Understanding a learners motivation and percieved importance of the content in designing course navigation.

A major discussion at the e-learning guild linkedin group has been around hiding a 'next' button with the intention of making the user complete some activity before being allowed to move on. The idea here is that users will be forced into focusing on the material rather than skipping through.

Lots of ideas for this have been brought up such as multiple choice questions, true / false, a timer, drag drop, and so on. Obviously whatever learning exercise that fits the content best will work in getting the user to stop for a second and take in the content. Do we need to do this? My opinion is that this technique should be used when we perceive our target learners motivation for the content to be low.

What situations fit this scenario:

• Internal Training for new company policies.
  
• Courses with no certification, or penalty for incompletion BUT the user is being forced to take.
  
• Online courses with multiple attempts at assessments where a user is more likely to attempt trial and error to get the completion. (I call this the 'Mastermind Learner')
  
• Courses with dry content that fail to engage the user
  

What situations do not fit:

• Courses that the user has willingly enrolled in
  
• Courses with a high cost/penalty to the user
  
• Courses that have been written and developed to engage the user through audio, video, animation, and well written content.
  

Not all courses have exciting topics, not all courses will have users that wanted to take them, and not all courses will be full of multimedia. It is the development teams responsibility understand a learner's motivation and more importantly their "Perceived Importance of the Content", and then implement a navigation strategy that fits the users willingness to absorb the material.

Staying Motivated

How do you stay motivated as someone involved with eLearning?

Educators in a traditional setting get to face their students every day. It may be difficult to be teacher of the year all the time, but it must help to be able to see the direct and immediate impact of your job on the faces of your learners.

So how do we in the eLearning field get that kind of reward?

How about using Course forums, allow your students to have conversations by posing an interesting question. Watching your students interact should provide you with a positive view into how your work is impacting these learners.

If and when able, communicate to your students, be proactive and don't always wait for an email. Remember students can be shy on the Internet as well, reach out and get feedback from them through direct communication.

Integrate excellent student work back into the course. If your course has assignments, and a student has provided a terrific submission, with their permission you could post this for future students to see. Soon your course might even have it's own 'hall of fame' that students should strive for!

What methods do you use to stay interested and engaged with your users?