If you wish to increase the retention rate in your e courses, you have to find a way to make it emotionally compelling. It is widely believed that rousing the right emotions during the learning process will help strengthen the memory of the learners.
According to an article published on Memory-Key.com, we tend to remember emotional events better than the boring ones. When you successfully arouse the emotions of the learners, it will give the learning process a personal significance and they will be able to relate that feeling to the lesson. However, you need to be careful because the article also mentions that we usually forget whatever comes after that emotionally charged piece of the course. Make sure that you do not put two important lessons after each other – especially if one is emotionally charged and the other is not. You need to create a breaker in between to avoid compromising the retention of the next lesson.
To help you create emotionally driven e courses, here are 4 things that you can do.
- Make it relatable. Start by making the course relatable. This can be done through stories or real world examples. When you give them scenarios that they are most likely to experience in their day to day lives, that alone will help make them more attentive to the lesson. But that would even be more effective if they have existing emotions in their memory banks because the scenario you showed is something the encountered in the past. If you use characters that they can relate to, that would make the e courses even more effective.
- Use powerful images. Another thing that you need to consider when creating e courses are the images that you will use. There are images that are powerful enough to arouse equally strong emotions in your learners. Sometimes, the emotions conveyed in the image can be felt by the learners. That means looking at the photo of a person who exudes confidence will help the audience feel more confident too.
- Engage them visually. There are also other elements in the course that you can use to help you make your course visually engaging. This can help make it emotionally stimulating. Think about what you will use in terms of fonts and even the layout. And of course, use colors wisely. This is the best way for you to evoke the right emotions. You need to know a bit of color psychology so you can use it as the background of your page.
- Connect through interactive scenes. You also have to think about the interactive scenes that you can use. This will help you connect with the learners because you are enriching their learning experience. When they interact, they get to immerse themselves in the process. When they are immersed, they get to make decisions and practice what they have learned. That makes the learning process more personal because of the heightened experience. In effect, retention becomes more possible.
These four characteristics: stories, images, visual aesthetics and interactive elements will help make your e courses more emotionally compelling. If done correctly, this will not only make the lesson memorable, it can even ignite the passion to learn in the learners.
Image courtesy of nenetus for FreeDigitalPhotos.net