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Using Online Interaction to Break Your Addiction to Classroom Training
By Michael Burke
Many of you may be familiar with the phrase: “Interactivity is in the mind, not in the mouse.” I’d endorse that statement, with the following caveat: It’s okay to depend on the mouse to get the mind engaged.
Unfortunately, the majority of corporate self-paced online learning consists of screen turners, which is the equivalent of page turners in a print model. That sort of courseware commits cruel and unusual punishment—boredom—upon its victims/learners. The irony is that online learning actually lends itself to interaction, and with little effort can be far more engaging than some traditional classroom instruction.
Many experts agree that interaction is the best way to produce such necessary adult learning meta-cognition activities as self-assessment and self-correction. For example, Denis Lander, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, writes in Online Learning: Ways to make Tasks Interactive:
“It is now widely recognized that the effectiveness of online learning tasks depends on the way they generate interaction. As Barker (1994) has put it, interactivity is a "necessary and fundamental mechanism for knowledge acquisition" and Mesher (1999) claims interactivity is the "key to successful online learning….The effects of interactions between the learner and tasks at a cognitive level can, in many cases, be richer and more effective in online than face-to-face situations. It is here that the computer comes into its own, allowing interactions in the virtual situation that are not always attainable in real life.”
So, it’s clear that interaction is key to a successful online program. But how do you design engaging activities? Here are some sample exercises to get you started.
Beyond game shows
One of the most common forms of interaction in modern courseware is the game scenario. Popular television games, such as Jeopardy, Family Feud, and Do You Want to be a Millionaire, are the most common and are typically used for simpler cognitive levels of content review. When compared to common quiz questions, however, game show situations are actually animated true/false, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank questions. Yet, they offer a change of pace from onscreen reading, can promote interest, and provide some entertaining interludes for learners as they prompt learners to digest new information.
In various asynchronous learning products that I’ve developed, a primary goal has been to advance online interactivity to the engineering level. The idea is to use engineering principles to meld interactivity and feedback in order to enhance knowledge and skill transfer. This technique addresses some significant asynchronous courseware shortcomings, including the inability to answer learners’ specific questions and the lack of immediate application of newly acquired knowledge and skills to practical applications.
Here are some interactive exercises that range from simple to elaborate, from a board game built around simple true/false questions to a financial spreadsheet business analysis to an identical-to-the-real-thing software simulation. Although many of the example exercises were developed for retail sales training, they’re easily adaptable to other content. (Visual Basic for Applications was used to program the interactivity that uses Microsoft Excel and Word as delivery mechanisms.)
(Note: If you're using a laptop for the exercises, and Excel starts, set it to full-screen [View menu: Fullscreen]. If the exercise appears too large for your monitor, set your display to Small Fonts [Control Panel: Display: Settings tab: Fontsize])
True/false
Perhaps the most clear cut category of exercises—online or offline—is true/false. However, even with these simple exercises, technology can punch things up a notch over hardcopy by offering true/false in a board game format.
Situation: You're on your way to a sales meeting with your boss. A potential customer is interested in buying a data warehouse system that will help them improve their sales. You want to handle the market basket analysis part of the presentation, so your boss is quizzing you on details. Correctly answering enough questions will get you the chance to make the presentation. But note that while correct answers gain you two points, incorrect answers lose one point.
Directions: For each question, click on T or F.
Participate: Sales Presentation Exercise
Agree/disagree
While this category is really true/false in disguise, it has an entirely new tone when put in the context of adult learning (androgogy). Agreeing or disagreeing, when not the correct response, doesn’t seem as absolute as being “wrong.” Explaining why an agreement or disagreement wasn’t quite correct doesn’t sting as much. And, it seems to work well with feedback.
Situation: Improving the level of customer service.
Directions: For each question, click on Agree or Disagree.
Participate: Customer Service
Matching: games, graphical, variety
Traditionally, matching games can be dull. But with a little ingenuity, they don’t have to be.
Situation: Various store formats have specific characteristics, and thwy also can share characteristics.
Directions: In the following exercise, you wager some denomination of Euros, which causes a store-format-related statement to display. You then select the store format (listed on the right) that accurately describes the statement. Correct answers win the amount of your wager, incorrect answers lose the denomination wagered. At the end of the ten descriptions, you're given a final score.
Participate: Identify the Formats Exercise
Situation 2: In order to successfully talk to a retailer, you have to know who to talk to. Certain executives are only interested in selected issues. To make sure you are talking to the correct person, you need to know what each manager does and what he or she is responsible for. In the following exercise, you will test your knowledge of what each senior manager in retailing might be interested in discussing with you.
Directions: In the following exercise, you'll move a salesperson into the office’s hallway area; then, click on him to start the exercise. Respond to the question or prompt by moving the salesperson into the appropriate office doorway. Next, click on him to see if you put him in the correct office (if necessary). Naturally, there are consequences for visiting the wrong executive.
Participate: Who Do You Talk To
Situation 3: Thousands of new products are introduced every year, and no retailer can carry more than a small number of them. Retailers consider a number of different factors in deciding which products to carry. In the following exercise, you can test your knowledge of what factors a retailer might consider in selecting items for their assortment. The products on the shelves represent various retail factors important in determining the merchandise selected to form a particular assortment.
