Replace your boring e-Learning with adaptive digital content

We all tend to have one perception when it comes to e-Learning… it’s boring. Why is this? And what are the actions you can take to increase interest and engagement?

If you’ve joined an organisation in the last 15 years, e-Learning has probably been a part of your induction.

It tends to be several pages long, and features a huge amount of text which you must read before undertaking a transactional assessment. It’s usually the modality of ‘self-serve’ or ‘distance learning’ – no tutor support, very little interaction, and it’s often aligned with mandatory or compliance topics. There’s probably an annual follow up too so that your company can run a report which says everyone has completed the necessary learning, and the box can be ticked. 

But who can really say they’re able to engage in that much concept, data, and information without switching off?

Learning must be adaptive to drive results

Bite-sized learning, personalised learning, hybrid learning, and adaptive learning – this is the new digital learning content landscape. These approaches are key to consider when building or buying e-Learning solutions. 

We know engagement in quality learning experiences is inspirational, motivational and helps individuals and teams to grow. Digital learning design is the foundational skill to make this happen.

It has made leaps and bounds and we are now more comfortable seeing it as its own discipline, and not just as a second cousin to delivery.

But it’s not easy. We can fall down rabbit holes due to the volume of content and making sure all stakeholders have their parts ‘covered’ so they’re able to run the reports and confirm compliance.

We’re at risk of barely transferring any learning into the workplace with these challenges, especially if we are using traditional thinking and typical verbs linked to the bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Next time you’re thinking of building or procuring an e-Learning solution, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is the pain point, and how can traditional e-Learning even be a solution?

2. What is the outcome you are truly looking for? If it’s compliance around a mandatory topic, does your workforce really need another read and click learning intervention?

3. How are you going to ensure that the learning is transferred into the workplace and learners? How will you know?

4. What are you going to do to make learners want to engage in this module and how are you going to build it to feel truly different? How will it ‘talk’ to each learner who undertakes it?

Post-pandemic thinking

We are now seeing and hearing HR thought leaders prioritise the needs of the individual, which must be met by the workplace, employer, and career route.

This tells us that individual needs are just as important in learning strategy, and arguably more so than any of the other HR disciplines. Afterall, e-Learning drives performance through the development of skills, knowledge, and behaviours, so this has to be our mantra when it comes to our learning build.

The hook, or burning platform, must be there for the learner, or you are facing a brick wall with a bunch of wasted cash and time at the other side of it.

Aim for adaptation and empowerment

Here are our disruptive and provocative tips to help you consider things in a different way when it comes to your e-Learning:

P.S. If you are starting with content, rip it up and start again. Then read the rest of these points.

1. Before you go anywhere near an authoring tool, map out your learner’s journey. Don’t be tempted to dump in a load of content which ‘must’ be covered. You’ll thank yourself for doing a lot of the thinking upfront and being clear on what your output is, prior to starting any e-Learning build.

2. Move away from a linear journey and think about choices and branching. Give scenarios which have an impact on decision-making and challenge learners to really think about what they would do in a certain situation. Remember those amazing ‘Choose your own adventure’ books where you were facing the dragon at the end of the cave and you chose to either go to battle, or run away? These types of decision-making intentions engage our prefrontal cortex as we just can’t help but make the choice. The build can be more complex, but this is where point 1 really comes into play.

3. Build personalisation into the journey. This can start by simply entering a name at the beginning of the module, and move through with the options on how to learn – which could include providing a link to the following:

• A blog for those who would prefer to read
• A podcast for those who might fancy a stroll in the sunshine whilst listening and learning
• A 2-minute video you can sit and watch on a phone or tablet
• A practical toolkit which involves worksheets, infographics and exercises which could be taken away and used in the team

Straight away you’ve put the choice in the learners’ hands which is fun, empowering and personalised.

4. Develop your creative skills and choose higher order learning objectives such as critique, collaborate, invent and podcast (yes, podcast is a higher order verb in the digital world).

This is all doable in building next level adaptive e-Learning. Move away from trying to impart volume knowledge through verbs such as describe, explain and tell, as you won’t stretch your build to support that well-required transfer – plus it’s boring.

5. Push the envelope when it comes to authoring tools. ‘On the market’ tools can provide different options than the typical read and scroll, and you might need a bit of coding knowledge too. But don’t panic, you can find plenty of support on YouTube and forums. Don’t be one of the 80% who creates e-Learning with a step-by-step, command and control ethos. We don’t live our lives like this, so why should we build learning like this?

Continue to innovate 

We can no longer kid ourselves that learners are engaged. Learners are savvy to where and when they invest their precious time, both in and out of the workplace. If you want your e-Learning to compete, it must be great.

It’s time to call out poor e-Learning, and revolutionise this experience for everyone.

AUTHOR: ERICA FARMER

This blog was written by Erica Farmer for TrainingZone: https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/deliver/training/replace-your-boring-elearning-with-adaptive-learning.