There are very few
people out there who want life to be as difficult as possible. Most of us want
to do things and to learn things in the easiest way possible.
Luckily, when it comes
to presenting information, we’ve made progress in leaps and bounds in this
regard.
Old-school data analysis
First came charts and graphs, which significantly simplify text to demonstrate the relationship between and among data. Trends can be seen with ease.
Then came infographics, which aim to further simplify data presentation. Learners no longer need to be familiar with types of graphs and their characteristics. Instead they can be engaged in data interpretation in fun and colourful ways. Learners also receive an extra boost of context based on the design of the infographics.
Interactive infographics
Now the interactive infographics have arrived. These have all the benefits of the regular infographics but with the added benefit of encouraging thought and activation of prior knowledge. The Articulate Community recently did an eLearning Heroes Challenge on interactive infographics. Check out some of the submissions here.
Activating prior knowledge and encouraging thoughtful participation
Now, this post is not about how to create an interactive infographic; instead, it about how to ensure that there is ‘information interaction’ included in your ‘interface interactions’ (for more on this concept, see this previous post).
What’s the easiest way to get learners thinking about infographics? Withhold the information until they have made a guess about the answer. Check out the example below of a tiny piece of an infographic.
Notice how it makes you think more deeply about the content than if you were simply presented with the information from the start? It also helps with making connections to your prior knowledge at the same time. It may have even made you do a quick internet search for more information. Activating prior knowledge can help make learning last by creating links to the new information.
Now, I’m still on the fence about full-on gamification (I need to learn more before I can develop an informed opinion), but adding in small elements of gamification (for example a score, a countdown timer, or a leaderboard) could further encourage learners to answer the questions with more thought or enthusiasm.
Conclusion
As with most things in
life, a bit of interactivity increases interest. As with most things eLearning,
the type of interactivity that actually encourages learning is information
interaction. Before building your interactive infographics, consider how you
can encourage your learners to engage thoughtfully with the content, rather
than just clicking away.
Anyone who’s know me for any period of time knew that this post was coming! One of my pet peeves is when learning experience designers/ instructional designers/ eLearning developers use the term “engagement” incorrectly.
There are two common ways that the term “engagement” is interpreted. The first interpretation is that learners are engaged when learners click, hover, and swipe their way through a course. I call this interface interaction. Often, this goes hand-in-hand with the idea that appealing graphics are the key to increasing engagement. The second interpretation is that learners are engaged when they think deeply about the course content. I call this information interaction.
So, which do I believe is the correct interpretation? I believe that true engagement comes from information interaction. I believe it to the core of my being. That’s not to say that interface interaction doesn’t have its place, but it’s not what will grab a learner’s attention and keep them coming back for more.
Unfortunately, there are many vendors and
consultants that advertise their ability to engage audiences with unique
interactions, treasure hunts, and gameshow-style activities. They further the
misconception that interface interaction actually promotes learning.
Cammy Bean notoriously coined the term clicky-clicky bling-bling to describe how dry, boring courses often add useless but punchy interface interactions to make up for poor instructional design. She’s among those leading the charge against the concept of engagement through interface interaction.
Another designer at the forefront of this battle is Cathy Moore. She is the mastermind behind action mapping, which is particularly useful for training for behaviour change. Action mapping is a process for creating useful training and avoiding information dumps.
Strategies for engagement
So, how do you engage through information interaction? Well, it all starts with good learning experience design. Srividya Kumar over at eLearning industry wrote a great article about this topic, it’s definitely worth a read.
1. Start with stories
My own approach to engagement begins with
my favourite WIIFM strategy: stories. I work in occupational health and safety,
which means that there’s an abundance of stories about accidents and
consequences. I try to begin every module with a short but compelling story to
grab attention and provide context (two birds with one stone!). If you don’t
have any real-life stories, feel free to create a realistic story of your own.
2. Prime learner’s brains
Learners like to know what to expect in a
course. Confusing chunking, unorganized sequencing, or tricky navigation can
distract from a learner’s attempt to engage. Thus, it’s helpful to prime the learner’s brains before
learning. Once you put nuggets of ideas in their brains, they perk up when they
get to the relevant section of the course (a little bit like Inception).
Sometimes stories are enough for this. If
not, you could add in question-style learning objectives to each module.
Instead of dry bulleted lists of objectives that are ignored by learners, instead
ask learners to reflect on questions that are derived from these objectives.
For example, rather than “By the end of this course you will know how to load a
mobile elevating work platform for transportation”, try using “Do you know how
to load a mobile elevating work platform for transportation?”
3. Allow for learner control
Although various stakeholders can be very insistent about locking navigation, it is in the learner’s best interest to have some form of control. What that looks like depends on the course. It could be the ability to move at your own pace, to skip slides, or to skip entire modules based on performance on a pre-test. Nothing makes people tune out of a course faster than “learning” something they already know.
4. Personalize the course
To move one step beyond learner control,
personalize the course to the learner. Personalizing can go above allowing for
selection of modules based on pre-test scores. For example, you can personalize
a course by modifying the stories and scenarios based on characteristics of the
learners, by changing questions or question types, and by presenting content in
a different context.
5. Remove the fluff
This may seem obvious, but ensure you are
focusing on the need-to-know content
and eliminating the nice-to-know
content. Overwhelming learners with content can prevent them from engaging.
Often you can provide the additional information in a job aid or a link for
interested learners.
6. Present bite-sized content, then build on it
For the initial presentation, communicate
the content one topic at a time. This allows learners to develop competency and
build confidence in specific topics and allow them to expertly navigate
scenarios. Just don’t overdo it when it comes to chunking the information – you
don’t want learners tuning out because they feel the course is too dumbed down.
After the initial presentation, feel free
to encourage learners to think back to previous modules to combine their
knowledge. Not only will they need to think deeply about the content, it will
also help with recall post-training.
7. Keep learners on track
Reading slide after slide of information
provides few opportunities for deep information interaction. Be sure to include
knowledge checks along the way. These don’t need to be tests to evaluate if the
learner has passed the course (Assessments of Learning; AoL), they can be
quizzes to provide feedback (Assessments for Learning; AfL) or reflection
points to promote metacognition (Assessment as Learning; AaL).
8. Scenarios
I like to end my courses similar to how
they start – more stories! But at the end I present the stories in the form of
a scenario that the learner must navigate by using the knowledge gained in the
course. These scenarios are particularly engaging if they are realistic and if
they allow the learner to be the hero of the scenario.
Conclusion
Without a doubt in my mind, information interaction beats interface interaction 100% of the time. What do you think about engagement and interface interaction versus information interaction?
