Last week, Learning Technologies took over much of the Kensington Olympia events complex for its eponymous two-day conference and expo, a permanent fixture in most L&D professionals' calendars, and one of the biggest events of its kind in Europe. Normally we would have a stand in the exhibition hall with an iPad or two, but this year we thought we'd try something different. Teaming up with leading industry benchmarkers Towards Maturity we created Generate, a community-led initiative that aimed to solve a few L&D's problems. And it went pretty well!
Here was the process:
- Ask our community the L&D questions they want answers to via a survey promoted through blog posts and social media
- Pick the eight most popular
- Pin them to our crowdsourcing wall at stand 418 in the Learning and Skills expo area
- Liberally distribute post-its and marker pens
- Let the delegates provide the answers
And beneath are the answers to question 1: How do I engage my learners more effectively in online learning?
Not all the answers are practical, and I've tried to group them together thematically.
- Involve learner in design (not just pilot)
- Listen to learner feedback
- Build learning around learner
- Peer learning/community learning
- Get learners to lead the teachers
- Involve learners in the development of the solutions from the start
- Set up a YouTube channel
- Get mobile
- Answer the question ‘what’s in it for me?’
- Look at Amazon review as a model
- Make online model interactive via @ericzemaitaitis
- Ask questions but not just assessment-type questions via @ericzemaitaitis
- Embed video and audio too via @ericzemaitaitis
- Make it non-linear
- Mix F2F and online
- Integrate into employee workflow (i.e. don’t make it an event)
- Think about what learners need to do not just what they need to know
- Look outside L&D and inspire learner feedback
- Sell the benefits to your unique population
- Provide face-to-face support post-course
- Use relatable rather than abstract examples
- Make it real and believable e.g. use drama and authentic voices
- Keep content real and solve practical problems
- Enable honest feedback about content AND context
- Make it completely customisable
- Fun and active learning
- Reduce unnecessary animations
- Make people enjoy it so don’t call it learning
- Give them information at point of need
- Find a way to do it and share successes
- Make it engaging and relevant
- As short as possible but as long as necessary
- Communicate with the learning population to advertise it
- Make it immediately relevant
- By giving them a reason to log on and make the experience a fun one
- Make it fun!
- Keep it short
- Short and sweet
- Use a blend!
- Carrot and stick!
Keep your eyes peeled for more posts to come.
A big thanks to Laura Overton and everyone at Towards Maturity without whom this wouldn't have been nearly as successful as it turned out.
