just you’re not there in person to do it. For example, you can include quizzes and open questions to help you collect information about what they acknowledged from the course and arrange a call or a meeting after that to give them a follow-up.

Another way to give feedback is by including it in the course if you’re doing the exam mode or just the question capsule. When the learner responds to a question, an explanatory note in the body of a customized message pops up to tell if it’s a right or wrong answer and why. This can be stated as a strategy to ensure the learner is getting the information, not just answering questions and not knowing why it’s wrong or right, as sometimes the reply can be a lucky guess.

• Receive feedback from learners:

It’s constructive for both parties to receive feedback from the learner. In a way, it aids the course creator in designing more relatable and practical courses the next time. In another, learners are benefited by default. “Organizations must create a supportive environment allowing experimentation through feedback and iteration. Working and learning in new ways requires openness and transparency from leaders to permit learning from failed experiments, as well.” (Saunderson, 2021)

You can do the same thing as in giving feedback. Include questions at the end of the course, but they have to be more targeted and specific because you need detailed data. For example, ask about how the course was, how it can be improved, let them put their suggestions, ask if anything specific they want to learn about, etc. Millions of questions you can put depending on the course and your company’s objectives.

Or, to make it easier for you and the team, just tell them to put their feedback or questions in the “Give your feedback” button as demonstrated below. The course creator will receive emails with all feedbacks.

Another interesting feature that can tell you if they liked the course or not is the rating part in the final screen of the course.

Lastly, you can just have a look at the feature Metrics and reporting if you’re using Smart Courses for Confluence. It shows you how much the learners were engaged with the course and their performance within it. It’s an easy and fast way to pull data for your organization.

Make it interactive:

Making e-learning more interactive is a surefire way to boost learner engagement. Several strategies are put on the table, but you can choose whatever suits you and your team. If it’s a web e-learning session, you can ask everyone to turn on their videos and engage with them for the first 5 minutes to ensure everyone is participating. Build a short conversation every 10 minutes to allow everyone to discuss or ask about what they’ve seen so far. Use learners’ first names’ to address participants when you’re talking; it means you’re paying attention to them or what they’re saying, and it positively impacts them.

As previously spoken in our blog about the effectiveness of e-training, the latter is worldwide-agreed that it’s an efficient system to boost team members’ knowledge and skills. Businesses nowadays managed to integrate this into their working system as it is cost-effective and doesn’t need a big budget to promote. You don’t have to pay for the team traveling fees or the training space reservation.. but is this motivating enough for the team to learn?

Motivation is the key ingredient for a successful e-learning session. Businesses’ objectives are to enhance the teams’ productivity, and by that, we mean the outcome.

Here are some simple tips to follow for a more engaging yet motivational e-learning process.

Use an engaging LMS tool:

Choosing the right tool for your business is the first step to a rewarding e-learning process. Several important features have to exist. A variety of content creation options are mandatory to help the learner with visual and audio aids in addition to the text. It should have the question and quizzes option to customize the learning experience to each team member or student. Most importantly, the tool needs to be fun and easy to use.

“Higher productivity and satisfaction usually occur when employees are comfortable using any LMS. With proper training, employees would be more efficient, knowledgeable, and confident using different LMS.” (Ellis & Kuznia, 2014).

If you’re a Confluence user, we suggest that you take a look at our LMS tool Smart Courses for Confluence. It surely will satisfy your needs for this matter. To discover more about the app, you can check this blog.

Employ just-in-time e-learning:

Instead of scheduling an e-learning lesson for a week in advance or sometimes a month in advance, go for the JIT approach. Having to wait for the online lesson or training for months or weeks is in vain, as the team member or the student will forget what the training was for from the beginning and the latter’s aim won’t be as expected. Everyone hates waiting. That’s a fact. Therefore, this approach solves the issue for you and guarantees you a 100% effective e-learning session, therefore, a productive team.

Receiving the information just when needed is way more fruitful because people tend to learn better when they have to learn or when they need that specific information as it’s work-related or studies’ related. That will lead them to be more accurate with the job they’re doing, and the performance will be improved.

Think about it! For example, if you’re an IT developer, you’ll need to be continually updated with the latest IT hacks and programming skills to facilitate your work. You’ll sometimes get stuck in the middle of an HTML code to search for information or just find yourself unaware of the next step. Here, we talk about the JIT approach that will facilitate the work and make it consistent.

The manager, the lead, or the teacher can create relative courses with Smart Courses for Confluence and add them to the course catalog just in case someone needed them. It will boost autonomy in the individual. By that, we will end up talking about more productive, confident, and engaged learners.

Integrate vocational e-learning:

Vocational e-learning is the act of training specific skills and knowledge to staff to perform a precise job position. This can be done to students or team members. Many job positions don’t require the new hires to know everything before the start. Sometimes, they hire them because they have the needed soft skills to help them go through the process of learning the hard skills. Or, it’s a matter of customized platforms or tools for the company that you only learn how to use when you are hired. “In order to train staffs to perform more efficiently and economically, the industry provides e-learning system with web resources. The staff can facilitate their need in time-control and learning speed according to vocational e-learning systems” (Cheng & Chen, 2015).

In this context, vocational e-learning is used with the OJT approach, which is On-the-job Training. If you’re a Confluence user, you can provide information on different spaces for different departments. Your team can also interact and engage by putting comments or feedback on the content created. Since the concept is about learning anywhere and anytime, the staff can open their smart tablets or smartphones everywhere to go through Confluence and check the contents concerned.

If you have newbies, you’d want to share a bunch of courses with them without letting the other departments see them. You can use the restrictions feature we have in Smart Courses for Confluence. Simply add a group of your team with whom you want to share the courses as they’re the only ones concerned.

How to add restrictions to your course?