It’s not uncommon for companies to cut corners or go overboard for staff training and development during specific months of the year. With remote working becoming a norm rather than the exception, a new syndrome known as ‘online learning fatigue’ has emerged. Virtual learning tiredness results from L&D teams and HR experts attempting to impose too many training, reskilling, and upskilling requirements on their employees. Yes, sometimes it’s not possible to have too much of a good thing! So how can you ensure that you deliver engaging online learning which does not tire your learners?
Well, before getting there, let’s try to understand how remote learning, at times, proves overwhelming for employees.
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Reasons for Learning Fatigue in Remote Workers Training
Learning overload and weariness are the outcome of several variables in today’s remote working environment, including the following:
Continued corporate pressure to upskill and reskill
In today’s environment, firms must constantly reinvent themselves to stay competitive. As a result, they are continually re-skilling their workforces to remain competitive, which puts employees into a never-ending cycle of reskilling and upskilling, resulting in learning fatigue.
The overworked remote worker
Contrary to popular belief, most remote employees find it difficult to “unplug” or achieve a work-life balance under the new WFH paradigm. As a result, they take on more duties and work longer hours than they would during “normal” hours. Making time for mandatory training adds to their stress.
Fatigue from remote work
Working remotely without the benefit of frequent in-office support networks has drawbacks that add stress to the day of remote employees. When management forces already stressed employees to complete additional remote employee training, the workforce can become fatigued.
Inability to apply new knowledge immediately
Virtual learning fatigue is exacerbated because most training is oriented toward preparing people for circumstances they may or may not face in the future. When employees give their all to master a subject/course without knowing when to utilize what they’ve learned, they become fatigued.
Concentration on compliance rather than substance
For the sake of ticking off checklists, a lot of compliance-based training is placed on overworked and overloaded remote workers. Remote employee training fatigue is exacerbated by the race to finish specified course loads within set deadlines.
Long hours spent in training
The design of the traditional corporate eLearning model does not meet the demands of today’s remote workforce’s long WFH workday. Workers who must attend training and complete allocated (sometimes additional) remote responsibilities simultaneously are put under extra stress by the extensive curriculums and extended completion dates.
Burnout affects 69 percent of people who work from home, according to a recent poll. One more online learning session could be too much for even the most enthusiastic staff. When employees are experiencing Zoom fatigue during training, they are more likely to be counting down the minutes until they can turn off their screens rather than absorbing the information.
The good news is that you can avoid this weariness and make it easier for students to study. So, let us begin!
7 Strategies for Creating Engaging Online Learning to Combat Remote Fatigue
The learning design techniques listed below are essential for creating engaging online learning, maintaining student engagement and avoiding learning weariness. To assist you in dealing with learning overload, here are seven learning design strategies:
Strategy 1: Access And Flexibility
Enable pull-based learning
Instead of enforcing training, offer remote employees the option to explore what’s available and allow them to choose what aligns with their learning needs and work-life schedules.
Instead of favoring one specific training mode, pre-recorded sessions, live-streamed, or video-chat-based training, use a moderate blend of synchronous and asynchronous (also called poly-synchronous) training to add flexibility to your remote employee training program.
When you’re working, you can learn while you’re doing it (LIFOW)
Learning requirements frequently develop during an employee’s typical workday, forcing the remote learner to rush for learning content to meet the specific work demand. You may address this component of online fatigue study by providing virtual learners with app-based learning and short-format information, such as micro-videos or FAQ-style learning.
On-demand education
Learning weariness is understood when employees wait to supply the answers they require rather than access learning whenever needed. That problem is solved by providing on-demand learning.
Short breaks on a regular basis
To avoid virtual fatigue study, structure your learning with proper brief pauses.
Allow learners to learn in a broad sense
When remote workers struggle to understand the context of their learning, they get agitated and exhausted. Providing learning background and context, rather than jumping directly into specifics, can help to reduce the stress of learning new/additional concepts and ideas.
Strategy 2: Social Learning
Remote personnel frequently become depleted as a result of their isolation. Being in the company of others gives people vitality. You may help by including connection opportunities in your training.
Making each lesson a social experience is another approach to re-energize learning and get away from static screen time. Employee collaboration adds a layer of engagement that combats feelings of isolation.
More hands-on involvement with the material makes it more remember and impactful. Incorporate collaborative learning activities or group projects that encourage people to talk. Learners will grasp and retain more information when they think more deeply about the practical application with their peers.
Informal learning to motivate learning and collaboration
Adding informal learning resources to your arsenal of online learning tools, such as chat rooms, discussion forums, and learning networks, can assist ease virtual fatigue study. Even though remote workers are more at ease in such casual settings, they will continue to learn from their peers without stress.
Consider incorporating some live training sessions into your plan. Employees can feel less alone by interacting with a trainer and learning with their coworkers, even through screens. Adding a live session here and there to self-paced training gives employees a good touchpoint for realizing that they’re not alone.
