How to Share an E-Learning Course on Your Intranet or Internet Website
Considering sharing your e-learning course on a website or your company intranet? It’s a great option for times you don’t need to track learner progress or quiz scores, and it’s supereasy to set up. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process, step by step. 1. Find a Web Server To share your course on your intranet or internet website, you have to upload it to a web server. But before you can do that, you need to find one you can use. Start by contacting your IT department to see if your organization already has a web server. If they do, great! Ask them if you can get access to it. If they don’t, here are two free options many e-learning pros use: Amazon S3. See this tutorial to learn how to get set up. Google Cloud. See this video tutorial to learn how to get set up. Note that there’s a usage limit for the free versions of the above web servers. If you go over the limit, you’ll be charged a small fee. 2. Publish the Course for Web Delivery Once you’ve identified a web server you can use and your course is finalized, you’ll want to publish or export it for web delivery. In most authoring apps—including those we offer at Articulate—this is as easy as selecting the Web option and hitting Publish. For more details, check out the links below: Rise 360: Publishing Content for Web Distribution Storyline 360: Publishing a Course for Web Distribution 3. Upload the Course to Your Web Server Next, you’ll want to upload the course files to your web server. If you’re using Amazon S3 or Google Cloud, you can do that directly in your browser by clicking the Upload button and selecting your files. Upload screen in Amazon S3 Some web servers require you to use an external app, called a File Transfer Protocol (FTP), to upload your course. If that sounds complicated—don’t worry! We made a short video to walk you through that process. 4. Share the Course Link with Learners Now that your course is uploaded, all that’s left is to send the course link to your learners. But how do you find the course link? It’s easy! Simply open the course folder on your web server and look for the HTML file. Depending on the authoring app you used to create your course, the name of this file—and therefore your course link—will be slightly different. Here are the file names for Articulate apps: Rise 360: index.html Storyline 360: story.html Storyline 360 course folder on Amazon S3 Once you find the HTML file, click on it to view the full URL. It’ll look something like this: Rise 360: http://www.myserver.com/coursename/index.html Storyline 360: http://www.myserver.com/coursename/story.html That’s the link you’ll want to share with learners so they can view your course. Wrap-Up Sharing your course on your intranet or internet website can be a good option if you don’t need to track learner data. And by following the steps outlined in this article, you’ll have your course in your learners’ hands in no time. Want to learn about other ways to share your course? Check out this article: How to Share E-Learning Courses with Learners. And remember to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any comments, please share them below. This article is part of our E-Learning 101 email course, a series of expertly curated articles that’ll help you get started with e-learning—delivered right to your inbox. You’re only a click away from becoming an e-learning pro! Sign up here to enroll.What’s the Difference Between Training, Education, and Learning?
Ever sat across from a client or Subject Matter Expert (SME) as they asked you to help create “training,” “education,” and “learning”—all in the same breath? While these terms might sound academic and share some DNA, they’re not interchangeable. They all have slightly different meanings. Failing to clarify and build a shared understanding of these terms with your clients can contribute to misunderstandings and rework later. So let’s unpack the meaning of each of these terms—training, education, and learning—and place them into a workplace context. Understanding them will help ensure that you and your clients are on the same page right from the start! What is training? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary gives many different definitions for the word “training,” but the most applicable is “to undergo instruction, discipline, or drilling.” And when you look up the synonyms for training, it shows “drill,” “exercise,” and “practice.” Hmm. