Engaging Learners and Making Your Instructor Led Course Relevant in the Digital Age

Today, people’s attention spans are shorter than ever. This is due to the rise of social media and short form videos like TikTok and YouTube shorts. What the heck does this have to do instructional design and learning development? Literally everything!

Whether you are an instructional designer, learning developer, teacher, or professor, you can can use these tips to help learners engage better with your content. Although these tips will help, it will take time and practice to really grasp them and implement them in the most effective way possible. Don’t overthink it; just give it shot!

The Learner’s Perspective

The largest issue in instructional design, learning development, teaching, lecturing, and anything learning and/ or education related is the disconnect between the learners and the designer(s) and instructor(s). What do I mean by this? Simply, I mean that all the people making and teaching the learning content have absolutely NO idea what the learners and students like and want.

Today, I am going to FORCE you to leave your comfort zone. Today, I’m going to MAKE you start thinking about EVERYTHING from the perspective of the learner. Today, I’m going to PUSH you to be different and better than everyone else. Today, I’m GOING to make you upset. However, if this information is applied consistently, IT WILL WORK.

What Student’s ACTUALLY Want

What student’s want in their courses can be summed up this way:

1. Student’s want something that is free to use.
2. Student’s want interactive content that isn’t boring AS HECK.
3. Student’s want content that their instructor actually took the time to make themselves.
4. Student’s want to digest as much information as possible in the least amount of time possible because they are busy people.

What Student’s DO NOT Want

What student’s don’t want can be summed up this way:

1. Student’s do not want to pay for 3rd party content like a textbook, website, or really anything.
2. Student’s do not want to spend 5 hours a night reading and watching videos.
3. Student’s do not want to miss out on their lives because you’re piling up so much work on them.
4. Student’s do not want to digest content in a boring and old-fashioned format.
5. Student’s do not want to spend unnecessary time completing course work.

*Note* I can hear all the nay-sayers out there groaning, “yOu ShOulD conDuCT suRvEys.” I get it; surveys are useful. If you want to – and have the time to – go ahead. The issue is that students are too afraid to give their honest opinion about your course or other courses because they are afraid of upsetting people and that affecting their grade.

The saying remains true. You don’t ask a fish how to catch fish; you ask a fish turned fisherman how to fish because he has experience being a fish and a fisherman. In this case, you ask the guy who is and was an instructional designer and learning specialist when he was and is in school. Yes, that’s me.

Textbooks

99% of the time, information is planned, designed, developed, reviewed/ tested, and deployed without ever thinking about this information from the student perspective. An example of this is using a textbook in your course. Textbooks are old fashioned, outdated, expensive, heavy, and EXTREMELY lazy.

Now, sometimes information from a textbook is necessary and even essential; I understand this. However, this is where you need to start looking at it from a student’s perspective, and I’ll start by giving you my perspective when I actually was a student.

When I was a student, I would avoid buying the textbook at all costs for a number of reasons. And this is all from the perspective of being a student in college, but it is just as applicable to any type of learning in an instructor led or any other type of course.

1. Every time we used a textbook in a course, I can’t remember a time that we actually used it for more than about 10 pages worth of content. Why would I pay $80-$150 on something I don’t want and that we would likely only use a couple of times?
2. I was a broke college student, and I liked eating A LOT better than textbooks. And even if I HAD the money, I would rather save it for rent.
3. There’s SOOO much free content out there that can be used to learn, nowadays; why would I spend EXTRA money when I’m already paying so much for the course?

*Behold your ears because this one is harsh.* When an instructor would tell me we needed a textbook, the instructor was effectively saying this:

1. “I know most of you are broke – and even if you weren’t – I don’t care; pay the $100 for the textbook!”
2. “I’m too lazy to make my own learning material and/ or find free resources that can supplement my lectures, so go buy this $120 book!”
3. “I make 20% commission on every book that I force a student buy. Go buy my book, so I can make even more money!”

Outdated and BORING Content

Another example of content that shouldn’t be used is outdated slideshows, extremely long videos made by other people, printouts from the Vietnam War era. Basically, anything that’s old and/ or boring needs to get thrown out. Lucky for you, there are simple solutions and tactics that you can use to increase engagement and success.

