Stop the Snoring! Compliance Training that’s Engaging and Inspiring

Yesterday, I had attended yet another webinar on "Stop the Snoring! Compliance Training that’s Engaging and Inspiring" conducted by Training magazine network. This webinar was facilitated by Ray Jimenez who is a PhD and is a Chief Learning Architect in Vignettes Learning. Ray started the session by providing some examples of the official symptoms of boredom in compliance learning, such as click forward, forward, etc, napping, and I have a headache. He also asked the participants to provide their version of what they felt were the symptoms of the boredom in the compliance training. Then, he asked us to complete a short survey where he asked us to compare two small lessons, Lesson A and Lesson B. Both the lessons had the pages but the manner in which they were presented was different. Lesson A was present in a liner manner where the learner has to just click next and there was no interactivity involved, which made the content very boring. In contrast, Lesson B was present in a dynamic manner and it was more interactive. Liner carries the factual content whereas Dynamic carries the motivational content.

So, if we talk about online learning or a SPO, which one you think is more appropriate to have, Linear or Dynamic. Perhaps, the answer is, a mix both. It is essential to have both facts along with the motivation factor that needs to be involved in any online course.  But the Dynamic content serves as an “Engagement layer”.

The session was highly interactive as it involved a lot of participation from the participants. A lot of times, as Instructional Designers, when we design the learning solution, we tend to forget one basic thing and that is the learner. We need to empathize with the learner and this becomes equally important when we are designing a self-paced online (SPO) course because we must understand that incase of a SPO, the learner is supposed to be on their own. They do not have any facilitator who will be explaining the concepts so it is very important to design the courseware for a SPO in such a manner that is targeted to them, and most importantly, it is for them only. Now, the question you might be asking is that how linear and dynamic content can be merged? Well, in order to do this, you can use a scenario-based approach or develop a story and ask a question that helps the learners connect to a real-life consequence or resolution that is related to the topic. It helps make the content instantly relevant. To this, Ray gave few very good examples to explain this concept. So, in order to create an engagement layer, the first and foremost step is to create the learning objectives that are focused on the learners only. Next, if you have a procedure to explain, then you need to ask the learner to evaluate, comprehend, and contemplate on the situation, which will help the learners to make sense of the content. Last but not the least, you need to test the knowledge of learner so that the learner can apply it in their real-life scenario, which will help them to remember the content. You can do this by giving the learners with a set of questions and asking them to evaluate them and how would they apply them if they were in that scenario.

However, you must remember that while you are creating an engagement layer, it is equally important to ensure that factual content is covered in your course. But, how do you ensure that? To do this, you use the “Embedding method” as depicted in the following diagram.

 

This method allows you to add more context to the Engagement Layer by adding more content details. You need to make the content details organic and add more natural parts of the story. Ray stressed the fact to make your content very specific and provide detailed information to the learner.  

Finally, Ray summarized some of characteristics of a good “Engagement Layer”:

• Seamless
• Integrated
• Refined
• Natural and organic
• Engaging

To conclude, once you follow these strategies, you will be able to design and develop a learning solution that not only engages the learner but the learner can take something out it. So, the result of this would be from the official symptoms of boredom in the training will transform to the official symptoms of engaged learners, which include “Really helpful”, “Awake”, and “Makes sense”