Active Learning: Your Quick How-To Guide

Engage Your Team With Active Learning: Your Quick How-To Guide

Want to benchmark how competitive your business is? Then check whether or not you offer quality training to your employees. And if you want to thrive in the cut-throat world of business, first ask yourself these questions:

Do I have what it takes to attract and retain the best talent out there? How do I score in employee engagement?

Because that’s a major challenge for most corporations today.

Did you know more than 50% of all currently employed adults are looking for new job opportunities?

Offer your employees enticing reasons to stay, and you won’t have to worry about employee turnover. Give your team access to quality online training and enable them to have an upward career trajectory within your organization.

Meet the Modern Learner

Here’s your quick how-to guide on engaging your team with active learning.

What is an Active Learning Method?

Active learning is not a newfangled concept. It was made popular by Bonwell and Eison in the early 90’s, and it’s here to stay.

But what is active learning, exactly?

The core principle of active learning is ‘learner-centricity.’ So a learner is not a passive object, merely receiving what they see or hear. Quite the opposite, an active learner:

  • Actively participates in the learning process.
  • Takes control over the learning process.
  • Is encouraged to take responsibility for the learning outcome.

To top it off, an active learner:

  • Doesn’t just regurgitate what has been taught, but uses an analytical approach.
  • Doesn’t simply understand the subject matter, but synthesizes the information via discussions and problem-solving.

Which is what makes it perfect for the Millennial workforce.

Now get this:

The Millennial generation highly values Learning and Development within a company. Not only that, they want to access training from their mobile devices; that ubiquitous gadget present in every sphere of their lives.

And should we remind you that by the year 2025, Millennials will comprise 75% of the global workforce? Enough said.

People are increasingly relying on their smartphones for timely solutions to unexpected problems.

So, an LMS (learning management system) is an excellent vehicle to deliver your active learning training to your team. Anytime. Anywhere. On any device.

So, if upgrading your employee learning program is in the pipeline, try World Manager. It’s not only a powerful LMS platform; it’s also a talent management system that can help you recruit, manage performance, and much more.

Remember, you need to adapt employee training to a modern learner.

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What Are the Benefits of Active Learning?

  • It helps people hone hard skills, improving critical thinking and decision making. Problem-based learning helps teams step out of their comfort zones and begin thinking independently.
  • It boosts employee engagement and motivation. Having control over their learning curve sparks intrinsic motivation within team members.
  • It caters to different learning needs. Active learning content allows the user to swap between different learning styles.
  • It builds a strong company culture through peer-to-peer interaction. With active eLearning, the team comes together, however large the group may be. Active learning includes online discussions and peer-to-peer communication to foster a sense of shared values and camaraderie.

Listen to the podcast below to discover how to author training that will better engage your team.

Listen to Rebecca Chandler Podcast on “How To Create An Organization Where Everyone Is Engaged In Learning”.

Examples of Active Learning You Can Try Today

Learning is so much more than skim-reading sections of text. It’s about practical implementation. And vitally, it’s about promoting a resourceful and proactive team.

There’s so much more you can do to engage your team and help them retain knowledge to apply in real-life situations.

Here are 6 effective active learning strategies you can start using today.

1. Foster Interactivity to Drive Employee Engagement

When creating your training, it’s important to use good instructional design. Ultimately, this can make or break your team’s learning experience.

And trust us, you don’t want to lead an indifferent team, because this leads to poor learning results.

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin

So, create a good instructional design, based on active learning. Pepper the training with interactive elements, and you appeal to the modern learner.

Wondering how to engage your team at work? Below are some super-effective interactive elements to use in your employee training:

World Manager offers a technical solution to help you incorporate fun and interactive elements into your eLearning.

2. Use Mind Mapping to Facilitate Employee Training

Gather your team around a task that is everyone’s bone in the throat. Do you know those tasks with the million-dollar question?

Have them brainstorm ideas and jot them down on a whiteboard mindmap. This will not only gather fresh ideas from your team and ignite their brains for problem-solving, but it will also spark employee engagement.

How? Well, if you encourage everyone to contribute ideas, they’ll feel their input is valued. This translates into feeling valued as employees, helping to boost their engagement with your company’s goals.

You can also use mind mapping to design training plans for your employees. Here’s a good template you can use:

Product Launch Mind Map Template Of Venngage

3. Use Scavenger Hunts to Encourage Real-Life Problem-Solving

Scavenger hunts are a great way to motivate your employees with some hands-on learning.

It’s an excellent exercise for ensuring your team delivers exceptional customer service. How does it work?

  • Center the exercise on a particular customer concern.
  • Launch your team on a hunt around your company’s Knowledge Base.
  • The winner is the employee who gets to the bottom of the customer concern and comes up with the best solution.

4. Make Use of Collaborative Learning to Build Strong Corporate Culture

Using collaborative virtual learning can unify your employees across teams and distances. It’s one of the most cost-effective team-building strategies for remote organizations.

And one of the most effective employee engagement methods.

Current eLearning doesn’t stop at chat features and audio-video conferencing. It includes so much more, using collaborative tools like message boards, forums, resource sharing hubs, etc.

Current eLearning doesn't stop at chat features and audio-video conferencing. It includes so much more, using collaborative tools like message boards, forums, resource sharing hubs, etc. Click To Tweet

Collaborative learning is the future of human capital management.

5. Use the Jigsaw Technique to Simplify Your Human Capital Management

Speaking of managing large, remote teams: the Jigsaw Technique will help simplify your human capital management. It lends itself well to large organizations with lots of processes.

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Each team member is given a “piece of the puzzle” to crack on their own. Following, the team comes together to complete the puzzle. The result is a team with a much better idea about their role in an organization as a whole.

6. Try Role-Playing to Improve Your Team’s Learning Curve

Does the same knot keep coming up time and time again? Comb it through using a role-playing strategy. This will fill in knowledge gaps and clear up any misunderstandings.

It’s simple: a learner and a facilitator assume specific roles and act out real-life situations that need resolving.

Set up different customer interaction scenarios. It’s the single most effective way to solve real-life problems with your front line staff.

Use Active Learning to Drive Employee Engagement – Start Today

Low employee engagement has far-reaching effects on your business, chipping away at your company’s efficiency. Right from the basic ongoing operations through to your bottom line.

Luckily, there are ways to drive employee engagement. Primarily, including the active learning methods above into your employee training program.

Use new technology to engage your team in training with the format that’s most appealing to them. Take your training online and make it accessible on mobile devices.

World Management is an LMS that offers your team endless mobile eLearning possibilities. Members can access training wherever and whenever they want, keeping you at the forefront of your industry.

Take a few minutes to explore our website and learn about tangible benefits you can reap for your team. Or book a free demo to see what having a future-proof employee training program on a cutting-edge LMS platform is all about.

Disclaimer: This information is meant to provide general guidelines and should be used as a reference. It may not take into account all relevant local, state or federal laws and is not a legal document. Neither the author nor World Manager will assume any legal liability that may arise from the use of this information.

The best companies use World Manager to train staff, maintain standards, and set the company up on the road to success.