Many training tools and software promise an interactive element but fail to deliver. Though we have moved away from slide-to-slide PowerPoint presentations and have emerged as masters in creating interactive training modules, it is time we step back and ponder over the meaning of interactive training and identify the learning opportunity.
In a classroom setup, interaction happens between the trainer and the trainee. When we switch from classroom to digital mode, it’s not possible to replicate that interaction. However, you can recreate the sweet spot with interactive elements of authoring tools. An engaging, interactive training model drives the learners to retain information and overcome the forgetting curve. The underlying interactions are vital to creating an engaging learning experience that makes it easy to remember, recall, and apply it.
Employees in the modern workforce and business speed may not always need a fancy interactive course to execute a task at hand. Training may not answer the needs of employees. Instructional designers and L&D must evaluate what exactly is required to address the knowledge or skills gap. It could be a simple job aid or cheat sheet that essentially supports the employees’ performance on the job. Hence, before deciding to create a course with interactive elements, it is wise to diagnose the gap and create a focused and purposeful content resource that employees may utilize better than a course.
For example, no interactive content would be useful to sales personnel unless they need concise information learning before a sales presentation. The information must be designed after a careful task analysis with the results clearly defined. Simultaneously, engaging, interactive courseware could be the need of the hour for practice and rehearsal. Hence, instructional designers need to be aware of the tradeoff while choosing interactive courses versus snappy resources.
Interactive training is undoubtedly the favorite in organizations. Especially now, given the current COVID-19 scenario with employees requiring being in contact with training. While interactive learning software is the best bet, identifying the right information and presenting it in the correct interaction is a challenge L&D faces.
So how do you go about creating interactive training? If you have an authoring tool, you can add various types of content to training to make it more interactive.
Add videos and audio to your courses – this is something you can do in our tool, Easygenerator. By providing your key learning content in a video, you can increase its impact. Using audio can also help explain complex topics in a more accessible format. Your employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than to read a text.
You can use hotspots to both share and test knowledge. Hotspot content allows you to add more information that learners can access by hovering over highlighted areas of an image. This is perfect for teaching employees how to use software or any subject where your learner needs to identify something visually. A hotspot question also tests your learners on identifying the location of something on an image. For example, a geographic area. It is an effective way of adding relevance to your e-learning.
Not all assessments are created equal. Some are certainly more effective at testing your employees than others. It can depend on what you’re trying to teach. We created a helpful overview of the assessments available in Easygenerator and the situations to which they’re best suited.
Some of the most interactive question types are the text-matching question, the drag and drop question, and the ranking question.
This clever block allows you to embed interactive elements from third parties. For example, surveys from Google forms, collaboration tools from Padlet, or gamified quizzes from Quizlet. If you can get the embed code, you can add it to your course. You can watch our training session here to learn more about this feature.
