Designing engaging online learning experiences

Anouk Janssens Bevernage, Sue Dark
Open Polytechnic of New Zealand

Engaging the online learner remains a major challenge for e-learning designers and facilitators. How do we inspire the learner and energize the learning environment without any visual clues and when learning is not taking place concurrently?

This workshop introduces some of the basic concepts of engaging and collaborative learning design for online environments. Workshop participants will be given an opportunity to experience hands-on what it takes to make this happen.

At the end of the workshop, the participants will be able to:

• discuss and construct principles for engaging learning design for online delivery;
• explain what makes an effective online learning design to foster collaborative learning;
• design an inspiring online group activity;
• recommend facilitation approaches to promote a ‘learner-centred’ learning experience in a virtual learning environment.