An Overview of Learner Engagement

Learner engagement can be a tough nut to crack, especially in a technological era where everything is moving 5G fast. But, if you can get managers and their departments excited about online training, you are already a step ahead of the competition. For real excitement to build up, you'll need to be transparent about desired learning outcomes, honest in giving feedback, and flexible with how you construct and modify your employee training program.

When learners are motivated and proactive in their learning experience, they will:

Show eager participation and active implication
Maintain a high level of motivation
Be inspired and inspire others
Put the time and effort into persevering and improving

Keep in mind the four levels of learner engagement while you're crafting any training course. First, learners need to be engaged on both the cognitive and emotional levels. When this happens they will also connect to the course content on a behavioral level and their learning attitudes will reflect this.

The fourth level of engagement is something that the organization needs to supply and foster: social engagement. Ensure that learners have a discussion board, forum, or social media channel where they can talk about your course, exchange experience, and fill in knowledge gaps. Teaching others is one of the best forms of learning because the new knowledge you acquired will more readily settle into the long term memory.

Make a note of these four levels of engagement and delve deeper into learning about these concepts:

Cognitive Engagement
Emotional Engagement
Behavioral Engagement
Social Engagement

Do Your Homework

Aside from really understanding what engagement is all about, you'll need to understand what your employees are all about. Learn about their:

strengths and weaknesses
how well they work with new technology and computer applications
what platforms they prefer using
what knowledge and skill level they are at
what learning goals (if any) they have set up for themselves

Get to know your employees by sending out surveys or setting up department meetings. This will not only help with designing a successful training program, but also with spreading the word about it as well as letting your employees know you care about their opinion.

Disengagement Prevention Plan

We all know that the best solution is prevention- having a problem to solve, in the first place. It's not always easy to predict how something might unravel but being prepared is more than half the battle. Prevent learners from disengaging with the course by offering them:

Quality and interesting content
The change to give and receive feedback
Social engagement opportunities
Multiple platforms for accessing the course
A mixed-method of course delivery (blended learning, microlearning, etc.)
Rewards and Acknowledgements
Build a learning and development community
Offer technical training too
Make sure your programs are learner-centric
Keep the content relevant to your employees' daily job needs
Avoid obstacles by foreseeing needs and possible issues

Build Your Corporate Learner Engagement Strategy

You will not get far without a solid plan. So, make sure to create a strategy for engaging learners well before the training course goes into production. Besides the previously mentioned prevention points, you'll need to think about what tools could engage your learners. Depending on their learning style, you might decide to include more images or go video-heavy. You can use simulations, AR, VR, blended learning principles, serious games, gamification, or any other content delivery method. The point is for the learners to engage and enjoy the learning experience.

All the elements of your course design need to be well-thought-out with maximum engagement in mind. If your employee training course looks visually stunning but lacks relevant and relatable content, learner completion rates will plummet. The worst part is that your employees will walk away from the course not having learned anything new. Oftentimes a dedicated instructional design team is more able to handle all the intricacies that come with proper course development that generates high learner engagement. Finding the right training course creator might need to go on your to-do list eventually.

Final Thoughts

This ebook provides thorough, informative and valuable information on increasing learner engagement. Still, you'll need to learn more about employee engagement, training course design, and content delivery types in order to create an eLearning module that can succeed. Our blog page and extra downloadables can clear up many of the questions that will rise up. You can also reach out to our team for help with your training needs at any time!