Engagement in eLearning: How to Add Appeal to your Instruction
By Ruth Clark
A challenge with any kind of instruction involves gaining and maintaining learner interest and engagement. In the past 20 years research evidence has mostly focused on cognitive learning processes; only recently have instructional psychologists started to measure and studying the effects of multimedia design decisions on motivation. What are some common methods to boost motivation and engagement? One approach is to incorporate interesting stories in the form of video clips or graphics.
Imagine you are designing a lesson on lightning formation. You illustrate the basic scientific process with some pictures that you describe with audio narration. You find the result to be pretty boring. To add appeal, you decide to incorporate some interesting video clips. In one of these clips you show the effects of lightning strikes on airplanes. In another clip you show the burned uniform of a football player struck by lightning. Adding these short clips definitely appears to make your lesson more interesting. Are stories like these added for interest a good idea?
Luckily we have evidence on this question. Researchers compared learning from the basic and enhanced lightning lesson. Which version do you think was more effective? The research team found that learning was much better from the basic lesson averaging about 30% more solutions on a transfer test (Mayer, Heiser & Lonn, 2001). Note that while the added video clips were about lightning, they were unrelated to the learning objective which focused on the formation of lightning. Over the past 20 years many research studies have confirmed the potential negative effects of stories and graphics added for interest.
Adding seductive details like these has been found to be most detrimental when A. the lessons are system paced (as in a video) versus self-paced (as in most asynchronous e-learning) B. the learners are new to the instructional content, C. the added stories or graphics are of high interest, and D. when learner motivation is low.
In the last few years researchers have been looking for ways to motivate learning without interfering with the learning processes. One outcome of this research is a technique called emotional design. Emotional design involves adding color or facial expressions (called anthropomorphizing) to existing lesson graphics rather than adding any extra content or effects. Recently a research team applied these techniques to the lightning lesson I mentioned previously. As you can see in the attached figure, 4 lesson versions were compared: 1) black and white – no expressions; 2) color – no expressions; 3) black and white with expressions and 4) color and expressions. The team found best learning when both color and expressions were used (Wang et al 2023). Research on emotional design is still pretty new but for now consider the use of color and simple facial expressions.
Lee et al (2021) published a review of factors that maximize engagement in e-learning among workforce learners. They found the design elements that best correlated with engagement involved 1) relevance of the courseware to learner’s work roles 2) ease of use of the courseware and 3) time provided by employer to engage in learning events.
The bottom line is to use stories in the form of examples or case studies that illustrate relevance of the instruction and avoid stories and graphics that might be highly interesting but extraneous to the learning objective. In addition, enhance existing graphics with color and facial expressions.
FOR MORE DETAILS
Lee, J. et al (2021). Influences on user engagement in online professional learning: A narrative synthesis and meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 91;518-576
Plass J.L. & Hovey, C (2022). The emotional design principle in multimedia learning. In R.E. Mayer & L. Fiorella (eds). The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning – 3rd Ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wang et al (2023). Two emotional design features are more effective than one in multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 60, 1991-2014.