Interactive online learning is a growing trend in higher education, particularly among adult students. Developed to fulfill the needs of students who are busy while also juggling work and family commitments, interactive online learning enables instructors to deliver courses in the most flexible manner possible. This allows adult learners to manage their own time while still absorbing critical information, all without having to leave campus.
Interactive online learning is easy to use, engaging, and can be applied to almost any subject. If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to transform how you teach–or just get general information on online learning–read on.
Principles of Interactive Online Learning
Interactive online learning entails going beyond the passive one-way nodes of reading, listening, and watching static content. It includes pulling out the exact content you want and manipulating it rather than just waiting for information and digesting it. Having said that, it’s important to understand these four concepts to grasp what interactive online learning is all about.
Interactive online learning doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a result of a systematic, planned development process. Before creating an eLearning course, an expert also needs to be aware of the principles of online learning. There are certain patterns in which people process information.
Each principle of interactive online learning should align with a type of communication or activity that facilitates the process of eLearning. This way, chances for learners to interact should be higher and they should be more likely to retain the information and skills they obtain.
We’ll now take a look at some critical principles that will help you structure a training session that provides the best possible learning experience to your learners.
Set the Stage for Effective Learning
Try to engage the learner from the very beginning by taking a strong start and setting the stage for an amazing learning experience. To disengage the learner from all other tasks and divert their full attention to your course, open your eLearning module with an interesting activity or introduction. Some great strategies to capture learners’ attention at the start of the course include:
- Asking a thought-provoking or a short survey question
- Sharing an unpredicted, insightful, statistic or fact
- Using an activity that engages learners in the learning process
- Using a fascinating introductory video clip
Communicate Learning Objectives Upfront
Stating objectives clarifies to the learners ‘What’s in it for me?’ Not only does this set expectations for your learners for what lies ahead but also conveys the value the course offers. You can simply list the objectives in a slide. Ideally, you should also state the expected performance standard, the required performance, and what a successful outcome would look like.
Link the Content with Learners’ Existing Skills or Knowledge
Helping your learners recall prior learning gives them a sense of confidence as they approach new material. The best way to stimulate this recall is to conduct a test to check how much they remember. Alternatively, you can simply add a summary of the concepts or knowledge they have learned until now.
eLearning applications typically come with useful knowledge check tools, allowing you to create different types of test questions including MCQs, matching, fill-in-the-blanks, etc.
Utilize Visuals and Structure the Content Well
When delivering new information, knowledge, and skills to your learners, leverage images, graphics, tables, and graphs instead of relying on text. This should help learners visualize and properly understand each concept. To make sure that the information doesn’t overwhelm the learners, organize and sequence your content in a reasonable way that facilitates information absorption.
Using a training video or video course is an incredible way to do this. You may also choose to create a slide-based course. The best eLearning programs allow you to build or create any of these.
Use Tools that Facilitate Learning
Learning content is one thing, but there are various ways to support the learners on how they can learn and develop skills. This can be as simple as providing useful hints or tips, offering advice on content learning, guiding them through available learning resources, and giving real-life examples.
Other supportive objects that can assist in learning include concept maps, infographics, case studies, job aids, etc., that can be included in the eLearning program.
Put the Acquired Knowledge to Use
When you know that a learner can demonstrate the knowledge or skills they’ve acquired from the training content, it’s time to be practical. While the entire course should be interactive, this is where the learners will be engaged the most. The interactive elements you use at this stage should require them to apply their acquired knowledge or skills.
Among the most effective ways is to use dialog simulation through a realistic work-related scenario, in which the outcomes vary depending on the learner’s response to each question.
Provide Immediate Feedback
After a learner applies their knowledge or skills, provide feedback spontaneously. If the learner performed well, sharing a positive comment should reinforce the right things they’re doing. For any skill or knowledge errors, sharing constructive, helpful advice should help learners identify what exactly they did wrong.
Set a suitable comment for every answer the learners might choose in the dialog simulation, for instance. To point out a mistake the learner made as well as to explain the correct course of action, or even praise them for doing the right thing, you can even create information scenes that will prove more appealing for them.
Conduct Assessments
Once the learners have gone through all content of an online course, assess them through comprehensive quizzes or tests. Interactive online learning programs offer highly customizable testing solutions, such as exciting drag-and-drop questions, cause-outcome matching, and more.
Hence, depending on the nature of your business, you get different types of questions to choose from.
Facilitate Knowledge Retention and Transfer
Finally, there has to be some way to improve knowledge retention and transfer. What you can do is share valuable resources such as instruction manuals, catalogs, working guides, etc., that the learners can refer to at any time to recall things they’ve learned. The top online learning solutions can even help make the reference materials highly interactive.
How easy is interactive learning content to do?
Incorporating interactive learning content into the e-learning process can be very simple to do. Any good learning content management system will allow you to host multimedia content for easy access. In most cases students will also be able to upload their own multimedia content to the LMS so that it can be viewed by their peers and course facilitators.
A learning platform that makes it possible for us to create our own courses and not only host them will allow us to include activities that follow active learning strategies. Experts associate active learning with better academic results, as stated on The Impact of Active Learning on Students’ Academic Performance, by the Tuskegee University, Alabama. Moreover, student motivation increases when they see their study has been useful.
Why should you consider creating your own content?
The most important reason to want to create your own online courses is the possibility of creating custom content and printing your personality on them. Having your material centralized, the management of all your educational content is much easier. In this way, it is possible to create personalized training actions and design your own content. You can upload your own videos, links to YouTube, websites of interest or files in different formats.
Another important reason is that with the language e-learning course accessible from tablets and smartphones as support for face-to-face classes, you do not need photocopies or books. The exercises are integrated into the lessons and you can create all the theory for the units, or a host of active practice exercises such as listening or videos, as you wish.
Moreover, take into account that e-learning education is not just individual learning in isolation. It offers connection between students, promoting social, group and collaborative learning through the virtual classroom to express themselves, share doubts and experiences.
What can be done with interactive learning content?
There are very few limits to what can be done with multimedia content.
Here is some inspiration:
- Learning can be supported by adding relevant and interesting images to illustrate each point.
- Automatically generate lesson manuals in PDF format, as well as audiobooks of the lesson, that include all the modifications made by teachers.
- Students can submit video reports and presentations instead of written projects.
- Trainers can provide video lecture content from international experts.
- Webcam streaming and Virtual Classrooms can mean that a class can view relevant events in real time.
- Students can engage in educational discussions with other students from anywhere in the world.
- Video game technology can be used as part of learning role play.
- Students can choose to watch video lectures again and again until they are confident in their understanding. Record your virtual lessons or upload your video lectures.
- Trainers can use mind-mapping software to share an overview of related ideas.
- Identify learning goals and objectives. Link each activity to a specific objective or skill. Students will be able to practise with exercise related to the objectives they want to review.
Interactive learning content can make e-learning resources far more effective. If you’re currently working with a learning management system that doesn’t allow you to easily share this type of SCORM content, why not explore alternative options?
CAE offers the Voluxion Authoring Tool, which makes it very easy to create content for online language courses from Voluxion’s extensive multimedia content base. Its materials guarantee a natural, progressive and effective teaching, structured according to the CEFR.
Conclusion
Interactive online learning is the best way to listen, learn, and interact with your fellow students. Did you know that interactive online learning tools can help you with almost everything? You can earn credits, certifications, degrees, and more with the right online education.