E-Learning - Push or Pull

Are Your E-Learning Courses Pushed or Pulled?

Here’s the challenge for many of us. We want to make our courses engaging and interactive, yet sometime the content or the time pressures of work don’t make that easy.

The default position is to merely push the information out to the learners. The end result – courses heavy on information and light on interaction. By changing the way you structure the information you can quickly build the framework for more engaging and interactive courses.

Let’s assume – you have clear learning objectives and all of the information you need to meet those objectives.

Typical Course structure

This approach is kind of like ho you build a product in a factory

Assuming a good content design and a product is visually engaging, it works fine.  (Especially if there are no performance objectives)

The downside to pushing your content to the learners is that it assumes that all of the information is equally relevant to the learners and meets their learning needs.

The Pull Approach

What you want to do is to get the learner to pull the content they need.

This allows each learner to have access to the same information, yet the learning experience might be unique to the learner. So instead of focusing on creating a universal design that pushes the content, focus on crafting the right types of reasons a person needs to pull the content.

 

Information only becomes relevant when you need an pull the content that fits your need.

How do you get learners to pull information?

When you push information out, you spend your time trying to figure out the best way to get it to the learners and make it stick. When you design the course for the learners to pull the information, you spend your time figuring out how they would use it and then set it up for them to pull the content.

Well-designed case studies or scenarios can create a need for the learner to pull the information.

You don’t even need to have big case studies. You can present some simple questions or problem-solving activities that require a solution. Essentially, you want to create a need for the information. Once the learner has a need, then they’re motivated to fulfill it.

By changing your focus from push to pull, you can share the same information and at the same time create a learning experience that is somewhat unique to the learner.