Essential 3 Questions Learner Asks!
- The 3 Essential Questions Every Learner Wants Answered
It’s important to develop learning objectives and then build the course content around meeting those objectives. This is good. However, what that usually translates into is a bullet point list of “You will learn this…” type of objectives.
While showing a list of objectives to your learner isn’t bad, what you really want to do is convince the learner that this course is valuable and will make a difference in what they do or know. When the learners understand that the course has value, their motivation increases. And motivation translates to a better learning experience.
So when you craft objectives for the course, it’s less about presenting a list and more about getting the learner to perceive value and understand how the course helps them. That’s why scenarios and case studies are so effective. They show the learner the course information in a relevant context. This helps them perceive its value.
b. What am I supposed to do with all this Information
No one likes to waste time on irrelevant elearning courses. When people commit their time to a course, they want to know why it’s important and then what they’re expected to do with this new information.
That’s why you build your information around what you expect the learner to do. Even compliance training is built on a foundation of performance expectations. You don’t prevent hearing loss because your
No one likes to waste time on irrelevant elearning courses. When people commit their time to a course, they want to know why it’s important and then what they’re expected to do with this new information.
That’s why you build your information around what you expect the learner to do. Even compliance training is built on a foundation of performance expectations. You don’t prevent hearing loss because your
a. How can I prove I know it?
Everything centers on what actions you expect. When people know what the expectations are, they’re diligent to achieve them. Let’s go back to the argument about why people just click through the course. The reason they click through is because they perceive that the content is not relevant. In that case, the only performance expectation they have is to complete the course. So they are diligent to demonstrate that they can complete the course. In a sense, because we haven’t answered the first two questions, our course design incents them to click through to completion. You can prevent this.
· Make the course relevant to the learner.
· Help the learner understand how they’ll use the information.
· Create a way for the learner to prove they understand it. The closer you can get to how they would apply the information in the real world, the better the learning experience.
Quiz questions are fine, but the reality is that we rarely have to make multiple choice decisions outside of elearning courses and the occasional Cosmopolitan survey. Ideally we design a way to measure the learners understanding that is more than selecting correct answers.
I read of a school that was teaching about nutrition. They could have given a quiz to measure understanding. Instead, they had the children design a week’s worth of menus for a summer camp. The menus had to be healthy and they had to explain their choices. As you can imagine, based on the menus designed, you’d get a better sense of the learner’s understanding than if you just had them select from a list of correct
Everything centers on what actions you expect. When people know what the expectations are, they’re diligent to achieve them. Let’s go back to the argument about why people just click through the course. The reason they click through is because they perceive that the content is not relevant. In that case, the only performance expectation they have is to complete the course. So they are diligent to demonstrate that they can complete the course. In a sense, because we haven’t answered the first two questions, our course design incents them to click through to completion. You can prevent this.
· Make the course relevant to the learner.
· Help the learner understand how they’ll use the information.
· Create a way for the learner to prove they understand it. The closer you can get to how they would apply the information in the real world, the better the learning experience.
Quiz questions are fine, but the reality is that we rarely have to make multiple choice decisions outside of elearning courses and the occasional Cosmopolitan survey. Ideally we design a way to measure the learners understanding that is more than selecting correct answers.
I read of a school that was teaching about nutrition. They could have given a quiz to measure understanding. Instead, they had the children design a week’s worth of menus for a summer camp. The menus had to be healthy and they had to explain their choices. As you can imagine, based on the menus designed, you’d get a better sense of the learner’s understanding than if you just had them select from a list of correct