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If learners are not engaged, they will not learn. Yet modern learners are highly distracted: research shows that workers are interrupted every five minutes and unlock their smartphones nine times an hour1.
As their attention wanders, they won’t retain new information. At the same time, technology-enabled learning means that learners are typically expected to take the initiative and be more self-directed than ever before. With Millennials joining the workforce in record numbers, the need to engage this generation of “digital natives” becomes increasingly important.
Most organizations can do a much better job when it comes to delivering engaging learning on the job. While personalization is one of the hottest topics in corporate training, learning delivery remains largely top-down, with little thought to a learner’s personal style nor alignment to their individual objectives.
Levels of interactivity in learning content are generally not as high as they should be for effective learning, despite the fact that modern browsers and new web and mobile technologies offer better potential to create interactive experiences than ever before. As a result, organizations are not getting the optimal outcomes and skills development from their training spend.
If you’re not seeing high levels of learner engagement, skills transfer, or business impact the first step may be to improve the interactivity of your training and learning experiences.
The challenge for most learning and development professionals is to understand how to deliver more engaging, interactive learning that works. Many digital learning modules are simply repurposed PowerPoint content. However, slides that trainers created to deliver classroom learning were never intended to serve as self-paced, stand-alone learning content. Rather, they were designed to supplement expert, face-to-face training delivery.
Some digital learning designers have attempted to make eLearning delivery replicate classroom interactivity by, for example, hiding elements and then revealing them as the learner progresses through the module. But this does not go anywhere near far enough towards creating native, interactive content. Just because a learner is clicking frequently does not necessarily mean learning content is engaging. The learner may be trying to speed through the course simply to reach completion.
By contrast, learners can be highly engaged with content when levels of interaction appear to be very low and the relationship with the content is entirely passive....