7 Supereffective Ways To Address Every Course

Offer a better online course by adapting to the needs of each learner. Here’s how.

It’s a common misconception that each online course is the same as the one before it. Courses are made up of people, and everyone is different. Your program and your facilitator have to adapt each training session to fit the people in it if you hope to succeed. These are seven common hurdles in online programs and some easy solutions.

1. Pepper your material and discussions with knowledge-checks

Frequent knowledge-checks, which are much shorter than quizzes, can help keep learners engaged and also help them determine if they understand the material or not. These are most useful with dense material. E-learning tools you can use are polls, questions on the discussion board or even a question built into the course with the answer on the next page.

2. Break a big class into small discussion groups

Large groups of people are hard for a single facilitator to manage, but they also make it easy for some learners to lurk and become forgotten. Create on-the-fly discussion questions that will get students speaking with each other. Instruct them to partner up with someone they haven’t chatted with yet, or divide them yourself into regions.

3. Invite guest facilitators

Long courses can become monotonous, and–let’s face it–not every facilitator connects with every learner. Address both issues by inviting a guest to answer questions in the forum for a week or host a one-time web chat.

4. Send pre-written messages

Course participation will stay at a consistently higher level if you send pre-written reminders or encouragement throughout the course. Send messages when the course has begun, when new sections open, at the half-way point, when certificates will be ready, etc.

5. Dangle carrots to eliminate drop-outs

Fatigue often sets in after a few weeks of course, and that’s when learners drop out. Resort to bribery to keep learners logging in. Carrots include: completion certificates, equipment they can use on the job, in-person wrap-up luncheons.

6. Schedule a web chat or call for new material

When the topics you’re offering change significantly in the middle of a course, it can help flow and engagement to schedule a web chat or conference call to address the new material. This will signify a shift in directions and give participants a chance to ask any last questions about previous content.

7. Stockpile good questions

Even the best facilitators can feel unenthusiastic about leading online discussions sometimes. Address burnout by having a template of questions at hand that only require a cut and paste, and put the responsibility to reply on participants. A few examples are below. Save these for your next course.

• Everyone brainstorm a few possible solutions to that.
• Please give an example of that.
• Did you ever experience something like that before? Provide details.
• Explain how you arrived at that conclusion.
• Say how you see that relating to [insert topic here].
• What more can you say about that?

Read some more ideas about motivating a group of unmotivated learners.