6 Techniques To Help Motivate Your Online Learners
There are two parts to creating effective online training. The first part is building out your course with the right content, and the second part is getting your online learners—people who take your online training course—to engage with the material. And it’s a lot easier to share new information and skills with an audience who is excited to learn. When online learners are motivated to acquire new knowledge and skills, they can improve their job performance and change their behavior. Here are 6 techniques you can use to help motivate your online learners.
1. Include Compelling Media
When learners start your online training and discover images, videos, and other media, they’ll be more engaged than if they see endless lines of text. Video, in particular, is great for conveying emotion and context. Video, animated GIFs, and other multimedia are also useful for demonstrating a process in action, like completing a purchase order or upselling a customer.
2. Make Your Training Interactive
Give your team something tangible to engage with during training. For example, clickable buttons and interactive activities can help draw learners into the experience so they spend more time going through your course. And sorting interactions and scenarios can help them practice decision-making in a controlled setting.
3. Challenge Your Learners
Include activities in your online training that test learners’ understanding of the content. Make these activities challenging enough that your team really has to pay attention to your course content. A few activities that are great for challenging learners include sorting activities that let them prioritize and organize information, scenarios that allow them to apply their knowledge to real-world situations, and knowledge checks and quizzes that measure how well they can apply what they’ve learned.
4. Give Online Learners Control
Allow your team to take control of their own online training experience. Present them with a group of helpful courses and let them decide which to take based on their interest or skill level. Help folks decide which topics to tackle first by clearly labeling course content. For example, instead of labeling the sections of your security course, Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, and Conclusion, you could call them Introduction, Build the Skills, Bonus Tips, and Next Steps. With an all-in-one training system like Rise, you can set up a learning path full of helpful courses that give your learners a sense of control over their progress. A learning path provides them a guided experience, drawing them into your content in small doses that they can easily absorb. After all, what could be more motivating than being given achievable milestones, as well as learning that can be applied on the job immediately?
5. Provide Feedback Throughout Training
The purpose of training is to help learners change their behavior and improve performance. Giving your team feedback on specific tasks helps them gauge their progress and motivates them to meet their goals. For instance, when learners select a correct answer in a quiz, include an encouraging response that emphasizes how well they did on the task at hand, like, “Good job!” or “You handled that tricky situation like a pro!” It’s also helpful to explain why their answer was correct or incorrect, so they get a deeper understanding of the material.
6. Give Learners An Enjoyable Learning Experience
Learners have become accustomed to consumer apps such as Netflix, Airbnb, and Spotify that are beautiful, modern, and intuitive. And when it comes to online training, learners expect that same enjoyable experience. Learners can quickly lose their motivation when faced with training that feels clunky and outdated. They can become frustrated when they can’t access training from their phones or tablets, or when their progress isn’t clear.
If you want to keep learners motivated, give them an enjoyable learning experience—one that meets their expectations. With training that is beautiful, automatically adapts to mobile devices, and is easy to navigate, learners no longer dread training. In fact, a positive learning experience creates a desire in learners to seek out more training. They’re more likely to apply the training and do better at their jobs.
If you use a combination of these techniques, you can get your team really excited about learning new skills. That helps you make the most out of your training courses and ensure they have a greater impact.
Originally published at blog.rise.com.
