Many of the best tips for creating rich, engaging digital assets for learning come from sources that are probably not first-of-mind for most learning designers or IDs, much less trainers, professors, or instructors.
Case in point: My so-called seven steps for ramping up the engagement level in digital learning assets, below, are a thinly disguised version of a comparable list that appeared in today's eMarketer FYI newsletter. In an ad for Adobe's Scene7 platform, no less. Do you even know about Adobe Scene7? You probably do if you are a sales and marketing professional, but I would be surprised if many elearning or education professionals did.
In any event, by changing the word "customer" to "learner", and making a few other obvious modifications, these tips for making commercial online sales sites more engaging for customers this holiday season seemed particularly relevant for those of us looking for ways to engage our stakeholders in more compelling ways:
1. Mobilize your website. When it comes to the small screen, think big. Engage with
full-screen video and interactive zoom. Remember how you like to use your
mobile devices. There will be many devices with different operating systems, so
be sure to choose an approach that makes sense for you and your learners.
2. Socialize your rich
media. Blogs and
Facebook are perfect homes for rich media. Post your online “catalog” of courses,
assets, links and resources in Facebook
and go after word of mouth promotion of your resources by making your
multimedia viewers embeddable by bloggers.
3. Cover your rich media
bases. Learners are
hungry for visual information. Cover all the bases, from visual search to to
pan and zoom on all images and angles. Put up online examples, games and apps. (Chatroulette,
anyone?)
4. Enrich your online image. Don't be static this term. Engage learner with rich-media activities
and messages. Give your learners reasons to keep checking back to see what ELSE
is new.
5. Persuade, delight & inform with videos. Speak to
your learners with moving images; lectures, demos, interviews, field trips.
Self-produced or links from YouTube.
6. Invite user-generated
content. Ask your learners
to share their product experiences with photos and videos. Getting members of
your learning community to contribute content makes the experience more
authentic.
7. Let learners have fun designing one-of-a-kind assets and apps. Give learners the tools to personalize or design an online experience of their own. Use configurators to keep assembly simple and to help deliver a great online experience regardless of their technical abilities.
Perhaps those of us who design and produce
intentionally targeted communications that are intended to bring about a
call to action, a change in memory, performance or emotion have more in common than we might realize.
Comments