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a pretty clear mental picture of a runner being trained by a coach. Training a runner is the act or process of instructing them to improve their performance. It’s a form of education that’s focused on a defined goal or task—in this case, making it through a marathon and shaving a few minutes off the time. Taking an example from a workplace setting: let’s say your sales team needs to learn to use new software to process returns. This is a task-specific goal that can be easily addressed with training. What is education? If training is a form of education, what’s the difference between being trained and being educated? Turning to my trusty ol’ dictionary once again, we see that “education” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “knowledge and development resulting from the process of being educated.” Development implies a change that happens over time as you absorb knowledge. That means that, unlike training, education isn’t a task-oriented one-off experience. Another key difference between training and education is that education is more conceptual in nature. The skills and knowledge we acquire through education are often more theoretical and less practical. Again, using our new software example, most of us would agree that it’s probably not the best use of company time and resources to send learners who only need to know how to process returned merchandise on a new system to a multi-week, intensive sales education program. So, if the goal is discrete and skills-based, like learning new software to perform a task, training is a more appropriate solution than education. What is learning? If training is the act or process of formally instructing someone on how to perform a task or perform it more efficiently, and education is the long-term process of developing knowledge, what is learning? Learning is the desired outcome of training—and the path to being educated. And the best part of learning is that it happens naturally through life experience. Of course, the likelihood of learning something new can be increased by our environment, upbringing, work, and mindset, among many other factors. In a workplace setting, learning occurs when people internalize information or skills, retain it, apply it, and then make additional connections to something else they’ve learned. It’s that connection of knowledge to ideas and experiences all woven together that forms the fabric of learning. Not only do we learn all the time, people learn in different ways—through formal training or, more often, informally, through their own experiences, or through the shared experiences of others. Regardless of how people learn, the process of learning equips them to take on more complex challenges. For instance, if we use our new software training example once again, a team member who’s been successfully trained to use the new software to process returns is a training win. But even better is the employee who’s learned how to marry their knowledge of the new software with their understanding of the latest changes to your company’s 30-day return policy and uses their customer service skills to do what’s right. That kind of layered, dynamic thinking and problem-solving is where training, education, and learning all intersect. Wrap-up If it feels like the devil is in the details, you’re not wrong! These terms are similar and related but with slightly different meanings that might escape all but the nerdiest of instructional design pros. Understanding these nuances can be helpful for navigating tricky client conversations with ease and confidence. What other common threads do you see with these terms? Would you define them differently? Let me know with a comment below, or strike up a new conversation in the Building Better Courses forum and hear from all our resident e-learning pros! Like what you read here? Be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning.In Case You Missed It: November 2025 in ELH
Here’s a brief highlight reel of the conversations, builds, and resources that shaped the community’s discussions in November. 🧳 Join the E-Learning Heroes Passport Challenge! From now through January 5, you can earn passport “stamps” (aka badges!) just for participating in the community—posting discussions, sharing examples, cheering on peers, and more. Every badge marks progress in your own learning journey and gets you closer to fun rewards like swag, shout-outs, and even a chance to win a Fujifilm Instax camera. 💬 What Everyone’s Talking About Looking for a spark of inspiration? Here are some conversations fueling creativity across the community. Instant Publishing with Quick Share Members are excited about Quick Share’s one-click publishing for everyday Rise content. See how others are using it for job aids, previews, and vendor training, and share your own quick-use ideas. Share Your AI Assistant Makeover Creators are posting fun before-and-after examples of how they used AI Assistant to level up drafts, build scenarios, or refine lessons. Check out their transformations and add your own. A Handy Storyline Notepad JoeDey's persistent notepad for Storyline is getting lots of love. If you’ve been looking for a simple way for learners to save notes, explore the demo and join the discussion. 