Improving Learner Engagement among Association Members

There’s plenty riding on your abilities as a professional education coordinator for associations. Members depend on you to provide relevant continuous learning experiences that address professional requirements. There’s also the challenge of delivering these experiences in a way that makes sense to members, while keeping them easy, intuitive, and fresh.

In other words, you constantly have to consider ways of improving learner engagement.

The evolution of technology is making things easier. Learning management systems offer the tools that can make instruction come alive. Even better, these systems enable you to manage the various initiatives from a central location and customize it to your audiences. You can even make it so members look forward to the curricula that you have to offer. Here’s how!

Interact and Immerse

Digital environments offer opportunities for innovation in learning. It’s no longer about listening to a lecture or a speech for an hour straight. Those boring days have given way to fresher and richer experiences.

Learning management systems enable curriculum designers to harness learning methods like gamification, simulations, and virtual reality. Each turns learning into a multi-dimensional experience, so members can engage with each other and even build competition into the instruction. The more involved and engaged learners are, the greater the chances for good learning outcomes.

You can also use technology tools to advance goals for interaction and immersion. For instance, building video into learning experiences adds dynamic elements, and you can extend the experience through mobile apps.

Leverage the Power of Community

Digital learning management systems also provide opportunities to utilize the concept of community as a way of improving learner engagement.

Curricula can have digital offramps with various communication vehicles, such as:

• Discussion forums, currently common in higher ed, where students can discuss and challenge each other about the specifics of materials
• Mentorships, where more experienced members can provide their expertise and encouragement to newer ones
• Peer-to-peer engagements, which allow for less formal but still significant connections aimed at improving engagement

A learning management system also enables you to integrate surveys at all levels of your programs. Capturing how your members perceive your learning experiences and the ease of use of the system is crucial in terms of finding ways to improve continuously.

This system also provides analytic tools for tracking and measuring engagement along the way. Understanding what works and what doesn’t from the community of learners can further your team’s desire to get better and meet learners where they are.

By collecting feedback and using it to improve learning experiences, you can make learner engagement even stronger.

Make Learning Materials Personally Relevant

There’s a reason that services such as Netflix and Spotify were able to disrupt the movie and music industry: by utilizing data analysis to deliver recommendations relevant to each user, they make subscribers feel like the service knows them.

Personalization is more than just saying hello. It’s about leveraging the data from their usage to provide the most relevant offerings to individuals on their terms, tailored to their experience and interest levels. It’s another way of improving learner engagement. Based on usage patterns, you can deliver to members the course offerings that make sense to them and where they are in their careers.

Your solution can be tailored to the individual's learning needs, making it easy for members to get through and manage all their requirements from their profession. Personalization extends to the back of the learning experience—post-learning—by providing certifications and credentials that recognize and validate the member’s achievements. Part of the value of continuous learning is to be able to prove that you've generated additional skills and experience relevant to your employer or future employers.

Promote Learner Engagement with Elevate

Professional development coordinators face many challenges in building learning experiences that meet the needs of association members. The learning experiences must be fresh, relevant, accessible, intuitive, and easy to use and learn. Any friction that you create in the system will likely turn members off and make it difficult for them and for you to achieve goals.

Elevate can help professional educators develop curricula and certifications and extend knowledge-sharing and social learning to help association members meet their learning objectives. The system allows for centralized management of multiple offerings from a single database.

Elevate, the leading LMS for associations, enables professional educators to develop curricula, certifications, knowledge sharing, and social learning to help association members meet their learning objectives. Schedule a demo today to see how your association can use the platform to its advantage while delivering exceptional professional experiences.