The future is now, just not evenly distributed. This is the sentence with which I start most of my webinars, online trainings and speeches recently. A lot of people are getting interested in online courses only now, but these have been with us for several decades already! So we also only now realize how easy it is to enrol in an e-learning course and how much harder it is to complete it 
Responding to this increased demand and the still existing problem of „to be completed” courses growing on the virtual shelves, I decided to write this text. I have been collecting insights for it over a long period of time, since I noticed myself that my study at home was rather unsuccessful. I hope these thoughts and tips will help you pursue your development even more efficiently.
Don’t learn, because that’s the way…
Vroom’s expectancy theory still effectively predicts our motivation to develop competences. If we want to be sure that we (or anyone else) will complete some online training, we must know that completing it will bring us an attractive result, important to us, and the increased effort will increase the quality of this result[1]. In other words – the harder I will work, the more I will benefit – just like with learning how to play an instrument, or with getting in shape.
If you add a course to your basket, because it would be fun to complete it, but there are no other, slightly more specific results (e.g. I will complete a painting course to present a portrait of my loved one) – it will not be easy for you to complete it.
Vroom was clever in his assumptions because the theory is very general. The result of undertaking online education can be, for example, a good time during the course. Sometimes I exchange Netflix for a course from the LinkedIn Learning offer, taking care of the other necessary movie night gadgets – like a plate of snacks – and soak up a course that otherwise could be the next episode. Although it is not the most effective method of learning, it allows me to complete courses that are interesting but not high on my priority list. Thanks, Professor!
A related factor was also determined by scientists from Pennsylvania and Indiana[2]. Most MOOC students complete MOOCs when the goal is to solve a problem. They often quit their studies for the same reason – if they solve the problem ahead of time, using only some materials. In fact, in my case, such courses end up at the highest level on the TO-LEARN list.
Recently, while making a podcast for a recorded online course, I realized that it would be useful for me to get to know the backstage of journalists’ work, to make sure that I conduct interviews in accordance with the art. In addition, I noticed that I was unable to adequately persuade my interlocutors to shorten their statements, which sometimes ended in a few minutes of monologues, while my interviews for the media never looked like this. How do they do it? I found the answer to this question in a two-hour course.
The most important rule
Before you even start looking for courses and other online education, determine what outcomes you expect and consider if these outcomes are important enough to you. It’s also a great way to choose which course to start with!
7 steps of effective online learning
The above rule should help you already to increase chances of course completion or encourage you to abandon some silly idea for learning a useless skill and save you some time to start a home garden, or walk the dog. You’re welcome! 🙂
Once you decided to learn something and you’re sure it is worth your precious time, let’s see how to make the best out of it. Here are some steps that I based on both – research and my own experiments.
1. What you don’t know?
In my opinion, one of the main reasons why we don’t pay so much attention to our development is that we simply don’t know how much we don’t know and how much it would make our lives easier if we knew it. The answer to the question „What should I learn now?” is worth it’s length in Bitcoin! It combines our personal and professional goals, awareness of the entirety of knowledge in a given topic. Helpful tools to fill this void include the Johari window, SWOT analysis, 360 degrees feedback, talking to a mentor, and … Google.
In articles on various blogs, you will find knowledge pills in the areas of interest to you, which allow you to determine what areas you can develop. Sometimes it happens to me that such an hour-long search allows me to learn what I wanted without the need to deepen the topic further.
2. Choose your sources
Google will also be useful here to determine first what we have to choose from. When selecting a course, it is worth paying attention to how it corresponds to our goals. Courses on the same topic have completely different programs. In addition, it is better to choose those courses where we can get feedback from the author. This will greatly increase the effectiveness of online learning[i3]. A final good practice in this area is to use more than one form of learning. I often supplement the courses with a book on the subject in order to consolidate the acquired knowledge and engage the brain in various ways.