🌟 Standout Challenge Entries November’s challenges surfaced lots of gems! A few standouts: Using Interactive Video for Scenarios & Quizzes in E-Learning Push vs Pull E-Learning By Jayashree_Ravi A side-by-side look at how the same topic can feel totally different: passive slide vs. active video journey. The branching version turns a basic onboarding moment into an experience you are excited to explore. Train Smart: Technique Quiz By ElenaZhuravleva This first-time challenge entry uses short workout clips as quiz questions to test whether you can spot proper form. Simple, practical, and a great example of how video can make quick checks feel interactive. Designing Office Exploration Interactions for E-Learning Welcome to the Office By Kate_Golomshtok This creative virtual tour guides you through an office space, offering a way to explore rooms, teammates, and key info. A fun, game-like approach with lots of potential for expansion. You're Hired! By ded2 This demo brings an interactive approach to onboarding with AI-powered characters who respond in real time. Airport Security for Travelers The Zero-Drama Security Shuffle By GabrielleBradle See how AI Assistant took an outline and shaped the result into a clean Air Travel Security module. A great example of AI speeding up real course development. TSA Dishes on Thanksgiving Food By GolfPrincess This demo experiments with AI-generated visuals, narration, and custom interactions to build a playful learner experience. 🎤 Members Took the Mic (Guest Webinars) From beginner tips to polished animations, these guest-led sessions offer hands-on tips you can put to work in your next Storyline build. Top 10 Tips for New Storyline Users with Judy Nollet New to Storyline? Learn ten essential tips to help you skip the rookie mistakes and start building with confidence. Creating Animations and Interactions in Storyline with Simple CSS and JavaScript (No Coding Required) with Natalia Vostretsova Learn how to give your Storyline projects a modern, animated feel using a simple framework and copy-ready code. 🎓 Trending Training Webinar November’s training focused on improving visuals with tools you already have. Edit AI Images Using Free Windows Tools Discover simple, free ways to edit AI images on your Windows PC, from removing backgrounds to polishing photos and refining illustrations. 📚 Member-Powered Articles Looking for inspiration? These member-powered reads offer hands-on techniques, career insights, and behind-the-scenes workflows you can adapt to your own projects. Made By Members: Rise Code Blocks See how community members are transforming Rise 360’s Code Block into full-on games, tools, and simulations. Community Insights: What You Can Learn from Career Pivot Discover practical career lessons from David Tait’s journey—from leveraging your existing strengths to turning setbacks into opportunities you can use in your own development. How I Built This: How I Vibe-Coded a People Manager Simulation by Daniel-Benton. A practical walkthrough showing how a story-driven simulation was created in Rise, and how you can adapt the same codebase to build your own interactive experiences. 💎 Hidden Gems Sometimes the best tips are hidden in plain sight. Here are a couple worth exploring: Articuland 2026 is Coming! Join the Articuland 2026 VIP list for early updates and pricing, then share the topics and ideas you want featured as we design next year’s experience together. Come Say Hello in the Welcome Center New members are introducing themselves every day, and a quick hello goes a long way. Jump in, say hi, and help someone feel at home. (Bonus: replying earns you a Passport Challenge badge through January 5!) ✨ That’s a wrap for November! What’s one thing you discovered—or created—recently that we should feature in the next roundup? Share it below!8 Business Use Cases for Microlearning
Are you excited to try out microlearning, but unsure when to use it? Below, we outline eight common workplace situations that benefit from a short-form course. Each situation includes a sample microlearning. At the end, learn how you can customize these templates for your own company and training needs. 1. Create Organizational Alignment To hit a business target, everyone needs to be moving in the same direction. Creating that alignment starts with clear, frequent communication of the shared mission, vision, and values. Microlearning can help. The following editable template shows how you can align employees through regular executive “micro” updates: Executive Update 2. Highlight HR Information, Notices, or Reminders Educating employees about annual events like open enrollment, tax season, and compliance training is a critical function of HR teams. The problem? Important announcements often get missed when they’re embedded in long paragraphs or endless emails. Grab the following templates to see how microlearning makes HR communications more digestible and engaging: A Quick Guide To Open Enrollment Internal Company Newsletter 3. Strengthen Company Culture and DEI Initiatives Fostering an inclusive company culture is a continuous process—not a one-time effort. A series of microlearnings can support your larger culture-building and DEI efforts. Check out the following examples for ideas on how to get started: Are You an Ally? Try Taking on These 5 Roles How To Identify and Stop Using Ableist Language Gossip-Proof Your Workplace 4. Streamline Business Processes You can also use microlearning to document and streamline business processes or workflows—such as employee onboarding or performance management. Notice how the following examples make it easy for employees