“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.” – John Dewey

Daily learning is becoming more and more a “pull’ than a “push” access, learners taking and needing to take charge of their own learning because of the intricacies of their abilities, differences, and styles when it comes to learning. 

Since there is already an overload of information made available in the environment, a responsive ability helps support both teachers/trainers and students, improving their relationships for mental communion. One of the many strengths of LMS technology is its ability to make learning more efficient with many effective features such as visual experience, meaningful interactions, flexible options for cognitive stimulation. With a continuous update on learner’s engagement with e-learning, our culture team has put together four leading student’s engagement tools that enables retention for advanced learning management, they include: –

1. Integrating learner-centred activity approach
A learner-centred environment is an educational approach that focuses on the participants’ concerns and involves them in making decisions and solving problems. It refocuses the mindset for learning and development with respectful relationships – i.e., recognising that learners are “experts” in their own lives. Hence the goal is to involve them in sharing, comparing and constructing experiences for knowledge creation. As well as creating a safe environment for them to consider changing behaviours. Learning becomes tangible when learners can interpret and own outcome in different areas of the learning process. Some of the active tools for personalisation include designs where the student’s set academic goals for themselves, journal entries using learning maps and navigate function for an “own pace” function.
Another highly important student-centric approach, useful in cementing new ideas and concepts, is encouraging students to use blogs and forums for discussion and debate. An online community in a safe environment function allows for student’s collaboration and knowledge exchange which is usually instrumental for deeper understanding when learning.

2. Microlearning media style One Secret to getting work done is pacing and in the case of learning, breaking information down into basic components makes it easy for learners to remember. Microlearning media resources are brief, targeted, and easily accessible. These resources can include e-Learning videos, online tutorials, podcasts, and training demos. Even more effective in this media style are learner-generated e-Learning content.  It is a powerful retention tool that encourages learners to produce materials that focus on specific tasks, topics, or trends. And once completed, they can be uploaded to your LMS platform, blogs or wiki and other collaborative forums. peers can leave feedback and offer new insight that builds comprehension. The act of creating microlearning content also gives online learners the chance to refresh their memory and actively recall the information. That is a winning combination of knowledge retention. 3. Gamification Learning Style For a highly digital environment, native learners are saddled with the realities of attention deficits/ short attention spans. Online learners are more engaged with break pacings that relax or motivate thinking. Integrating gamified breaks or gamified lessons leads to active participation as it incorporates basic motivation of recognition and reward, increasing absorption of information while reducing or eliminating distractions getting in the way from mental stress and other attention deficit factors. With this enabler, learners concentrate on earning points and progressing to the next level instead of checking their social media platforms during their learning process. 4. Responsive e-Learning content Most online learners are frequently accessing from alternate portable mediums other than behind a computer either for the preference convenience or accessibility reasons. A responsive e-learning content provides user-friendly motivation for learner’s assimilation and retention.

Responsive content is also vital for support aids. Learner’s support is as diverse as learners are different, and an enabling learning platform provides learners with a good variety of performance support/ aids to meet their unique recognition partners, some of which include – Interactive PDFs/eBooks, Infographics, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Visual checklists, Short how-to videos, Whiteboard animations, Flowcharts etc. This makes it easy for learners to assimilate the key takeaways and move the information from working memory to long-term memory.

Concluding on this learning engagement post, a wise step after this read would be taking a brief moment for a quick gauge on your Learning engagement position, assess how your current LMS caters to each of the basic virtual learning enablers we have covered in this post. And if you are still unsure of the suitability of your LMS for your engagement needs you will benefit highly from the professional counsel of an LMS expert. Argyle LMS experts provide a dependable customer support system and will provide you with professional counsel as well as a demo presentation for your LMS decision needs, just click on any highlighted argyle LMS support and begin free and easy steps to your LMS vision.