Remember those online courses where it seemed like you were watching a video, reading some text, and hoping you remembered something? It’s a somewhat passive learning approach and, let’s be real, it is easy to zone out during those courses.
That’s where interactivity comes into play. Interactivity is the “magic” that takes your LearnDash course from being a presentation to a conversation. Rather than just telling your students something, it allows you to invite them in and out, allow them to practice, and to better engage with the content.
So, how does including interactive elements correlate with your course success? From boosting completion rates to making knowledge unforgettable, we’re breaking down the top five ways interactivity can help you build a more effective and popular LearnDash course. Let’s dive in
What is Interactivity in LearnDash Courses?
You might already be familiar with some basic interactive pieces, for example at the end of a lesson students take a quiz or students have a forum to ask questions. However, interactivity in a LearnDash course goes above and beyond that. Think of a course where students can drag and drop items to show the correct sequence of a process, or make choices in a scenario to see the outcomes, or practice a soft skill through an interactive video conversation. These are not just tests; these are experiences.
The fantastic thing is that LearnDash provides you the tools to build these experiences. The platform is more than capable of handling the basics but sometimes you will want to add a little more excitement or creativity to your course so you can customize your course more uniquely. Perhaps you want to customize badges for users for specific achievements, or create a custom progress map for each of your users.
This is where it is nice to know good LearnDash developers. A LearnDash developer will turn your brilliant idea (i.e. a live leaderboard to support competitive play) into a reality and they will do it without you having to learn how to write one line of code.
1. Quizzes and Assignments
Okay, we can all relate to the term ‘quiz’ bringing back unsettling and stressful memories of exams, but quizzes and assignments in your LearnDash course should not feel like a weighty download. In fact, quizzes and assignments can be among the most powerful and fun content you can use in your course tires. In fact, quizzes and assignments are the checkpoints where learning is confirmed and application of knowledge takes place.
LearnDash has made it easy for you to get started with transitions with a broad range of built-in question types from traditional multiple-choice to more complex essay-type questions. However, the magic happens when you move away from quiz format. What if you make a quiz game?
Another great way to incorporate engagement is to build a timed or urgency element. For example, when you put a countdown timer on a quiz, it gets students to practice thinking fast and perhaps adds the stress and tension they would feel in real life making decisions. You can also take this further make hard deadlines for larger assignments in your course, so they have a sense of timelines, and are less set on procrastination. Deadlines will also allow your students to develop valuable time management habits. There are even tools available for you to automatically send reminder emails that will go out to your students as deadlines are approaching so they never forget.
If you really want to go to the next level in what quizzes or assignments can provide, then you can consider investing in a custom LearnDash expert. This will provide you with opportunities for advanced desirable functionality that standard settings may not allow. You can create pathways with conditional choices or communicate with third-party system functionality. The flexibility is almost unlimited.
2. Forums
Although learning something new may seem like a job for one and one only- this no longer needs to be the case. This is where forums come into play. Essentially, a forum will change your course from a single traveler to a shared journey, creating a virtual classroom to engage with.
Forums are simply dedicated spaces where your students are talking. It could be a situation where your students ask questions about a challenging lesson, share their tips, or even answer a question that a peer posted. This way of learning and peer-to-peer help is fantastic. Often, a concept will make more sense or be easier to understand, when the explanation comes from a fellow learner, who has just been wrestling with the same ideas as the student.
If you want to even make things more interesting, you can create structure within the forum. Try posing a weekly discussion question or challenge that relates to the content. To engage your participants even further, you may wish to provide points or a special badge or reward for thoughtful comments and engagement. This way the forum becomes more than just a basic Q and A board, it becomes a rich and engaging community!
Ultimately, a forum does more than just answer questions. It creates a network of support. This sense of belonging is a large factor in keeping students motivated and engaged until the very end of your course.
3. Gamification
Now let’s talk about one of the most gratifying ways to increase engagement: gamification! Gamification, at its most basic, simply means to create games. Gamification is the use of game components and concepts in your course to leverage our innate desire to play, achieve, and want acknowledgement of those achievements.
Imagine the enjoyment associated with a game achievement unlocking. You can create more rewarding experiences in LearnDash by including easy incentives. Finished a tough module? Give students a badge. Nailed a quiz? Award some points. These little wins boost motivation and make learning feel more fun and personal. These little rewards are almost “gold stars” and show the student that they are doing well and encourage them to keep going.
Consider those concept to be applied to the overall learning experience. Those points can go toward a leaderboard to spark a little friendly competition. And of course at the end, nothing says success more than a hard earned certificate of completion, a tangible artifact of their work.
4. Drip Content
Have you ever tried to drink water from a firehose? That’s what the experience of a student trying to learn can be, if they receive all of the course material at once. The experiences, the details, the materials are dumped on top of them, and it is overwhelming! The drip-feed of content is a much kinder and ultimately more effective way to design your course. Instead of giving every part away on day one, you choose to release your lessons in the appropriate order, with the intention of walking students along a clear and manageable path.
There are two principal ways that this can work. You can design your course in a way that each lesson only opens after the previous ones are completed. This can allow for a smooth learning experience with continued focus on the lesson topic. OR, you can unlock lessons on a schedule—such as every Friday or on specified dates. This works well for live cohorts or weekly course plans.
5. Feedback
Feedback is the greatest teaching product we have as it closes the gap between answering a quiz questions, and in the end, knowing the material.
Consider the student who selects the wrong answer on a quiz. If they find out two or three days later, that incorrect conception can become fact in their mind. If they have immediate feedback, not only can they see if they chose the right answer, but they will also get a brief explanation. This corrections can solidify the right information before the wrong one can set in.
However, feedback does not always have to come from you the teacher. You can many times generate opportunities for students to voice their thoughts. Using a basic comment box, a lesson that is difficult and where you know they are confused, and asking them to type, “I am still confused about…” gives them the voice.
Conclusion
If you add cooking classes and can highlight interactivity, rather than only instructing, you are not only taught – your engaged. You are motivated, and you became a part of a cohort or a community around the content you create.
Then, we dug into how using tools like dynamic quizzes, adding community forums and being smart about gamification can turn a traditional passive lesson into an active and experience. We discovered that pacing content and providing instant feedback along the way allows your students to feel supported at every point of their course journey. These can be considered features, which they are, but they comprise essential foundations to assist people in actually sticking with a course and retaining the content learned.