Developing New Content

I’ve said a lot about using textbooks. However, textbooks can and should still be used as a tool to teach a course, especially when they have valuable information. Instead of forcing students to buy a textbook, you can use it as a supplemental resource. You as the instructor and/ or designer can have the textbook and create learning materials using the book. The same goes for any old content that may still be relevant. You can still use it, but repackage it into a new and interactive format that is appealing to the learner.

You don’t want to plagiarize, so add your own twist to the information. Every textbook and piece of content has information in it on how you can use the content, so make sure you are following the correct rules. If it turns out that you can’t use information from your textbook, use free resources online, use what you already know as an instructor, or find a new textbook that is more inclined to letting instructors use it as a resource where the information can be personalized. If you are lucky enough to have an instructional designer or learning specialist working with you, utilize them to do all the technical work while you focus on gathering and deciding on content to use.

#4 Interactive Presentations

Next, you can make a presentation in one of my favorite tools – Articulate Storyline – and add animations, narrations, and custom images and graphics. Now, you have an interactive and customized piece of content that will help engage learners much better than saying, “Go buy this book, and read pages 23-45.” *NEWS ALERT* Most people are not going to read the book even if you assign to them, so making your own interactive content that can be used becomes even more essential.

#3 Short Videos

If you don’t have a tool like Articulate Storyline, you can make a short – keyword short – video discussing what the students need to know with images from free to use image sites like Pexels.com or Unsplash.com and/ or samples of some of your own work. For example, if you’re teaching students basic JavaScript, you can make a short video for each topic they need to learn. If you want them to learn about variables, Booleans, and if statements in JavaScript, scrap the textbook and create 3 short videos under 5 minutes long explaining each one. I know 5 minutes could be tight in some situations, so if you need more time, that’s fine. However, remember that you want to keep them as short as possible. Even if you don’t know anything about JavaScript, it doesn’t matter. What you need to take from this is:

1. Make short videos under 5 minutes (or as short as possible)
2. Make a separate video for each smaller topic because it will drive engagement and break up material into more manageable segments.
3. Don’t overcomplicate it. Make something simple and short that gets the point across.

#2 Infographics

Another option could be to make an infographic. For example, if you want the student to learn about the differences between whales and sharks, a textbook is unnecessary. Create a simple infographic in an easy to use tool like Adobe Express or Canva.com. Don’t overcomplicate it; create something that’s simple and gets your point across. There’s plenty of free graphics and templates to start with on both.

#1 Gamification

There’s a lot of ways to gamify a course, and this subject will need its own article. Today, we are going to focus on a beginner and extremely easy to implement way of gamifying your course. The tool I will discuss is Kahoot.it. It may seem juvenile or even dumb, but trust me; students LOVE competing with each other.

Now, I know you’re pressed for time, so I’m going to describe how you can get started in 30 minutes. Let’s start the timer!

1. Create a Kahoot account and login.
2. Based on your course material, create 3 quizzes that are 8-15 questions long.
3. If your course is 15 weeks long, give your students the first quiz at around the two week mark, the second quiz around the 7 week mark, and the third quiz around the 13 week mark.
4. Decide the prize you want to give to the students that place 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. I recommend giving 15, 10, and 5 points extra credit on a test or project.

*NOTE* Let the students know about the competition and incentive during the first week of the semester. This will encourage students to study to beat fellow classmates. This simple method of gamification will drive engagement, success, and bonding between students!

Whether you make a video, an interactive presentation, an infographic, and/ or gamify, any of these methods will be more successful than an outdated textbook or old worn out content. Trust me when I say that students and learners will appreciate and respect the effort their instructor (and designers) made to create custom content that is free and more relatable to their wants and needs. Lastly, students may not admit it, but they like instructors who put in time and effort to make their course more affordable and customized. It will help distinguish you (and the designer) from the boring and lazy courses everyone else is making and reusing all the time.

Currently, I am a full time instructional designer for a college in Texas, so I have knowledge of the adult learning theories, Agile/ Addie methodologies, and more. However, the most success I have had with getting students to engage and creating better content is by thinking about everything from the student perspective.

Don’t misinterpret what I’m saying; all of the methodologies and methods are useful, but you want to lead everything from the learner’s perspective.