Directions: Put the mouse pointer over a product to view its specific factor. Then, if that factor is important to selecting an assortment, pile it on the display table. If it's not important, put it in the trash can.
Participate: Assortment
Situation 4: This is a graphical matching exercise.
Directions: Click on a cell in the left column, then the appropriate match in the right column.
Participate: Web Advertising & Ad Strategies
Situation 5: There’s an old saying in retailing: "You can't sell from an empty shelf." But the expansion in the number of store locations and items that a food and drug retailer can sell makes it difficult for stores to replenish stocks properly. In the following exercise, you can test your knowledge of some of the key concepts of a successful replenishment program.
Directions: In the following exercise, click the Questions button to display a question. Then select the answer or answers from the Answer box. For each answer or set of answers, click the Check Answer. button to see how well you did.
Participate: Replenishment
Situation 6: Your challenge is to climb the Knowledge Pyramid to reach your goal of successful selling. To do this, you must correctly answer questions about important trends in retailing that will affect your selling success.
Directions: To begin, click the Start Climbing button. Read the resulting question, then in each of the boxes at that level click on the box and enter a number from the list of possible answers. After your last answer in each row press Enter to check your answers. If you didn't get them all right, you can change or review them at any time by pressing Enter after your new answer. You must get them all correct to proceed to the next level.
Participate: Summary of B&M Trends
Situation 7: Category management has allowed food and drug retailers to make much better merchandising decisions. But to accomplish this, they have had to re-organize their buying offices. This exercise lets you test your knowledge of who is responsible for a variety of issues under a category management system.
Directions: In the following exercise, drag each task to the wall of the executive most likely responsible for it.
Participate: Whose Job Is That
Crossword puzzle
To be sure, there are lots of conflicting opinions about the value of crossword puzzles. But many agree that they’re worth using as optional reinforcement exercises. Most important, there are numerous tools available for creating them.
Situation: Supply chains have plenty of their own terms to learn, so this can be a fun reinforcement exercise.
Directions: Key in the terms whose definitions appear in the Across and Down boxes. Choose Help for more specific directions on using the game interface.
Participate: Supply Chain
Fill-in-the-blank games
These are another type of potentially boring exercises—until they’re jazzed up with graphics and put in the form of a game, of course.
Situation: The objective of the "Hang-Person" game is to enter letters into the phrase that answers the question before too many wrong guesses result in a hanged person—including briefcase and cell phone.
Directions: Letters are entered one at a time. A letter contained in the answer is displayed in the appropriate highlighted block. A letter not contained in the answer is added to a pile at the bottom of the exercise, and another part of the hang-person is displayed.
Participate: CAPEX
Multiple choice
This type of question is very efficient for testing knowledge, understanding of concepts, and so forth, which explains why it’s used so often in formal testing—not to mention, they’re easy to grade. Yet, when technology is added, multiple choice also can become a useful reinforcement exercise.
Situation: There are several software tools available to help retailers peek into their customer and supplier databases to help improve operations, profitability, and more.
Directions: Choose the correct answer, and note the feedback and its potential for reinforcing learning.
Participate: Multiple Choice with Feedback
Sequential graphically
The sequence in which things must work/flow/happen is important in most businesses. Colorful, movable graphics employing immediate feedback can be fun while simultaneously reinforcing learning.
Situation: This exercise is similar to the previous one; it tests knowledge of the sequence in category management.
Directions: Use the cursor to highlight a caption, then drag it to the appropriate box.
Participate: Category Management
Calculations
Spreadsheets can be extremely informative when used to show relationships, and to demonstrate how changing one parameter affects others.
Situation: This exercise illustrates how key performance indicators affect profit and loss. The top left-hand side of the spreadsheet shows a simple profit-and-loss account. Data (based on three real companies in the greeting cards and gift business and uses real data from their published accounts) has been compiled for three companies: your company and two competitors. Below the profit-and-loss account is a section containing other data, as well as a whole series of key performance indicators.
Directions: Press the START button in the first column then follow the pop-up directions. (Note: You may have to change the zoom setting in Excel, and widen some columns if you see XXXXXX displayed in some columns.)
Participate: Productivity Comparison Spreadsheet
Simulations
I believe that anything that can be simulated should be simulated. Learning by doing is the way to go, and software applications are the easiest to simulate. (This exercise is an actual application program written in Visual Basic.)
Situation: This exercise simulates a “window” into a database, which enables some high-level query operations. Various frames hold instructions and hints, yet the actual window that you input to duplicates exactly how the real software looks and works.
Directions: Most people will be able to open the file without downloading it, but if not, then download and double-click it. Follow the instructions in the left column, and look for hints at the top (actual students would have already seen the actual window and how it works, so if you get lost just click something).
Participate: Database Window Simulation.
Final score
Hopefully, these exercises answer the question posed earlier: “How do you design engaging activities?” Now, it’s just a matter of adapting them to your content area. If you do, or you springboard from these examples to clever ideas of your own, I’d appreciate a chance to see what you come up with. |