Interactions, regulated by the employees
Learning in instructor-moderated models can be overpowering at times, causing learners to have fatigue study. It is beneficial to nominate a few (2 or 3) learners to function as moderators while engaging small to moderate-sized learner groups. In this approach of collective learning, the learning group will feel more at ease.
Encourage the use of breakout rooms
Fatigue study can quickly develop in larger groups when sessions stretch on indefinitely due to the extensive learner-instructor interactions required (even 10 minutes with each of the 20 learners can stretch the session to 3.5 hours!) Breakout rooms/sessions (3 rooms with 5 to 7 learners) make sharing and cooperation less stressful and more efficient.
Make use of handpicked material
Add targeted and curated new content such as infographics, videos, and relevant internal content, as well as a select range of external resources, in addition to digitizing current training content. User-generated content (UGC) is another excellent technique to alleviate remote employee training weariness.
Strategy 3: Comprehensive L&D Platforms
Immersive learning as a means of increasing engagement
A learner who is more absorbed and engaged is less worried or exhausted. Immersive learning tactics like branching scenarios, gamification, and next-gen strategies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) alleviate rather than worsen online fatigue study.
Employees might sometimes be re-energized in their learning by a little healthy competition. Use the various LMS tools to incorporate gamification elements into your training.
Leaderboards that allow students to compare their progress to their peers can keep students interested and energized. Consider allowing students to earn badges for completing tasks or additional points for completing quizzes to keep them engaged in the learning process.
Experiential education
Interactive tales, role-playing, real-life scenarios, and workplace-relevant use cases are strategies you can use to aid leverage learning based on earlier experiences. This approach provides more relevant learning for distant workers while also reducing fatigue study.
Personalization
The more strict a learning environment is, the more difficult it is for a learner to participate. Learning becomes less exhausting to consume when tailored learning paths and learner-driven environment adjustments are introduced.
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Learning burnout and fatigue study are exacerbated by long-form learning content, such as long-form films or hour-long talks. Shorter-form targeted learning in the form of micro-modules is one solution to this problem.
Make short courses or make microlearning the focal point of your training plan. Employees can concentrate better if they are given short, targeted lessons that they may complete in minutes.
Learners can also take breaks when they need them because the duration between halting sites is shorter. They’ll be able to rest without interrupting their studies. If you’re using eLearning videos in your training courses, for example, make sure they’re no more than 3-4 minutes long.
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Strategy 4: Flexibility
The ability to self-pace is another feature that makes eLearning so enticing. Employees can log in and complete training on their own time, thanks to remote training software. For distant learners, having that kind of freedom can relieve a lot of stress.
It is not a hardship on employees’ already hectic schedules when choosing how and when they complete their training. They can schedule it during downtime during the day — or even outside of business hours if it is more convenient.
Strategy 5: Engaging Content
Ensuring that your training attracts and maintains learners’ attention is one of the best things you can do to prevent them from zoning out. Examine your material to discover how you might make it more interesting.
Consider factors such as learning modalities. Do you have a lot of text-heavy slides in your training? To engage different types of learners, include movies or dynamic graphics.
Alternatively, include interactive components such as quizzes, practice, and branching scenarios. Learners’ energy is focused on accomplishing something, such as answering questions, clicking on a screen, or practicing a skill. Interacting with the subject keeps them engaged and prevents training from becoming tedious.
Strategy 6: User Interface
When it comes to improving the user experience, content isn’t the only factor to consider. Please take into account the design of your courses and make them suitable for screen-weary students.
To prevent eye strain, for example, use minimalistic fonts. To assist learners in grasping the same piece of information in less time, try substituting presentations or manuals with informative infographics. Also, make sure your LMS is simple to use and navigate, so staff don’t waste time or become annoyed while completing their training.
Strategy 7: Ideal Blend of Training and Work Schedules
Finally, by implementing education into your employees’ workdays, you can assist them to have a better experience. It can feel like you’re adding duties to people’s to-do lists when you ask them to attend training. Build learning time into their schedules to show them you respect their time and are prepared to invest in their development.
Clear some space so that folks can check in when they have some free time. You can relieve tension by showing learners that training is an integral element of the employment experience. They will be able to focus and study instead of thinking about squeezing another thing into their schedules.
Final Thoughts
Trainers and learning and development teams are aggressively pushing a variety of training choices on remote employees nowadays. This methodology results in learning overload, which overwhelms employees who are already stressed. They reach a point where learning fatigue sets in as they deal with the numerous training expected of them to complete. The rule of declining marginal training returns kicks in after this; exhausted learners can no longer engage or absorb more training, no matter how hard you try!
We hope that this article will assist you in using the suggested ideas and approaches in your remote staff training and successfully overcoming online learning weariness. Meanwhile, if you have any additional queries, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us or leave a comment below!
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