Further Information: Learning is designed to result in the active engagement of all learners with appropriate levels of interactivity.
Actively involving learners.
When you deliver a course through e-Learning, you are not giving someone a text book or a lecture. You should not just be putting text on screen.
An important aspect of the design of e-Learning is that the learners should be actively involved in the process. Therefore you need to make sure that the content contains on-screen questions, tasks, exercises and assignments which encourage learners to actively participate in the learning process.
If this approach is going to be adopted, then feedback to the learner also needs to be built into the design.
e-Learning presents excellent opportunities to engage and motivate learners. When you are working with development companies to develop new content you need to ask the following prompt questions.
- Will you use a variety of media, including high quality audio-visual materials and lively texts and images?
- Will you provide relevant learning activities and tasks that are appropriate for the target audience?
- Will you offer interaction in group work as well as the opportunity to work independently?
- Will you include ways of recording learning so that learners can see that they are making progress?
- Will you give useful feedback to the learner in support of the learning objectives?
The theory of active learning
People learn by doing. Research shows that active learning is much better recalled, enjoyed and understood. Active methods require learners to 'make their own meaning', that is, develop their own conceptualisations of what they are learning. During this process learners physically make neural connections in their brains, the process called learning. Passive methods such as reading and listening do not require learners to make these neural connections or conceptualisations.
Geoff Petty is the acknowledged guru of active learning methods.
There is an online series of video clips of him describing the importance of active learning methods.
Related Resources
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