Human Design for Engagement and Critical Thinking

(The opinions expressed herein are solely the author’s and in no wayrepresent the opinions of Google.)

Amidstall the effusion of how MOOCs are signing up hundreds of thousands of learners,democratizing education, and forever changing the way future generations willlearn, we often overlook learners’ low engagement and high attrition rates.While technology that teaches so many people at scale is certainly impressive,if an online course doesn’t inspire users to think critically about the subjectmatter, it has not met its course objectives.

It’s notenough to slap together a series of textual notes, PowerPoint slides, ortalking-head videos followed by a quiz, and call it “eLearning.” In order tocompensate for the lack of real-time learning feedback, you must use theadvantages of the Internet to overcome its disadvantages and engage learners. At Google we always strive to dowhat’s best for our users. Similarly, when developing online courses, if you dowhat’s right for the learner, your metrics will reflect theirengagement with the course material. Hereare five guidelines that I believe will build engagement in any online course.

Tell the story

Anessential part of teaching is providing meaning and context to make subjectmatter relevant. The dynamic flexibility of web content makes it an idealmedium to provide such context through situated learning. When tasked withbuilding out an online product-training course at Google for DoubleClickadvertisers (not exactly cat-video-worthy entertainment), we created astoryline that put the user in the role of a new hire at an agency tasked withcreating an ad campaign for clients. This included mock emails from an “accountmanager” that communicated specific learning objectives around individuallessons, while simultaneously advancing the simulated storyline. We offeredplayful incentives like “clients” and “board members” that reacted to courseaccomplishments, and potential “promotions” after the completion of tasks.Occasionally, the client had campaign “emergencies” that required the learnerto step in and solve problems using the new ad tools they had just learned. Weincluded fun advertiser campaigns for “DinoWorld Theme Park” and taught theconcept of rich media by having interactive ads that you could mouse over tomake dinosaurs dance. In essence, we created an emotional connection with ourlearners that would resonate with aspects of their daily work.

Keepin mind, the developmental costs for this kind of engagement were extremelylow. It didn’t require any technology, only a little creativity to align arelevant storyline to our audience and learning goals. We found that learnerseven mentioned these elements unsolicited in the course feedback, indicatingtheir appreciation. For even more engagement, you could add gaming componentsthat let learners compete for thematically related incentives on a publishedleaderboard to reward course task completion, although this requires a moresignificant technical effort.

Writing it well

Anoften-overlooked part of engaging users online comes simply from the tone andstyle of delivery. Just as a steady monotone can lull classroom students intosleepy submission, prosaic text devoid of dynamics can make an online courseequally tedious. Express your enthusiasm for the source material, even if it’s somethingas esoteric as ad serving.

Use a style ofwriting that is light-hearted and clever; unique without being bizarre;congenial without pandering; humble, yet audacious. Your voice should conveythe humanity, personality, and passion behind the subject matter. It shouldavoid cliché and trite phrasing at all costs, as well as business-speak. Muchlike overall Google design, your course voice should be straightforward,informative, and helpful, but with a spark of personality (think the laughing “e”in the Google logo). Imagine you were trying to explain something to your bestfriend’s mother. A strong, yet personal, voice can resonate with learners,making the difference between those who engage the material, and those whomerely skim over your carefully crafted words without completing the course.

Designing withoutdistraction

Coursedesign is incredibly important for engagement, as well. Design communicates howmuch you care about your learners. They’re already in a bit of limbo in thisunfamiliar online environment you’ve created; the least you can do is make themfeel comfortable. Your pages should be clean and easily readable, with plentyof breathable space. The last thing you want to do is disorient your users withmore information than they can reasonably process at a glance. Chunk yourcontent thematically, which will not only help your user digest informationmanageably, but enable easier updates over time.

Thenavigation should always make it contextually obvious where users are in thecourse and where they’ve been. It should have flexible options for theself-directed learner to easily skip around and find what they need. Anyrepetitive page elements should be clear and consistent. Even the colors shouldsupport your learning goals. If you intend the subject matter to feel intimate,comfy, and inclusive, you may want to design against a darker background, asopposed to a white background, which will convey a more clear-cut, independent,self-sufficient feel. Consider how your design will look on mobile devices andmake sure that a touch screen can replicate any mouse-click or hoverinteractions.