to work through the steps of a process independently: New Hire Pre-Hire Checklist Performance Review and Feedback 5. Increase Security Awareness Most successful data breaches, phishing attacks, and other cybersecurity incidents are caused by human error. Adding refresher microlearnings throughout the year can fortify your defenses. See an example for safeguarding against phishing attacks below: Spot the Phish 6. Enhance Employee Wellness A successful business needs thriving employees. But employee wellness training often ends up buried under competing priorities. Microlearning makes it easy for employees to fit in short breaks for self-care throughout the workday. Check out these two wellness-related microlearning examples: 3 Desk Stretches to Instantly Improve Your Day 5 Tips for Better Naps 7. Provide Quick-Reference Guides Microlearning is the perfect resource for one-off training questions: Employees can quickly find the answers they need—when they need them. Below, we’ve created templates for product and software training. But you could easily create quick-reference guides for sales, customer service, and other teams. Get To Know [Name of Product] Software Training 8. Reinforce and Assess Key Takeaways Finally, who says you have to choose between a more sizable course and microlearning? Repetition aids retention. Consider following up longer training sessions with a microlearning quiz, scenario, or summary. The examples listed below demonstrate how you might do this: Can You Recover From a Workplace Mistake? Training Refresher Wrap-Up There’s no shortage of creative ways you can use microlearning to achieve your business training objectives. The examples above are just a starter list. You might also check out submissions to one of our weekly community challenges, 40+ Microlearning Examples Created in Rise 360 #407. Interested in customizing one of these examples for your team? If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber or trialer, you can edit all of the examples linked throughout this post by choosing the course from our Rise 360 microlearning content templates. Here’s a short video showing how to do that: What’s the latest microlearning course you’ve created? Tell us about it in the comments—and feel free to ask any questions you might have! Like this article? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter.5 Ways to Use Animated GIFs in Your E-Learning
Animated GIFs—or image files that act like a short video that loops endlessly—are everywhere these days, on social media, in blogs, and even in e-learning courses! That’s right, instructional designers are using these eye-catching multimedia assets to grab their learners’ attention—and you can too. Check out these ideas to get inspiration on how to incorporate animated GIFs in your courses. 1. As Course Header Images If your learners have a ton of courses in their dashboard and you want yours to stand out, try using an animated GIF in the course header, like in this example: Mars Curiosity Rover. It’s a surefire way to get your course noticed. 2. As Attention Getters GIFs are eye-catching. Have you noticed how hard it is to look away even when you’ve already seen the same animation loop 10 times over? That’s what’s so great about them. Their movement naturally draws your learners in and incites them to pay attention. Not convinced? Take a look at this Rise 360 course: Space Travel–Themed Interactive Infographic See how the GIFs draw you in and make you want to click on the interactive parts? I thought so. 3. To Illustrate Key Messages But GIFs can do more than just catch your learners’ eye. They can actually help learners better understand the concepts you’re teaching them. Check out the GIFs in this course, for example: An American’s Guide to Driving in France. See how the GIFs support the key messages? 4. To Lay Out the Steps in a Process If you’re creating a how-to course, you might be tempted to make a video. And that’s definitely one way of doing it! But if people need to replicate the steps one by one, they might need to rewind each step and watch it over and over again. What a pain! Instead of creating a lengthy video or screencast, why not create a GIF of each step, making it easy for people to rewatch the steps as needed, like in this article on how to make coffee? 5. For Comic Relief If the topic of your course is particularly dry, it might be a good idea to work in some humor to make sure your learners don’t fall asleep. GIFs are a great way to do that! However, be careful to not overdo it. A humorous GIF here and there is one thing; peppering every section of your course with them is another. Here's an example that uses humorous GIFs effectively. Another thing to keep in mind with humor is that it’s subjective. Test your course out on a trusted coworker or two and make sure they find the GIFs to be both work-appropriate and funny. The Bottom Line As with anything, it’s important to keep in mind that too much of a good thing is bad. When using animated GIFs, make sure they’re helping and not hindering the learning process. After all, the goal is to get your learners to focus on the content and retain the key messages. If you’re sold on using animated GIFs in your courses but aren’t sure how to go about creating your own, check out this tutorial. Like this article? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and X (Formerly Twitter).3 Steps for Creating Your First Rise 360 Course
