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If you were unable to attend our webinar in May on How to Create Engaging Learning Experiences Online, then fear not. Here, we provide a recap of the key discussions and learnings so you can apply them to your online learning and development programs.
The webinar was joined by 79 people from across the globe and it was a true collaborative online experience.
The Demand for Engaging Online Learning Experiences
Our consultant Slavina Pancheva kicked the webinar off with a couple of polls on online learning. Our polls found that:
- 90% of participants agree it’s slightly or a lot more challenging to creating engaging experiences with online learning.
- 84% of participants will invest more in online learning post COVID-19.
These results indicate that while the online learning environment poses greater challenges than that of traditional face-to-face learning environments, we will continue to see a shift towards online learning in the post COVID-19 world. The need to make online learning a collaborative and memorable experience therefore has never been greater.
What Makes Learning Engaging
Participants were then formed into groups via Zoom breakout rooms and were asked to ‘get back to the basics’ and reflect on the best learning programs they ever had. There was a consensus that the following factors contribute to building effective learning programs:
- Relevance to the job
- Engagement on an emotional level
- Experiential: learning by doing
- Collaborative including learning from peers and networking
- Interactive including the use of business games and role plays
- Assessment integrated throughout
After having addressed these key success factors, it seemed only natural to ask: ‘so how do we incorporate these success factors into the online environment?'
Incorporating Engaging Learning Factors Into the Online Environment
Take just 1:42 minutes to let our Managing Director Philippe Latapie take you through incorporating engaging learning factors into the online environment.
What Does an Online Learning Journey Look Like?
We then shared an example of how CentrX has recently incorporated the key elements discussed above into an online learning journey. Take 3 minutes to follow Slavina through a case study of building innovation and agile mindsets in a VUCA world.
Can Online Learning Be Superior?
The mic was then brought back to the participants as they were asked to share their best practices on creating engagement online. ‘Asking probing questions’, ‘creating breaks and limiting the amount of screen time’, ‘creating surprises like your breakout rooms’ were a handful of answers from the respondents.
Slavina then presented a slightly more challenging question: ‘Can online learning create superior experiences to face-to-face?’ Let Philippe take you through some of our thoughts on why virtual spaces can create a more inclusive learning space.
Supporting Technologies for Online Learning
We finished off the webinar by providing a range of technologies that can support the online learning space. Philippe explained that business simulations are a fantastic tool for creating challenging activities and engaging environments. As they are digital in nature, they can be run with ease entirely online and they build the bridge between theory and practice, helping to make learning programs truly experiential.
To Summarize
Thank you to those who took the time to join us in a collaborative discussion on making online learning engaging, which is arguably one of the most relevant topics in the business world right now. If you didn’t have the time to watch all the videos and read the discussions, then take this one point away from the webinar:
Online learning needs to be interactive, collaborative and experiential.
What to Do Next
We’ve compiled a list of resources to help build better and more engaging online learning programs:
• What is Experiential Learning: Download our free experiential learning user’s guide to find out how you can start building engaging online learning programs today.
• Leading Engaging Meetings: HBR on how to get people to actually participate in virtual meetings.
• Creating a social virtual space: Zoom tutorial on using breakout rooms.
Even better, request a 15 minute discovery call with us so we can hear about your unique situation and share ideas on building engaging online learning programs.
