Toys for the Online Multitasker

A good friend of mine recently took a new job, and in blogging about her experience with the two day orientation training she was required to attend said that upon entering the training room, the new employees were presented with a table of toys and simple gadgets. Her first thought was one of dread- "they're going to make us do those really annoying team building exercises!" But it turned out, somebody in HR simply understood that some learners can be a bit attention deficit or are just naturally inclined to multitask. I thought about my friend's blog post when Dr. Nich described her online course experience and promised from now on, if we will promise to engage for fifty minutes, we will be granted fifteen minutes for a break.

Learners disengage at various points during class, I think. It happens in face-to-face and online environments. The danger with mentally disengaging in an online environment is that it is much easier not to plug back in. The vast world of the internet is right at the learner's fingertips, and instructors can't catch learners with eye contact or briefly stroll by a desk to nudge a learner back into the activity at hand.

The eLearning Guild had a similar tip about toys in their eBook, "The eLearning Guild's Handbook on Synchronous Learning." The eBook solicited tips from the Guild's very large membership and published them in this handbook. One tipster made the same use of toys and gadgets in her face-to-face sessions.

It's more difficult to approximate this strategy in a synchronous, online course. An instructor can offer suggestions for focusing on the topic at hand, but he/she can't display a table of appealing toys and gadgets. One way to handle this is to make sure some interactivity is built into the synchronous session- polls, mini quizzes, and handing text tools and microphones over to the students. I know for myself, I have a couple of rules that I follow for an online class, so that I don't end up disengaged for long periods of time. I always close my email application before logging into the class, and I have a scratch pad and pen next to me, separate from the notebook I use for class notes. I'm an inveterate multitasker, so staying focused on a screen and voice can be challenging for me. Often, doodling, or noting random thoughts about emails I need to send or items I need to add to my To Do list can be enough multitasking to keep me focused on the course content and away from the internet browser. I also reward myself in small ways for staying focused- like watching a video after class sometimes instead of buckling right down to homework. With more online offerings each year, learners will need tools to stay engaged and focused. Online courses are rapidly becoming the norm. In fact, according to research for another course, I found statistics that say over more than half of US degree-granting institutions offer online courses.

There are a plethora of tips out there on how to be an online learner. A lot of the tips cover time management, staying connected to peers, and dealing with technology problems. Once a learner has managed his time, learned how to stay connected to his class, and overcome any technology barriers or malfunctions, he doesn't have many resources for how to actually stay engaged in the content once he gets to it. Proper time management, and courses that appropriately serve their target audiences help, but I'm wondering what sort of tips and strategies other online learners use to keep themselves focused and interested in the course content. We've probably all had course requirements, necessary for a certificate or a degree, that we didn't find exciting or engaging. When designing courses for online delivery, engagement of the learner is a factor that instructors and facilitators should consider.