Reading: "How To keep eLearners from escaping"

I’ve been reading this White Paper from CertPoint called “How to keep eLearners from escaping“.

Although it has been written for the corporate learning market it is easy to replace some of the vocabulary for further and higher education institutions.

The paper makes some very tidy comments on the processes that the ‘managers’ should NOT try, for example, to save time and money before the course by

“… insisting that the instructional team jump right into instructional design activities, most performance improvement technologists can attest readily to the necessity of a thorough needs analysis”

but by following a series of key points (you’ll have to read the White Paper – page 3/4 – to see the full  details) such as;

• Know the intended learners and their goals
• Know the work environment
• Match their values and motives
• Prepare the work environment
• Apply both push and pull strategies

to achieve a successful and reusable course.

It concludes by saying;

“Motivation … results from the intrinsic drive within the individual learner and extrinsic efforts externally supplied by the online learning environment. Online instructional designers especially need to understand how their students learn best (metacognition) and then provide a complementary external environment that interacts with those specific needs positively.”

If you’ve read this, please let us all know what you think by leaving a comment.