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How do you organise your modules for effective e-learning training?
Digital training for your animal health employees must take into account the real-life conditions of your learners. E-learning modules will often be completed between consultations, or between commercial visits. Keep in mind the attention span of your audience in those moments to maximise comprehension.
Our pedagogical experts can confirm this: the secret to training in e-learning success is to focus on short, simple and pragmatic modules.
Our 3 expert tips for designing simple and relevant digital training.
Simplicity doesn’t mean ease. It is more difficult to make something simple, than to be complicated. By keeping it simple, you are pedagogical and make sure that your learners are fully understanding the message you want to convey to them.
Tip 1: Get straight to the point
Ask yourself: “If there was only one notion that learners would acquire, what should it be?”
This will help you to focus on the essentials and provide content that is most useful to learners. When creating your content, always remember the main purpose of the training and the educational purpose of each module….
It is by going straight to the point that you will best result in the acquisition of new skills, whether it is a new process, or the memorisation of the characteristics of a new product.
Tip 2: Stay pragmatic
Think of your approach in a pragmatic, non-exhaustive way: focus on the practical applications of your training.
To make sense of your content, here are some critical questions to ask yourself at the beginning of your project:
- Why does your audience have to follow this module?
- When and how will it help to implement the objectives?
- What indicators do you want to see impacted by this learning?
Put your learners in a real situation rather than taking the content to them academically. They will feel more engaged and will find it easier to implement their learning in the future. You can explore theoretical knowledge applications with blended learning, for example.
“I hear and forget, I see and I remember, I practice and I understand.” (Confucius)
Tip 3: Use visuals
Sometimes a drawing is better than a long speech! Use the power of your audience’s visual memory: a striking illustration, a graph, a diagram…… Our pedagogy experts say that it is often easier to complicate approaches than to simplify them to better understand them. So don’t be afraid to go to the extreme!
Short modules: the secret to online training
The time for modules of several tens of minutes (or even more than an hour) is over…. How can we keep the attention of learners, especially the younger generations, for such long periods of time?
The solution is to split your content. This practice also applies to other forms of digital learning, such as webinars, but also to face-to-face training!
A short attention span
2 minutes 53: This is the average time a user spends in front of a YouTube video® before clicking on the next.
The ability of the general public to concentrate is declining and must be taken into account in the way educational pathways are conceived. Learners like to have more and more information and switch from one content to another constantly: they are no longer programmed to stay 40 minutes in front of the same video, however interactive it may be.
It’s up to you to adapt to them and not the other way around!
The ideal duration of a module for training in Animal Health
How do you set the optimal duration of e-learning module? This depends on different factors: the degree of interaction, how you approach a subject….
Today, it is psychologically more acceptable to follow six ten-minute modules, than a single one-hour module. For most online training courses for animal health professionals, we recommend creating modules of no more than ten to twelve minutes.
If you have content that seems too long to be processed in a short module, then the solution is simple: split your content into multiple small modules! The extreme trend is micro-learning: information per module, which can be viewed in seconds.
“Hh3” and everyone’s rhythm!
Showing the estimated duration of your module is not always a good idea. Indeed, how would you react if you spent 25 minutes on a module that is displayed with a duration of 12 minutes? Let your learners be free of their journey and go at their own pace thanks to free navigation!
Good practice advised by our online learning experts: test your modules with a sample of your audience. This is the best way to evaluate whether your modules have the right duration! This is the advantage of iterative development methods: learners are integrated into the development team upstream which will further increase the relevance of your training!
The branching scenario, a high-performance digital learning method in Animal Health
The branching scenario (arborescent scenario or trendy scenario) is a powerful concept in e-learning. It allows us to combine gamification with the advice given above: to remain pragmatic and divide the learning into small modules….
Branching scenario, what is it?
The branching scenario is an educational course in which one makes the learner an active participant in their training. The choices they make or results to exercises have real consequences on their course journey (for example, their answers lead them to one activity rather than another).
In Animal Health, branching scenarios can come in different forms:
- simulation of recommendations at the counter for ASVs;
- clinical cases for veterinarians;
- sales simulations for delegates.
What are the benefits of a branching scenario?
Since it puts the learner in a situation that they will face in the future, a branching scenario is a successful pedagogical method that has concrete advantages:
- Engagement of the audience in the learning process;
- Setting up unconscious behaviours (new routines for example);
- Gamification (successful playful learning, failure, reward…)
To see some examples of our achievements with a model of branching scenario, you can visit our portfolio.
With simple, pragmatic, and engaging modules, your e-learning training has every chance to seduce your audience! Now you can take a closer look at the choice of animations and interactions, and, if you haven’t already, ask yourself about your audience and its navigation to customize your online training..
At Wolf Learning Consulting, we are 100% specialized in the training of animal health stakeholders. We can bring knowledge and practical understanding of the sector and educational expertise to accompany you in your training strategy.
Come and discover our team of passionate experts (https://www.wolf-learning.com//fr/equipe/) or contact us (https://www.wolf-learning.com//fr/contact/) to discuss your next project!
