There are pros and cons of using asynchronous elearning. One of the benefits of using this type of learning is it allows the learners to choose their own pace throughout the course. It makes learning possible even in the midst of work or other projects. However, it is in danger of becoming boring. After all, we are social beings. Without interaction, it will be difficult to complete the lesson.
Without an instructor, the learner has no way of getting feedback to see if they are going about the learning process the correct way. Creating an asynchronous elearning course with interactive activities will help learners finish it with more enthusiasm and direction. Not only that, retention is best achieved when you start practicing what you learn. That is another reason why you need to make sure that you have such activities in your course.
Here are three tips that could do asynchronous elearning courses some good.
- Encourage learners to use external tools. Using calculators or other tools while going through parts of the course will help the learner deviate from just looking at the computer screen. While there are online tools that can be used, encourage them to use those that will get them to use their hands. This is also encourage them to explore and experiment on their own. It make the learning process more effective.
- Include hands-on training exercises. Include simulation exercises that will train learners on the practical side of the course. This will help improve mastery of the lesson. We all know that practice does make things perfect – the same is true with learning. Applying a theory to an activity that the learner is familiar with, they are more able to retain the lesson in their mind. There are cloud-based tools that you can use to make these simulations easier to implement – despite it being used at different times by various learners. For instance, you can use experiment activities with a step by step video tutorial that is uploaded on YouTube. You can remove the result of that experiment from the video and ask the learners to provide the results of the experiment in your elearning course. That way, the course can rate how well they did on the experiment – or even if they did at all. This is just one example that you can follow as there are many tools available online. There is bound to be one tool that you can use depending on the content of your course.
- Incorporate interactive quizzes to get feedback. Interactive quizzes are not really hard to do. Just stay away from the usual question and answer type of quiz. Use images and animations if possible. This will make the quiz more appealing to the learner. You want to make sure that this quiz is successful in identifying if the learner was able to absorb the content of the course. Apart from that, it can also be used to check if there are areas in the course that the instructor has to improve on. Like if learners were not able to get the answer to a particular area in the quiz, there might be something wrong with that part of the elearning course.
There are other things that you can do to make asynchronous elearning courses more interactive and thus appealing to the learner. But you should be alright if you include any of the three tips that were mentioned in this article.
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