Which eLearning Content Types Get the Most Engagement?
Is your employee training not as popular as you’d like it to be? From increasing job satisfaction to learning new skills that can benefit the company, training is the key to success. A report from Harvard even found that employee engagement was a major factor in the success of an organization That’s why it’s vital to get your training right the first time. Scott Cooper from Go1 takes a look at what we can learn from data in the Go1 platform about the types of content that get the most engagement.
Employee training that isn’t engaging is just as bad as having no training materials at all. You can present lots of useful information to someone, but if it doesn’t engage and captivate the user, there’s going to be no learning and progression taking place.
As the industry currently stands, there are a lot of options available when it comes to content delivery methods.
What’s most common?
We have collected data from the users in GO1 and can see some patterns as to what formats are the most common across the board:
| Content Type | Percentage of user using content type |
| Quiz/Question | 36% |
| Video | 34% |
| Interactive | 10% |
| Document | 7% |
As we can see above, there are some clear leaders when it comes to the most popular content types in GO1; Quiz or Assessments, and Video. These content types go hand in hand with many users opting for video content to demonstrate learning principles, followed by the user completing a quiz to test their knowledge of the information contained in the video.
Just because they are the most popular choice of content types, does that mean that video and quizzes get the engagement and completion rates that would allow them to be effective learning mediums?
Completion rates
When we took a closer look, we could see that completion rates across a range of content types were proving to be very effective.
| Type of Content | Completion rate |
| Quiz/Question | 74% |
| Video | 65% |
| Interactive | 62% |
| Document | 62% |
Leading the way once again we have video and quizzes, however, once we start moving down the list it’s apparent that video, interactive files, and document all have very similar completion rates.
In the world of business, there’s no time to waste. That’s why you’ve got to choose e-learning training content that gets the most engagement from your employees to start with.
But, we didn’t say this is easy. In fact, it’s a challenge to know how every employee learns best. That’s why you’ve got to go with the proven methods of e-learning.
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A closer look at popular content types
So, let’s have a look at these types of e-learning content that are effective for employee training!
Videos
You only have to look at YouTube to realize how valuable videos can be for your employee training. As the second most popular search engine, YouTube is bringing in a whopping 250,000 visits per second.
People are clearly using this kind of multimedia to watch and learn, so why not use it in your LMS?
There’s plenty e-learning courses out there that use short and snappy videos to get their message across. This is a sure way to hold your employee’s attention and engage with the content.
In fact, it was found that four times as many people would rather watch a video about a potential product they would buy than read about the same thing. This is sure to be the case when it comes to learning too.
Interactive Files
Interactive content comes in many forms. We find that game-based e-learning does particularly well and appears to be a great way to capture attention. Now you might be thinking, how can employees learn from games? Well, actually this is a great way to learn.
A Stanford University professor explains that in order to learn and change behavior, there must be three things present – motivation, ability and a trigger.
Gamification is a way to meet all three of these elements for training. employees can be motivated by gaining rewards and it teaches them the ability to carry out an action that’s useful for the workplace, as well as acting as a trigger.
Plus, educational games have the right balance of interactive fun and learning. You’ll find employees don’t have to be told to complete their training!
Quizzes
Having your employees answer questions about what they’ve just read or viewed is a great way to test their knowledge and let them process what they’ve just learned. You’ll find employees retain the information better and use it in real-life scenarios.
In addition, quizzes let employees receive instant feedback to see how they are doing. This lets them know what they’re doing right and the elements they need to improve on – just what you need for regular training to be beneficial.
It’s important to remember that everyone learns differently. Learning isn’t black and white and while passive engagement types might be better for some employees, others will prefer e-learning courses with active engagement.
The best way to capture the mind of all your employees is by using e-learning courses that provide a combination of passive and active engagement. As the saying goes – variety is the spice of life.
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