Phases of Engaging Adult E-learners

E-learning needs to be presented in an effective instructional layout so that it serves its primary purpose which is to engage the learners and help them achieve excellence. There are 5 basic phases of engaging E-learners. 

The first phase requires the engagement of the student and trying to connect their interests with the real life expected outcomes. Students learn about the concepts in relation to what they know or what they thought they knew as well as the misconceptions they had about the concepts. Important questions need to be asked to reveal prior knowledge on lesson topic and spur interest. 

The second phase creates an exploration into a lesson topic by encouraging students to investigate concepts before the teacher can provide an explanation on the concept or introduce vocabulary terms. In this phase the teacher only acts as a facilitator. The student does the rest.

In the third phase students can be encouraged to brainstorm with their peers and discuss their experiences along with the results from the exploration phase. The teacher can ask the learner to provide their own explanation on their understanding of the lesson topic. Deeper understanding of the concepts can be developed through explanations from the teacher at this point.

The fourth phase is helping the students elaborate what they have learned about the concepts so far and how they can apply the lessons to solve new tasks presented to them. At this phase they can collaborate with their peers and share more on individual experiences on the lesson topic. These challenges help learners gain deeper knowledge on the concepts and probably their real life application.

The final phase is the evaluation phase where the student is tested. This way both the instructor and the learner can easily find out the level of learning and the student’s grasp of concepts from the lesson topic. It is important to note that this process of evaluation can be applied throughout the previous four phases as an ongoing process. Rubrics, student interviews and journal entries among other diagnostic tools can be used for evaluation.