Engagement – the magical, catch all term that people love to abuse. We hear it all the time in eLearning; “we need this course to be engaging”, “we need learners to be engaged!” And so on, and so on.
After a while, it sounds a bit like white noise.
But what does engagement even mean? We won’t pull up the dictionary definition on you, but we will give you a thought exercise. Look at the scenario below and answer the question that follows.
Scenario:
A team is asked to take mandatory compliance training. The training is an eLearning course that has multimedia elements, along with a gamified segment which acts as the final assessment.
- Learner A: Speeds through the course, clicking through all the interactions as intended, and passes the final assessment.
- Learner B: Takes longer than the rest of the team to finish the course, uses the course as intended, and passes the final assessment with a high score.
- Learner C: Takes a moderate amount of time to finish the course, skips through some of the interactions, and fails to pass the final assessment.
Which learner is the most ‘engaged’ with the material?
Have you had time to think it over? Answers on a postcard please!
If you answered learner B, then congrats, you’re right! While learner A technically did all the right things, speeding through a course does not mean that they were engaged – even if they did pass the assessment. Interaction does not mean engagement; interaction is the baseline level of use. Real engagement occurs when the learner connects with the material and is able to internalise it for future use.
Okay, great, we know what engagement is now. So how do we make sure that all learners have that connection with the material?
We’ll be honest with you. We can’t.
Before you start throwing tomatoes at us, hear us out! Simply put, there’s no one size fits all approach when it comes to learning. What can be incredibly interesting to one person can be incredibly boring to another. One person might love video formats while someone else might hate it – we’re all different.
What we can do, however, is tailor information in a way that’s relevant to the learner, and do it in a way that lets them have more agency over what they’re learning. Consider your audience. Is there any way we can make this learning material relevant to their day to day life?
Can we include things like case studies that actually reflect similar experiences they might go through? We automatically connect to relatable experiences, and that connection is the hook needed for effective learning.
Of course, it’s not enough to just fill a whole course with relatable content and call it a day. Just like all things in life, variety is key! Interactions that slow learners down to properly digest the information, pauses that challenge what they already know, these are just some ways we can give learners more control over what they’re doing.
Take a moment to reflect on the training you currently have. Is it relevant to the people who are taking it? Better yet, have you actually spoken to your audience to learn more about them?
For example, let’s say you’re offering health and safety training to a group of people on a factory assembly line, but all the examples in the course are office based. Have you asked the group how they felt about that? And if you have, have you acted on their responses? Feedback can make a world of difference; trust us, we know.
All of this can be a lot to take in. Audience considerations, content types, relatability, and don’t get us started on cognitive overload! If it feels overwhelming, then have no fear, we’re here to help. All of the questions we’ve asked above are considerations we build into every project, and we work closely with our clients to learn what makes their audiences tick. Relatable? Engaging? We have it all covered.
If you’re in the market for five star eLearning that hits all your training objectives, drop us a line. We’ll be delighted to chat!