eLearning instructional design has different challenges and advantages than instructor-led training. Interactions are limited to the learner interacting with keyboard and mouse functions, and you have to shift your thinking of how an interaction is executed. eLearning design can be a challenge for those of us who spend most of our time designing instructor-led training. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be covering various eLearning interactions and how to incorporate them into your eLearning courses.
Before I get too far down the rabbit hole, let’s go over some basics of eLearning. As I mentioned, there is a limited number of ways to interact with the content. We have mouse interactions (buttons, hover, and drag) and we have keyboard interactions (type your answer or use keystrokes to navigate). The keyboard isn’t my favorite for eLearning as most development tools aren’t smart enough to read what is typed and process it well enough to give the learner helpful feedback. That leaves us with buttons, hovers, and drag interactions. Now the challenge is developing engaging courses with only three types of interactions.
These interactions aren’t as limiting as they sound, and there are a lot of advantages we have that aren’t present in instructor-led training. One advantage is eLearning is targeted at training one person at a time. They get to have a personal experience as they interact with the content. The interaction we are looking at today takes advantage of that feature.
Rapid fire quizzes where the learner has limited time to select an answer to several questions in a row is a great opportunity to challenge learners and get them thinking about the content. These types of quizzes are not graded, and the learning comes from the feedback. The questions are not tricky or challenging because you want learners to quickly use their instinct to select an option.
Let’s look at an example:
For most learning and development professionals it takes, on average, a full workday to develop a one-hour presentation.
- Yes, that is correct
- No, it takes less
- No, it takes more
- I am not sure
Feedback: According to our surveys, it takes more than a day to create an engaging one-hour presentation. However, with Soapbox that time can be reduced dramatically.
I typically have three to five questions in a row, with a timer that counts down and influences them to choose an answer quickly. As you can see, most of the learning happens in the feedback and we are working to change their first reaction to something new. By the end of the quiz, they should start to select the correct answers with a decent amount of accuracy.
Rapid fire quizzes are not assessments, which is a gauge what the person learned during the course. These quizzes should be tied to an objective because the participant is learning something during these interactions.
Do you see an opportunity for rapid-fire quiz interactions in an upcoming training? Let’s talk about that and your thoughts on these types of interactions in the comments below.
