Instructional design/LMS interactivity

Introduction | Lesson 1 | Lesson 2| Practice| References Next

Introduction
Have you ever had to take a self-paced eLearning course and been bored to tears? Many people will admit to 'multi-tasking' while an instructional video remains playing in a browser window, paying closer attention to their alternative task than the original task. However, those same people are also able to describe, in detail, a course where they have felt completely engrossed with its contents, a course where they have payed close attention to each word spoken or written by classmates and instructors, or a course where they have gone above and beyond to research and read non-assigned course materials. What has been the difference in these seemingly opposite, yet similar environments? What causes a course to captivate learners on multiple levels; cognitive, affective, and effective and what holds that same course back?

The courses that captivate learners are engaging, meaning they involve the learner, and are also interactive, requiring the learner to participate with the material in some manner. One of the key ingredients to creating effective instruction and a positive student learning experience is interactivity.

Overview of Lesson
Learners will be presented with research that describes the necessity of creating self-paced online instruction that is interactive. A video will be viewable to compare self-paced online courses with and without interactivity. The video will refer to the benefits of interaction and the holes in the learning that can be caused by not having interactions. From the videos, a list will be presented to offer characteristics of engaging interactions that can be included in self-paced online courses. Learners will also be provided with an opportunity to contribute to the list.

Learners will then be presented with a review of the non-interactive section of a course and the objectives for that course that was presented in the first section of the lesson. An improved version of the course will follow outlining the differences between the courses. The steps that were taken to create the “new” course will be identified and verified against the list of characteristics.

Finally, the learners will be shown a second example of a non-interactive course. The learners will be able to include their ideas of activities that they think would add interactivity to the course.

Lesson Goal
Corporate trainers and course designers will use this course to explore creating online courses with interactivity.

Key Learning Objectives
Learners will be able to
 * identify characteristics of interaction within a self-paced eLearning course.
 * identify steps for improving interaction in self-paced eLearning courses.
 * create at least one interactive activity for the course.

To learn more about creating interactions go to the Lesson  section of this course.