More than one medium=moreengagement

Oneof the easiest ways to disengage learners is through rote, formulaic content.While video can be a great way to initially engage learners, having nothing buta series of long-winded, talking-head videos may drive users to seek more easilyconsumable and entertaining distractions elsewhere. Similarly, a courseconsisting of only text or bullet points can be hard on the eyes and is staticcompared to most consumable web content. Instead, consider leveraging themultimedia nature of the Internet and use different modes of expression intandem. Alternate between discrete chunks of content that include text and images(which itself can be varied using bullet points, tables, etc.), infographics,video, interactive screen-capture, in-line quizzes, etc., which will keep thelearner refreshing their cognitive focus. While including a variety of media inan online course demands more from course developers, you will potentially see a payoff in higherengagement rates.

Let them lean in

Inaddition to meaning and context, an intriguing voice, clean course design, andvarying media formats, you can also look for opportunities to build “lean-forward”vs. “sit-back” content. Lean-forward content is course content that the usermust actively participate in, whether it is a clickable graphic, a mouse-overdefinition, an interactive screen-capture video, an embedded Flash module, a discussionboard, or other information requiring user attention. This is in contrast totraditional video or text, which the user consumes without any active effort.

Thereare easy ways to encourage lean-forward behavior, such as hyperlinkedmouse-over definitions within regular text. This not only breaks up monotonouscontent and reduces the amount of text on screen, but buries definitions thatmore advanced users might want to skip over. This same effect could also beachieved using “zippies” (hyperlinks that reveal content) or embedding linksthat hide content until they’re clicked on. This makes the user an activeparticipant in the flow of course content, allowing them to control the amountof information they view at any time.

Forthe DoubleClick online training, we needed to conceptually explain the complexsteps of building an ad campaign, while keeping users interested. This was aformative course concept that can be complicated due to the various steps androles involved in the process. We could have explained campaigns in straight textor video, which would have required a lot of passive, convoluted explanation.Instead, we created an infographic that showed the various steps and industryroles visually on a timeline and allowed users to mouse over different areas toexplore detailed descriptions of the role and process. The visual alsocommunicated not only the order of how a campaign gets built, but what happensat each stage of development and the assets passed between roles. While webuilt the graphic in Flash, you could easily use simple image-mapping softwareto build something similar (or even better, build it in HTML5 to bemobile-compliant).

Knowing that it made adifference

AtGoogle, we try to make as many data-driven decisions as possible, and there areseveral metrics beyond general course participation that show whether yourlearners are engaged. Google Analytics is a helpful (and, more importantly,free) tracking tool that can determine aggregate engagement across web pages.Analytics can track the time spent per browsing session, amount of pagesconsumed per session, and average length of time spent per page. It can alsotrack returning visitors and bounce rate (the percentage of users that left thesite from the entry page without any other interactions). These metrics canhelp measure user engagement with very little developmental effort.

Forthe DoubleClick course, we found that users in the first three months spent 28minutes per session and consumed 19 pages per visit! Did I mention this was anad-serving course? We also tracked extremely low bounce rates at 10.38 percent(we usually consider anything under 15 percent pretty good) and high visitor-returnrates at 77.7 percent. (These statistics are based on an internal studyconducted at Google.) We included regular surveys throughout the course thatnot only showed us whether users were engaged enough to respond, but alsoprovided valuable data to iteratively improve the course. One of the surprisingoutcomes of our surveys was how substantive the feedback was. People didn’tsimply tell us whether things were broken or indicate that they didn’tunderstand (they certainly did), but they also made thoughtful coursesuggestions and complimented us on aspects of the course that compelled them.These are the kinds of engagement that makes all the work you put into a courseworthwhile.

Designing courses from a user perspective involvespaying attention to details like how you frame the course material for thelearner, the personality you lend to the course voice, the overall course lookand feel, and creating content with which users pleasurably interact. Remember,if you do what’s right for the learner, then all else will follow.