“How well do your learners know themselves?”
Let’s face it, it’s hard to get learners to complete even mandatory training. It’s even harder to get them to tell you what they thought about it. “Oh it was good, yeah.” is a common response.
If you’re after meaningful feedback that ultimately helps the content and therefore the learning outcomes, learner feedback surveys can be valuable.
But, even better, OBSERVATION is gold. What are the learners actually doing? Which content types brought out the best in them? What did they click? What did they skip? What confused them?
Asking learners how they like to learn and what content supports this is a great question, but it isn’t the BEST way to understand them. Observing them, asking questions and assessing their retention is.
Many learners might THINK they prefer short videos, interactives or multiple-choice quizzes, but observation reminds us that learners sometimes don’t know themselves any better than you do.
Ultimately, what learners say they prefer matters, but what actually helps them learn matters more.