An eLearning pro’s eight rules and two insights to get and keep your students interested.
Engaging Digital Learners
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An eLearning pro’s eight rules and two insights to get and keep your students interested.
Ellen Wagner is senior director
of worldwide eLearning solutions
at Adobe Systems. She works with
product teams throughout the
company to help set the
strategic direction
for eLearning in
all of Adobe’s
markets. Wagner
is well-known in
higher education,
having worked as
Macromedia’s
senior director of
worldwide education solutions
prior to Adobe’s 2005 acquisition
of that company. Many
of her previous posts have
encompassed higher ed technology,
including a tenured
faculty position at the University
of Northern Colorado. She
has published more than 80
articles and book chapters on
learning and instructional
design, and frequently speaks
as a keynote or featured presenter
at professional
conferences. Her PhD in
educational psychology is from
the University of Colorado.
Here, she shares her Top 10
ways to engage learners.
Want to be considered for Campus Technology's Top 10? Send your countdown and a brief background/bio summary to [email protected]
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- 10
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Rule: Capture their attention.
- Learners deal with an enormous number of sensory inputs on any given day.
- Helping them focus attention is a critical first step when engaging students.
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- 9
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Rule: Convince them to care.
- Getting their attention is only the first step.
- Be sure you have something to keep your learners’ interests piqued; you want them to stay for a while!
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- 8
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Rule: Motivate them to change.
- Learning can be defined as a sustained change in capacity that persists
over time.
- Consider what it will take to compel students to do things differently.
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- 7
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Rule: Give them choices.
- Learners want to engage with ideas, information, and each other, on terms
they define for themselves.
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- 6
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Rule: Connect them with community.
- People learn from watching, showing, and sharing with people who
care as much as they do.
- Social learning is alive and well!
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- 5
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Rule: Induce them to participate.
- Participation gives learners a sense of feeling personally engaged.
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- 4
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Rule: Enable opportunities to contribute.
- Engage learners in the active negotiation of new knowledge.
- That new learning will be more relevant to each and every contributor.
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- 3
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Rule: Make learning an experience to remember.
- The more memorable a learning experience, the greater likelihood students
will remember what they’ve learned.
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- 2
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Insight: Consider that maybe it’s not about putting the learner
at the center.
- It’s more about giving learners the skills to decide where to engage.
- In today’s socially networked world, it’s important to help students feel
connected to the community.
- Relationships that operate in a networked manner may inspire lifelong
learning.
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- 1
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Insight: Always remember, learning is personal.
- Despite the many psychological theories and principles proposed to explain
what is going on inside our heads, learning continues to be unique to each
individual.
- No one of us can ever really “do” learning to someone else, at least not
without the permission or willingness to be persuaded.
