I've had times when I have worked hard to get the attention of the learners in my ILT sessions but not worked hard enough to justify that attention. The result has been some of the learners disengaging in the middle of the session.
Ideally, when we demand somebody's attention we should be making the experience worth their time. A lot of learning experiences fail at this.
Poorly designed course structure, uninspiring content, insufficient explanation or even unnecessarily lengthy explanation, jargon, examples that lack context, overly formal tone, extensive theory... it could be a long list.
But I have found that one solution to this is, firstly, keeping the goal always in front of us and building every component to meet that goal. And secondly, keeping the goal in front of the learners and showing them how each component of the learning experience connects to or is leading to the goal.
That means having a slide up with a map of the different concepts leading to the goal and highlighting the progress if possible.
That means explicitly stating how different components connect to each other and to the goal.
That also means making room for application during and not just at the end of the journey.
Knowing they are on a journey and seeing they're progressing towards the goal goes a long way in keeping them engaged. It answers that classic question for them - what's in it for me?
The risk of not doing this is simple. If we do not justify the attention we demand from our learners then they're not going to come back.
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