Online Learners Retention

March 2, 2015

Helping Learners Get The Most Out Of Online Discussions

Online discussions are the lifeblood of an online class. Without rich, ongoing discussions, learning is minimized. However, many online courses don’t help online learners understand how to post a new idea or response; the types of communications or posts that contribute to learning or share examples of good posts. As a result, online learners are often left to their own devices with many online discussions stalling or sinking to a level of mediocrity.

by Mary Burns

February 1, 2015

Digital Learning Styles Present A Challenge For Online Educators

Distance education is rapidly growing and demands constant adaptation by everyone involved, including educators. It opens up more opportunities for a wide range of students, making higher education accessible for more people. However, with the increasing diversity in student populations and rapidly changing technology, defining and supporting learning styles for all students is becoming more challenging.

by Mary Norton

January 30, 2015

How To Encourage Continuously Interactive Online Discussions

Ever get tired of grading posts at 11:00 pm on a Sunday night as the last students desperately try to finish the week’s discussion question with just minutes remaining? Looking for ways to keep a more even flow of posts and better interactions among your students? This article shares two techniques to develop better learning communities with more and better interactions among students in online discussions.

by Tony Birch

December 11, 2014

9 Tips To Improve Online Learners’ Engagement

With the coming of Internet, the way learning is imparted has undergone a drastic change. It is no longer limited to teachers giving lessons to the students physically located in front of them in the classrooms. Now they can teach students living in far off places through web based learning and educational materials. This has led to the proliferation of various kinds of online materials devised for students, working professionals, and others who want to acquire new skills and knowledge. But teaching students physically present in a class is quite different from teaching individuals located in far away locations.

by Sharon Thomson

November 14, 2014

Direct Learners’ Attention: 5 Tips For eLearning Professionals

In this article, I'll share some helpful tips that you can use to direct a learner's attention, so that you are able to design eLearning deliverables that offer a meaningful and memorable eLearning experience for your audience.

by Christopher Pappas

October 27, 2014

10 Strategies To Help Online Learners Complete An Online Program

“Successful” online learners are those students who complete their online course. “Unsuccessful” online learners either drop out of the online course or fail its requirements. As we all know, online learning suffers from much higher drop-out rates than face-to-face learning. And since most attrition occurs at the beginning of a program/course, it is important to frontload this preparation and interventions at the beginning of the course. This article offers 10 strategies online programs can undertake to increase learner retention.

by Mary Burns

October 19, 2014

7 Tips For eLearning Professionals To Enhance Knowledge Retention

This article features a number of tips and techniques that eLearning professionals can use to enhance knowledge retention for their eLearning audiences. After all, without knowledge retention, the overall eLearning experience won't offer any real value to the learners.

by Christopher Pappas

October 2, 2014

Helping Online Learners Succeed (Part 1)

How can we help online learners successfully complete a course of study? The first of two blog posts by Mary Burns focuses on strategies, the first of which is to figure out who should be an online learner. The next post, will offer strategies for promoting retention in online courses.

by Mary Burns

January 13, 2014

Online Flashcards for Active Recall and Spaced Repetition

People have been using flashcards as a revision aid for decades, but now they are being brought into the 21st century by online flashcard apps. Flashcards are an effective learning aid for a number of reasons, and online flashcards are able to build on these reasons to make learning even more successful. Online flashcards are created using theories of spaced repetition and active recall.

by Michael Bollinger

December 21, 2013

8 Tips For Engaging Students In e-Learning

You might have been asking, “how can I make my students be more active in online or class discussions?” or “how can I make them more interested in what they are learning and doing?” At this article you will find 8 tips to address your questions based on my experience in teaching and designing online/blended courses.

by Elham Arabi

December 20, 2013

How To Improve Online Discussion Posts

Minor changes may help your online course become more successful or easier to navigate. Upon completing an online course, take a little time to reflect on the class. An unscientific experiment allowed this author to better understand student engagement between video discussion posts and typed discussions.

by Douglass Bourne

April 13, 2013

Harvard Researchers: Frequent Tests Increase Retention In Online Learning

It's easy to get distracted--especially when you're in the midst of an online training course that shows no signs of ending. While most of us can agree on the utility of web-delivered training, we must also face the reality that even the most well-intentioned of learners, when left to their own devices, can be distracted by a sudden beep on their tablet or a buzz of their smartphone.

by Andrew Winner