Designing and delivering an engaging learning experience is an effective way of keeping people in the virtual learning experience once they've started, but getting people to enroll and attend in the first place is a matter of motivation.

Motivation is an entirely different animal than engagement, and as learning professionals, it's our responsibility to "set the stage" such that learners show up ready to engage. 

Very often you will read or hear about “learner-centric” learning methods.  These articles stress techniques that accommodate the learner’s needs and address expectations of the learner in the learning experience.  One commentator I heard recently likened this to “putting yourself in the shoes of the learner in the learning experience.”

Fair enough as a start – certainly we need to understand how the learning experience is perceived by the learner, but I would argue that in lieu of trying to put yourself in the shoes of the learner you should instead provide a learning experience where everyone’s shoes already fit. 

Picture this: you’re facilitating a live training session for your organization, and it comes time to ask for learner input. You open the floor for contributions with the common phrase, “A penny for your thoughts?”

And you get crickets. Your previously lively cohort goes silent. Some participants look utterly confused.

What happened? Your figure of speech may have confused your global learners.

This is the first part of our guest blogger Susan Bassett's two-part blog post. The second post will be published Tuesday, February 27, 2018.

I’ve been presenting online since 2001. I’ve always felt a certain sense of excitement when working with top-notch trainers and producers in creating active, energetic online sessions. Terrific online professionals make choices about how they present which results in transforming distracted, impatient, and overwhelmed attendees into engaged learners. (Bersin). Ask dynamic, effective online trainers what their “secret sauce” is and you’ll hear about presence, energy, passion and courage. And now, comes the best part, they are more than willing to share.