How To Achieve True Interactivity In Your e-Learning Course
Interactivity is one of the biggest challenges that e-learning educators and trainers face today. Research indicates that the attention span of elearners is dropping, making it harder for learners to assimilate critical concepts and improve their skills.
Therefore, it is important to encourage learners to participate in digital training, and the way to achieve this is by making your e-learning course more interactive.
By making your e-learning course interactive, learners will have no option but to get involved and take the steps required in their e-learning. Here are five ways to achieve true interactivity in your video courses.
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1. Promote group collaboration
An excellent way to achieve genuine e-learning interactivity is to allow elearners to work with each other on elearning projects. They must collaborate as a group to understand the concepts being presented to them.
Group collaboration is a powerful technique that offers a lot of advantages. For instance, when learners collaborate in a group, there's a good chance that peers will explain concepts or ideas to their fellow students better than a lecturer or a teacher.
Furthermore, group collaboration allows for critical thinking since it makes it easier for elearners to open up and share their thoughts to better understand the material.
Learners will have to organize their thoughts to present a cohesive argument that can convey their message to convince their peers that their argument is valid.
Such collaborations also require learners to analyze different answers critically while taking new information and adjusting their viewpoints as new ideas are introduced.
To facilitate group collaborations, you must create a reason to collaborate by ensuring that the tasks are complex, challenging, stimulating, and multilayered.
You will also need to connect social media features like chat or forum into your e-learning platform to serve as an avenue for learners to interact and collaborate.
Additionally, as the teacher, you will need to switch from an instructor to a coach who supervises group collaboration to ensure that each team works together productively to attain a common goal.
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2. Use branching scenarios in e-learning
Branching scenarios are an effective and interactive learning practice that e-learning professionals have employed for years. They are simply a e-learning approach where learners have to apply their acquired knowledge via activities to overcome the challenge posed.
These scenarios require learners to answer questions and make decisions, allowing them to apply their knowledge in a realistic context.
In practice, branching scenarios involve giving learners a multistage test that puts them in charge of how the course will go based on their choices. Learners are presented with a question that has numerous decision points and options to solve the problem. Thus, learners determine the outcome based on their selection and preference.
Branching scenarios can help improve interactivity in your elearning course by improving engagement and boosting retention of the material conveyed. What's more, learners will learn from their mistakes and be proactive in their skills with no risks.
When developing branching scenarios, it's important to define your goal from the onset, as it will help you develop different learning paths. Also, don't forget to use real-world situations and characters that learners can relate to. Also, it might help to use mind-mapping software or even post-it notes when planning.
3. Incorporate interactive elements on each slide
An elearning online course will struggle to generate significant engagement without the use of interactive elements. You can introduce different elements to your course, and it makes sense to use them on slides or pages. For example, you can add the following elements to your course:
Click and learn: Learners can click on a word, sentence, paragraph, or image to see a pop-up message.
Infographics: Present information in a visually appealing way by using diagrams.
Videos: Create videos that ask questions or include complementary information to reinforce ideas effortlessly.
Fill in the blanks: Learners can be asked to complete sentences by choosing the correct answer.
Drag and drop: Using one image and several choices to reinforce knowledge and improve sorting.
4. Gamify the e-learning experience
Video games are typically very engaging. It's the reason why kids get engrossed in it so much that they forgo other important activities.
Since it is easier for people to stay hooked to a game for hours but hard to concentrate on studying for a couple of minutes, it makes perfect sense to leverage games for your online elearning courses.
They can help add an element of fun to learning and make learners excited to complete your course. Among other benefits that make games an effective e-learning aid is the fact that they enhance motivation.
Everyone likes to play and have fun, but when used in learning, it allows learners to learn while playing simultaneously.
To encourage them to follow through with the course, you can leverage rewards to boost motivation. These rewards could be small gifts if they win a part of the training or a medal system where they can win medals based on their progress in the training.
Furthermore, you can introduce other elements that will encourage learners to get trained even without realizing it. For example, players seek risks, challenges, rewards, and recognition when they play a game, and incorporating these elements into your game can help your course achieve genuine interactivity.
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5. Use interactive quizzes
Adding quizzes to your online e-learning course can help hold learners' attention and keep them engaged with your content. By providing them with an opportunity to fail at guessing, quizzes can help increase learners' memory capacity and serve as motivation for them to do better.
Seeing their results from time to time is an essential aspect of motivation. Plus, quizzes provide you with an insight into their progress.
While some argue that e-learning quizzes are boring and seldom yield great results, you can make them engaging and fun by using real-life problems that learners can relate to.
You could also alternate between various formations like multiple choice questions, rapid-fire, trivia, fill-in type questions, drag-drop-sort, visual assessments, mind maps, flashcards, and more.
e-Learning Wrap-up
The era where elearners sit in front of a computer and pay attention to boring courses is long gone.
E-learning Interactivity is everything now, and educators who seek to make their courses effective must encourage e-learners' participation.
Thankfully, implementing the tips above can help course creators record better engagement rates and overall success in training learners.
