Nobody likes to be different or unique. We all just want to be the exact same as our peers, working as one unit to bring food back to the colony and to look after the pupa.
Oh, sorry – that’s ants, isn’t it?
People aren’t entirely dissimilar to ants. We like to work as a team towards the same goal but, unlike ants, we value our individuality. In this consumerist age, it’s never been easier for us to pursue our individuality and to sculpt the world to our own preferences. We’re now so used to getting our own way that we expect custom-tailored service wherever we go.
Your learners are also people and, whether you like it or not, they have the same expectations. If you want to help your learners get the most out of your learning content, you need to make it about them.
Be Flexible
With so many custom options available in the world and only a limited time to avail of them, it doesn’t take long for your schedule to fill up. Your learners have the same problem and you can’t expect them to be in the mood for training all of the time.
A fully online learning solution lets you hand that responsibility over to the learners themselves. This means that they aren’t tied down to a specific time and place – they can access their learning material from the office or, if they prefer, they can take their training on a Sunday morning in their undies with a bowl of corn flakes.
Custom Journeys
With some instructional design knowhow (and the right authoring tool), you can craft a piece of learning content that really speaks to the learner. To do this effectively, you need to create a journey that the learner can identify with and tell a story that they can relate to.
Your aim, as a learning professional is to highlight the learning objective and deliver it to the learner, but your strategy should be more learner-centric. The key with these journeys is to take every opportunity to put the learner at the centre of the action.
With a game-based eLearning template, your options increase even further. Here you can build so much more into the content than mere facts, figures and learning objectives. With the Genie Content Authoring Tool, for example, you have the freedom to create badges that celebrate your learners’ successes in a meaningful way.
The Discovery Method
But you want to do more than just build eLearning that your learners can identify with. At Growth Engineering, we’ve developed a learning methodology that can suck them into the eLearning like Jeff Bridges in Tron!
We call it the Discovery Method and it’s a way of tailoring the journey for the learner. Instead of asking the learners to complete a multiple choice question, or to read a hypothetical scenario, the Discovery Method asks them to examine their past and to think of how they dealt with similar situations. This taps in to a whole repository of learning material – the learner’s own experience – and it helps to create a bridge between that and the learning objective.
This functionality can also be used to recall their responses in the learning itself. Here, you can do fun things like addressing the learner by name or referring to their job title – if the learner can type it, you can substitute it within the content.
With the challenge of creating effective eLearning, your success depends on how well you engage your learners. If you give them an experience they can relate to, there’s a much better chance that the learning will stick. The next time you’re planning an eLearning project, don’t just give the learners an eLearning unit – give them their own personal learning journey!
If you want to wield the power of the Discovery Method, and captivate your learners with exciting game-based eLearning units, why not give Genie a spin? Start your free demo today by clicking the lamp!
