Give Learners Choices to Motivate and Educate

In video games, the player controls a great deal. He or she can decide what direction to explore, how many inventory items to gather, how to angle the bird to hit the pig’s house and other decisions. Most of the time, the player can even decide the level of difficulty he or she want to encounter in the game by choosing a specific game level like Novice or Expert. Most e-learning is lock-step and highly linear.

In contrast, most e-learning is one-size-fits-all approach. Every learner goes through the instruction in the same manner, doing the same activities. Often there is one difficulty level and everyone progresses through that level. Everyone sees the same screen and has the same experience. This can be demotivating.

To increase engagement and the effectiveness of e-learning, provide learners with a great amount of choice and control over the learning activity. Let them have input into when to initiate or terminate and activity, what direction they want to pursue in the training and even the level of difficulty of the instruction. These subtle but important control issues allow the learner to feel a sense of autonomy, self-direction and motivation. Adult learner often have some sense of what they know and some sense of what they don’t know. Giving them choices allows them to explore the known and unknown and fosters curiosity and spurs learning when they discover a need to know.

For example, create three different levels of entry into the instruction. One would be a “Show Me” mode where the learner is shown what he or she needs to do. Another could be a “Guide Me” mode where the e-learning allows the learner to interact with the content but corrects the learner if she or he gets something wrong. The last level could be a “Test Me” mode where the learner is not given any guidance or tips. He or she simply enters into the instruction and is scored at the end with no instruction along the way. These three modes can appeal to different levels of learners.

Motivation is also tied to learner choices. One theory of motivation is the Self Determination Theory (SDT). The theory is a meta-theory about motivation and claims there are three elements that motivate people. The three elements are:

• Mastery–the ability to master material and then move forward mastering other material.
• Relateness–the feeling of being socially connected to others.
• Autonomy–the ability to make your own decisions.

Allowing a learner to make her own choices impacts learning, motivation and engagement. Think about how you want to add choice and decision making to a learner and then design that into your learning intervention.

To learn more about creating choices, check out these two resources below discussing the design of immersive learning environments and elearning: