Variety, the Spice of Life

A Guide to Keeping Adult Learners Interested in Your Online Presentation

Keep the learner in mind

Remember that adults prefer to:

• be involved in their learning• share their experiences• solve problems

Remember that learning falls into three domains you can target:

knowing/head (cognitive)

feeling/heart (affective)

doing/hands (psychomotor)

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Remember to respect different learning styles, especially the common:

• auditory

• kinesthetic/tactile

• visual

Engage the learner

When presenting online, you lose the sense of “community” a room provides. You can create it in virtual space by meeting, interacting with, and collaborating with learners, just as in a classroom!

Technology need not stop you from “meeting” learners by:

• breaking the ice

• telling personal stories

• encouraging discussion with you and amonglearners (done by enabling chat features)

Technology can aid you in interacting with your learners, using features such as:

• polling

• hand-raising

• whiteboard*

(plus old-school

probing questions!)*merely a “digital chalkboard” or “electronic flipchart”)

Technology enables collaboration among learners separated by time or space. Use tried-and-true activities like:

• document sharing

• completing group exercises

• making group decisions

• solving problems as a group

Keep the ‘setting’ in mind

A few final notes about online instruction:

• attention wanes at 4 minutes

• learners still appreciate handouts (even in digital format, such as PDF)

• use audio, text, graphics, animation, video, hyperlinks, and more – because …

Variety is the spice of life!

Watch Salman Kahn of Kahn Academy discuss the power of video in education.