What You Should Not Do
Learners are not engaged with instructor-led lectures or trainings that commonly involve watching videos and answering questions. These are necessary in some cases, but fail to keep learner attention. Providing facts and policies to be memorized is not engaging or effective, and is considered poor pedagogical practice. When learners become disengaged, little to no learning actually occurs because they feel that their time is being wasted.
The Proper Approach
When policies and skills are decontextualized learners do not effectively apply them because a
skill needs to be paired with authentic application. Learners are truly motivated to transfer theoretical understanding to workforce application when they are provided with a true example or a testimonial. They should be intrigued, but also self-motivated based on the experience the instructor provides.
Proven Engagement Methods
The following methods have been applied to increase learner engagement and accountability:
Allow the learners to set up their own community expectations: More specifically, learners should be considered domain experts who have responsibility for their own knowledge and experiences.
Keep learners active by allowing collective breaks throughout the instruction process: Brain breaks are important and do not need to be longer than 5-10 minutes. Also, learners will notice that their comfort is being prioritized.
Gamification of concepts allows learners freedom to fail and consistently holds their attention: Easy, free methods of gamification are endless and help learners forget that they are placed in an instructional setting.
Generally, learner engagement is mostly dependent on the instructor's leadership. When learners are engaged and happy, they will remember, retain, and transfer the information. Learners need to see how information fits into their daily demands for their behavior to really change.
References
Boost Learner Engagement in the Virtual Classroom. (2020). TD: Talent Development, 74(12), 14.
Ginda, M., Richey, M. C., Cousino, M., & Börner, K. (2019). Visualizing learner engagement, performance, and trajectories to evaluate and optimize online course design. PLoS ONE, 14(5), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215964
Kapp, K. M. (2012). Games, Gamification, and the Quest for Learner Engagement. T+D, 66(6), 64–68.
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