Everything you need to create modern, engaging e-learning is at your fingertips with Rise 360. Not sure where to start? This handy guide will help you create your very first microlearning or full-length course in three easy steps. Let’s get started! 1. Choose the type of learning experience you want to create: microlearning or a full-length course Start by choosing whether you want microlearning or a full-length course. Your choice will depend on the content you want to share with learners. Microlearning courses aren’t just short courses. They’re bite-size pieces of content focused on a single learning objective. They’re approachable, bingeable, and easy for users to review and apply. Microlearning courses are also great for learners on the go because they’re easy to consume on phones or tablets. Full-length courses give you the opportunity to go in-depth on a certain topic. Made up of multiple lessons and knowledge checks, courses may include multiple learning objectives and, as a result, take longer for the learner to experience. Learners almost always use a computer to access full-length courses. So how do you know which format to use for your course? When choosing between the two, ask yourself: How many learning objectives do I have? If you only have one, a microlearning course is the clear option. If you have more than one, could each one stand alone or are they interdependent? If they could be split up, you could create a series of microlearning courses. If they’re interdependent, then a full-length course is the best option. Once you’ve made your decision, go to your Rise 360 dashboard. Click Create New and choose Course or Microlearning. 2. Search for a template or start from scratch It's always a good idea to look at templates and see if there’s already material you can use or adapt to your learning objectives. Articulate offers two types of templates: placeholder and real content: Placeholder templates include guidance and ideas to help you create a fully customized course. Real content templates have pre-written content you can adapt to fit your learning objectives. After choosing the type of e-learning you’d like to develop, you’ll see all available templates. Select Preview to explore a template before you choose it. You can use the search bar to find templates by keyword. And for full-length courses, you can use the left-hand panel to explore templates by category. When you’re ready to use a template, click Select This Course. If you don’t find exactly what you need, don’t worry: You can always customize a template or even start from scratch. Just click +Blank Course/Microlearning to begin. 3. Add your content Once you’ve chosen a template or started from scratch, you can add in your content using blocks. Blocks give you different ways of formatting your content in a lesson or microlesson. There are many types of blocks: text blocks, image blocks, interactive blocks, knowledge check blocks, and more. You can use different block types to make your content unique and engaging. Clicking All Blocks or the + sign in your lesson or microlesson will open a list of block types in a left-hand panel. If you change your mind about the type of block, you can easily choose a different block from the same category by clicking the dropdown menu in the top-left corner of the block. For example, the paragraph block gives you the option of reformatting your content into different types of paragraphs, headings, statements, and a note. Not sure how to pick the right block? Think about what your learner needs. For example, if you have a lot of content that may be overwhelming as a text block, consider using a tabs block to break up the text. Or, if you want learners to compare and contrast different chunks of information, consider using an accordion or flashcard block. As the course author, this is your opportunity to get creative! Here are some articles for inspiration: 6 Rise 360 Blocks to Use Instead of Bullet Points 7 Creative Ways to Use Images in Rise 360 Courses 6 Rise 360 Block Types to Use to Compare and Contrast Concepts 5 Different Ways to Create Scenarios in Rise 360 3 Creative Ways to Incorporate Your Logo into a Rise 360 Course More Resources Creating microlearning or full-length courses in Rise 360 is superfast and easy. In just three steps, you’ve already started putting together an elegant course customized for your learners. And when you’re done drafting your course, you can share and review your content with stakeholders easily thanks to Review 360. Here’s more information on how to use Review 360: Getting Started with Review 360 Rise 360: Publish Content to Review 360 Your Most Asked Review 360 Questions Once they’ve been approved, you can easily publish from your Articulate 360 dashboard. Here are some guides to get you started: Rise 360: Share Content with Learners How to Share E-Learning Courses with Learners Want to try creating your first course in Rise 360, but don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial. And subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest e-learning examples.5 Mental Health Resources You Can Share With Your Learners Today