3. Engage in community
Involvement in social exchange is the most important factor predicting the likelihood of completing the course![4] Often times, however, these communities are not well-designed, so once you make a plan, choose your materials, you can invite your friends to a learning feast. You’ll be surprised how easy and fun it is 🙂
4. Build a habit
A common mistake in online courses is binge-watching. To make sure that we finish the course, we start it on Saturday after the coffee and continue our intensive education for the next 4 hours, and then tick off the mission successfully completed on the TO-LEARN list. It ends up just like with exams, where we were able to recall each page of the text book and read answers from memory, but a week later we did not remember anything.
Regular, shorter learning is much more effective than multi-hour sessions. This practice allowed me to complete an advanced exam in biology a few years ago better than 55% of the candidates, studying for it a total of 16 hours. It is also easier to implement. Therefore, at this stage, I encourage you to use short (30-60 minutes) time blocks in the calendar for the implementation of the selected course.
5. Make it cosy
This is a completely unscientific and often unnecessary stage, but I like it very much: D If it is difficult for you to start a course, create conditions that will allow you to enjoy it better. Sometimes I read hard-to-digest scientific articles on the balcony, sipping virgin mojitos.
It is also worth paying attention to the other side of the cosines: Learning a language while watching TV series has little effectiveness! Diversification of the exploration of good quality materials – yes. Tricking yourself into learning through pure entertainment – not necessarily.
6. Experiment with forms
Diversity was, is and will be the secret to effective online learning. It is not always guaranteed by the lecturers, so it is worth playing with knowledge on your own. After each lesson, you can write down notes summarizing the most important conclusions and come back to them before the next one, or create mind maps.
You can also get into the shoes of the teacher by sharing your conclusions with others, or create quizzes to test your knowledge and then use them to repeat the material. You can also look for complementary articles to review the video courses you’ve watched, or create a podcast list to listen while doing chores. That’s how I usually learn really hard to grasp research concepts.
7. Collect feedback
It is sometimes a difficult stage to implement. How do you know you are making progress with the course? In technical topics it is rather easy – you know that you can, for example, edit a film from different shots, and you understand what an exposure is and how to control it. You can also post it on the forum asking for feedback. What about soft skills? It would take a book to answer that question, but let me try. Each soft skill most often manifests itself with some behaviours and patterns. These, in turn, will be much easier to notice by the lecturers, experts, relatives or colleagues, so feedback is important while learning them.
If the motivation for completing the course was the feedback from colleagues, we can ask for it again some time later. If the goal of education was to get rid of a habit (e.g. saying yyy during the presentation) – we can record ourselves and count how often it happens to us. When I started writing online, I asked readers to rate each text with the NPS tool. Thanks to this, I knew what progress I was making, and I also saw that completing the course in this area was very helpful.
I have never tried to structure my online learning process so far, the 7 points above work best with it, although it certainly does not always go this way step by step. Sometimes I skip some, and later regret it, sometimes I come back to some. I am still learning – also learning – so I hope you will share your thoughts on this text and your ways to develop with the use of online materials.
Sources
[1] Bauer, K. N., Orvis, K. A., Ely, K., & Surface, E. A. (2016). Re-examination of motivation in learning contexts: Meta-analytically investigating the role type of motivation plays in the prediction of key training outcomes. Journal of Business and Psychology, 31(1), 33-50.
[2] Zheng, S., Rosson, M. B., Shih, P. C. i Carroll, J. M. (2015). Understanding student motivation, behaviors and perceptions in MOOCs. Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work & social computing (s. 1882–1895).
[3] Gregori, E. B., Zhang, J., Galván-Fernández, C. i Fernández-Navarro, F. de A. (2018). Learner support in MOOCs: identifying variables linked to completion. Computers and Education, 122, 153–168. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2018.03.014
[4] Macfadyen, L. P. i Dawson, S. (2010). Mining LMS data to develop an “early warning system” for educators: a proof of concept. Computers and Education, 54(2), 588–599. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2009.09.008