Did you know that May is Mental Health Awareness Month? Individuals aren’t the only ones impacted by mental health challenges—businesses can feel the effects, too. Polling from Gallup indicates that employees with mental health challenges miss four times more work than those who rate their mental health positively. This lost productivity costs the economy some $47.6 billion annually. As an e-learning designer, you can help employees feel supported by providing resources that raise awareness of the importance of mental health and outline helpful tips for improving it. If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber or trialer, you can get the ball rolling quickly by using the ready-to-use mental health training materials in Rise 360—just in time for Mental Health Awareness Month. Curious what’s available? Check out some of the new releases below. You can learn how to customize these templates for your own company and training needs at the end of this article. 1. Stress Busters Microlearning Course Encourage employees to feel more relaxed with the 9 Simple Stress Busters You Can Do Today microlearning course. Moving through this quick learning exercise reveals proven strategies for relieving stress and activating feel-good endorphins. 2. Breathing Exercises Microlearning Course Anyone feeling tense can benefit from the Melt Away Stress With a 3-Minute Breathing Exercise microlearning course. With each successive swipe through a guided breathing exercise and accompanying graphics, learners will feel more peaceful and serene. 3. Feel Your Feelings Microlearning Course Reinforce the message that it’s OK not to be OK with the Feel Your Feelings microlearning course. This quick activity helps people process difficult emotions by prompting them to name and explore their feelings from a place of compassion and understanding. 4. Get Grounded Microlearning Course Support employees through worry spirals and mental fog with the Escape Anxiety With a 5-Minute Grounding Practice microlearning course. Moving through this 5-minute practice roots learners in the here and now as they engage their senses of taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. 5. Day-by-Day Challenge Course To offer access to a more in-depth daily challenge, check out the 5-Day Challenge To Improve Mental Health course. Each day, learners can refer to this course, explore a different facet of mental health, and follow simple exercises for putting concepts into practice. Wrap-Up Providing mental health resources as part of your business training is a win-win. Employees have access to support at work, and businesses benefit from employees who are less stressed and anxious. The examples above can help you get started, but the sky’s the limit for how you can use Articulate’s creator tools to achieve your business training objectives. Interested in sharing one of the supportive resources with your team? If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber or trialer, you can access and edit all the examples linked throughout this post directly from your Rise 360 dashboard. Simply click Create New, choose Microlearning and select the template you want to use, as shown in the video below: Looking for even more ready-to-use, customizable mental health content? You'll find those in your Rise 360 dashboard too. Just click Create New, choose Course, and then select Mix & Match Lessons. Here are some relevant topic categories to check out: Stress Management: covers stress management fundamentals, stress and work performance, and strategies to relieve stress. Health and Wellness: includes dealing with difficult emotions and life events, exercise, forming healthy habits, mental health awareness in the workplace, positive psychology fundamentals, and positive psychology in the workplace. Resilience: features content on resilience fundamentals, building career resilience, leadership and resilience, emotional and physical resilience, and thriving through challenges. Be sure to also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn and come back to E-Learning Heroes for more advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.Free Webinar: Secrets to 95% Safety Training Satisfaction
It’s here, it’s free, and now, it’s on demand! Our best-of webinar replay is here: Discover how a leader in safety training achieved 95% learner satisfaction and adeptly handles shifting compliance needs. We think you’ll love this guest’s tips for getting real results with e-learning. About the guest: Irish Rugby Football Union This fan-favorite interview features Colin Moran, National Training and Education Manager at the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU). The IRFU is the national governing body for rugby in Ireland. Colin’s team creates training for hundreds of teams across the country. Their learning audience includes everyone from elite and recreational athletes to volunteers, medics, coaches, and referees. Managing such a diverse audience makes it challenging to ensure that training is relevant and engaging for all. Learning Luminaries: On-demand webinar In this webinar, you can expect to learn how the IRFU training team reduces administrative work and adapts their training to different learner needs. You’ll also discover: Why and how the IRFU got stakeholder buy-in to transform their paper- and slide-based training into interactive e-learning. Online training tips and tools the IRFU uses to quickly deliver vital regulatory updates to game staff, volunteers, and players. A needs-based, learner-centered approach to training design that’s led to 95% learner satisfaction. You’ll also get a sneak peek of a microlearning course Colin’s team created to prevent head injuries and quickly respond to regulatory changes. Ready to tackle your training challenges and get inspiration from a fellow e-learning pro? Watch the free on-demand webinar here.What You Need to Know About Encouraging Your Learners to Pay Attention
You’re in a meeting with some stakeholders discussing a new e-learning course on a really dull topic. Obviously, you have questions for them and ideas to share, but you quickly realize that all they want you to do is to take a Subject Matter Expert’s 200-slide PowerPoint and put it on the LMS. No attempt to pare down the content or align it with the training goal. No reimagining the source material to add interest or engagement. You want to object to this approach because you know it’s dull and pointless. Learners aren’t going to pay attention to, let alone learn from, four hours of auto-advance lecture material. So maybe, in the interest of gaining more control and creative leeway, this is a good time to share the rather shocking claim that human attention spans are rapidly decreasing, down from twelve seconds in the year 2000 to just eight seconds today. That means our attention spans are even shorter than that of a goldfish! Holy cow! Well, now you have everyone’s attention. While I’m no expert on brain science or attention span, this claim has always struck me as being a little … pardon the pun … fishy. And sure enough, a few minutes of internet sleuthing confirms that not only is human attention span not fully understood—neither are goldfish attention spans! So it seems the oft-cited claim that humans only have an eight-second attention span isn’t actually backed up by evidence. It’s a myth, and it’s one that learning professionals have relied upon for years, usually with the honorable intent of winning the battle against dull e-learning. Unfortunately, perpetuating this hyperbolic claim—one that drips of confirmation bias and oversimplifies some pretty complex topics—can also paint you and your training team into a credibility corner over time, as your organization realizes that: 1) they drove themselves to work in an hour of traffic today, so they must have more than an eight-second attention span, and 2) simply making something shorter doesn’t mean people will pay attention to it or learn anything from it. So that leaves us with two big questions: What can you say to your stakeholders? And what are some credible, evidence-backed techniques you can use to help your learners pay attention? I decided to pose these questions to an expert in this area, so I sat down with Julie Dirksen, founder of Usable Learning and author of Design for How People Learn and Talk to the Elephant. The rest of this article is the highlights reel of our decidedly nerdy conversation. On the Topic of Attention Spans Me: Obviously, we can’t really process or recall information we haven’t paid attention to, therefore attention must be important for learning. Can you talk a little more about that? Julie: Attention is an important factor for many kinds of learning—but not all. Take learning to play the guitar, for instance. It involves skill-based practice and you need to focus while you are first learning a skill, but your mind can wander while you’re doing ongoing practice—for example, scales—to build your muscle memory. People can learn certain tasks through repetition, automating their behaviors and movements so they become unconscious. But at first, you need to pay close attention. After a while, you’re good. Me: So if there are different kinds of learning, does that also mean there are different degrees of attention? Julie: Patti Shank has written some really useful articles on attention, and she points out that there are five different kinds of attention spans, each requiring a different level of effort. Focused attention is involuntary—like reacting to a loud noise or a touch—so it’s a no-brainer. But as willpower becomes a bigger factor, the level of effort increases. Once you’re asking learners to pay attention to two things at once (i.e., divided attention), the level of effort becomes more difficult. On the Topic of Immediacy Me: I know there are lots of ways to get people’s attention, but which ones work the best? Julie: One of the most powerful ways to get people to pay attention is to create a sense of immediacy. So, if I ask how interested you are in watching a five-minute video about printer repair right now, your interest is probably zero. But if I asked you that same question when your printer is broken and it’s 5 o’clock on a Friday and you need to print out your timesheet and turn it in before you can leave work, you’re going to be much more interested in watching that printer repair video. That’s because it’s relevant to your current situation and there’s a sense of urgency to it. People don’t pay attention to the video because it’s flashier—they pay attention because it’s immediately useful. Me: So how can I create that same sense of urgency in a typical e-learning course? Julie: Well, one thing you can do is give people a scenario they need to solve by using the information you’re giving them. This creates an immediate need for that information. On Interest and Engagement Me: Okay, so I get how needing to solve something would make paying attention to that information feel more urgent. But the topic of printer repair brings up another important factor for me: interest. Julie: Yeah, it may seem ridiculously obvious to say this, but it’s just a whole lot easier to pay attention to things that are interesting. And if you’re interested in something, your capacity to pay attention to it is almost unlimited, Me: But what about when the content you’re sharing is really boring? Julie: People can force themselves to pay attention to things that aren’t interesting. But I don’t think it’s an accident that we put attention into monetary terms—paying attention. Basically, when you’re asking people to spend their willpower on something boring, that comes at a price. Most of the limits we talk about aren’t about how long people can pay attention, but that’s probably almost unlimited. The limits are more about how long people will force themselves to pay attention to something they don’t find interesting. I wouldn’t bet on that being longer than twenty minutes, and it might only be a minute or even a few seconds. If your training is always about delivering information—rattling off dos and don’ts or dictating policies and procedures—rather than giving folks a chance to get hands-on, make decisions, and practice their skills—there’s nothing interesting about that. You’re missing out on an opportunity to engage them. Engagement with your material helps people pay attention. On Importance Me: When I think about training that tends to lack engagement, I also think about things like compliance training that’s designed to address “what if” scenarios—things that could put the operation at great risk but happen relatively rarely. These types of courses are important for many reasons, but that sense of immediacy and interest isn’t really there. Julie: A lot of folks work in orgs where they’re told that everything they’re given is important. This course is mission-critical. Understanding this information over here is vital. Fatigue just settles in and people eventually find none of it worth their attention. Think about ways we can signal importance. Social proof—what others in the organization are doing with the information you’ve given them, how it’s made them better at their job—things like that definitely grab people’s attention and demonstrate that the information you’re sharing is important. However, text-heavy screens lacking visual design, learning objectives that are written in instructional design jargon—these are ways of signaling that the information you’re sharing isn’t important or useful. People instinctively know that if it was really important and useful, you would’ve made some effort to make it easier, more professional-looking, more relevant and personal. If something is genuinely useful or interesting, people probably won’t have to struggle to pay attention to it. Summary For those of you who’ve read Julie’s book or attended her sessions at industry events, you might be familiar with one of her favorite catchphrases, “One of the primary responsibilities of instructional design is the ruthless management of cognitive load.” It strikes me that encouraging your learners to pay attention requires some pretty ruthless management. Not only does the content you’re sharing and how you’re sharing it need to respect the demands on your learner’s time and attention, but that content also needs to be useful and engaging in a way that signals its importance. If you enjoyed this topic, there are lots of industry pros in addition to Julie who are talking about the science behind attention span, memory, and so much more. Check out folks like Clark Quinn and Patti Shank, to name two. You can also learn more about the backstory behind the goldfish/attention span myth in this video from Julie or by visiting her site, Designbetterlearning.com. What are you doing to encourage your learners to pay attention? Share your thoughts with me in a comment, below. I’d love to hear what’s working for you! New to e-learning? Sign up for our E-Learning 101 email course, a series of expertly-curated articles that'll get you up to speed with course development.
