Online courses: designing interactive activities

Why interactivity changes an online course

A course made up solely of slides or videos may provide few op­por­tun­it­ies to re­spond or apply learn­ing. Ques­tions, path­way choices and case stud­ies invite learners to act; their effect on un­der­stand­ing and en­gage­ment de­pends on their rel­ev­ance and should be eval­u­ated.

After an ex­plan­a­tion, ask learners to recall a concept without re­view­ing the ma­ter­i­al, then provide feed­back. Dun­losky and col­leagues’ review ex­am­ines prac­tice test­ing and dis­trib­uted prac­tice in the con­texts stud­ied [1]. It does not prove the ef­fect­ive­ness of every form of in­ter­activ­ity or of Di­dacticBot.

Essential tools for an interactive experience

Interactive video at the centre

Em­bed­ded quizzes, branch­ing scen­ari­os or voice in­ter­ac­tion may be op­tions, de­pend­ing on the tool’s fea­tures and the course’s needs. These op­tions do not ne­ces­sar­ily mean that the video adapts to a learner’s dif­fi­culty; see DidacticBot for training providers for the fea­tures ac­tu­ally offered.

Embedded quizzes and assessments

A ques­tion can ask learners to re­cog­nise a concept, ex­plain their reas­on­ing or apply a rule. Choose the format ac­cord­ing to what you want to ob­serve and provide feed­back on the answer; mul­tiply­ing in­ter­ac­tion types is not an ob­ject­ive in itself.

Educational gamification

Points, badges, lead­er­boards and mis­sions are pos­sible mech­an­ics. They may or may not suit the audi­ence and con­text; design them around the ob­ject­ives and check that they do not dis­tract from learn­ing.

To dis­tin­guish a ques­tion, an activ­ity and a sim­u­la­tion, ex­plore the principles and approaches of interactive e-learning. DidacticBot serious games provide real ex­amples of scen­ario-based activ­it­ies; se­lec­tion should start with the ob­ject­ive to be de­veloped.

Designing a learner-centred pathway

Per­son­al­isa­tion, storytelling and varied formats are design choices to test against the ob­ject­ives. Usage data and qual­it­at­ive feed­back can guide im­prove­ments without, on their own, meas­ur­ing learn­ing. See research on active learning and its limitations.

Start with a decision and the errors it may involve

Choose a single work­place de­cision before se­lect­ing an in­ter­act­ive format. Write down the in­form­a­tion avail­able to the learner, the pos­sible ac­tions and the con­sequences to ex­am­ine. Gather plaus­ible errors from the sub­ject-matter expert, then ex­plain what makes them tempt­ing. An activ­ity be­comes in­struct­ive when these errors reveal reas­on­ing that needs cor­rec­tion, not when it adds a click after every screen. The ini­tial de­liv­er­able fits on one sheet: ob­ject­ive, de­cision, clues, common error, suc­cess cri­terion and planned feed­back.

Fic­tion­al ex­ample: in an ap­plic­a­tion-pro­cessing ser­vice, the learner must decide wheth­er they can pro­ceed with an in­com­plete case file. The scen­ario provides the avail­able doc­u­ments and au­thor­ised pro­ced­ure without as­sum­ing any ex­tern­al rule. A cor­rect answer iden­ti­fies the miss­ing doc­u­ment and jus­ti­fies the next action. A “con­tin­ue” button is there­fore in­suf­fi­cient to ob­serve the skill. First pre­pare the ex­pec­ted reas­on­ing on paper; then choose between a short answer, a jus­ti­fied se­lec­tion or a sim­u­la­tion ac­cord­ing to what the tool can ac­tu­ally cap­ture.

Write a response, feedback and retry loop

For every plaus­ible answer, write feed­back con­tain­ing three ele­ments: the rel­ev­ant cri­terion, its ap­plic­a­tion to the case in­form­a­tion and an in­vit­a­tion to act. “In­cor­rect, try again” con­veys little; im­me­di­ately re­veal­ing the whole solu­tion can also remove the op­por­tun­ity to think. Provide gradu­ated help: start by point­ing out the over­looked clue, then give a fuller ex­plan­a­tion if ne­ces­sary. Feed­back must be avail­able without re­ly­ing solely on colour, sound or an­im­a­tion.

Pre­pare a second case that uses the same prin­ciple with dif­fer­ent data. Re­peat­ing ex­actly the same ques­tion may check memory of the cor­rec­tion rather than ap­plic­a­tion of the rule. In our fic­tion­al ex­ample, change the miss­ing doc­u­ment and add ir­rel­ev­ant in­form­a­tion while main­tain­ing a com­par­able level of com­plex­ity. The de­liv­er­able is a story­board of the com­plete loop: in­struc­tions, re­sponse, help, retry and stop­ping cri­terion. Check that the error branch does not lead to a dead end and that the learner can resume after an in­ter­rup­tion.

Introduce retrieval without overinterpreting the research

In their study published in Science on 15 February 2008, Karpicke and Roedi­ger stud­ied for­eign-lan­guage vocab­u­lary learn­ing among uni­vers­ity stu­dents: re­peated test­ing after ini­tial suc­cess sup­por­ted delayed recall under the con­di­tions stud­ied. This ex­per­i­ment does not demon­strate that any quiz im­proves a com­plex work­place skill. It offers a spe­cif­ic reason to ex­am­ine active re­triev­al, dis­tinct from simply en­coun­ter­ing in­form­a­tion re­peatedly.

You can derive a design hy­po­thes­is from this: after an ini­tial sup­por­ted activ­ity, plan a later re­triev­al op­por­tun­ity without dis­play­ing the source ma­ter­i­al im­me­di­ately. Ex­plain its pur­pose and provide feed­back af­ter­wards. Choose the in­ter­val ac­cord­ing to the path­way and op­por­tun­it­ies for ap­plic­a­tion, without present­ing a single in­ter­val as sci­en­tific­ally op­tim­al. Dis­tin­guish this re­triev­al activ­ity from a cer­ti­fic­a­tion as­sess­ment: the stakes and ad­min­is­tra­tion con­di­tions differ. Pro­duce a map of prac­tice op­por­tun­it­ies show­ing what is re­called, when, with what help and to inform which in­struc­tion­al de­cision.

Acceptance-test the reasoning as well as the branches

First test every path­way with the ex­pec­ted an­swers, then look for un­ex­pec­ted routes: double-click­ing, empty re­sponses, going back, clos­ing and re­sum­ing. A tech­nic­ally func­tion­al de­cision tree may con­tain an in­struc­tion­al in­con­sist­ency, such as feed­back citing in­form­a­tion not yet presen­ted. Con­duct two sep­ar­ate re­views, one of con­tent and one of nav­ig­a­tion. Record each defect in a log with its sever­ity and ex­pec­ted cor­rec­tion; do not re­lease a branch that teaches an in­cor­rect rule.

During a sup­por­ted trial, ask the learner to ex­plain their choice, then ob­serve wheth­er they can handle the second case. Record the help re­ceived so that in­de­pend­ent suc­cess is not con­fused with guided suc­cess. Clicks, time spent and points earned shed light on usage but do not re­place this ana­lys­is. The final ac­cept­ance-test file brings to­geth­er the story­board, answer keys, nav­ig­a­tion tests and reas­on­ing ob­ser­va­tions. It helps decide which in­ter­ac­tions to retain, sim­pli­fy or remove, rather than ret­ro­spect­ively jus­ti­fy­ing every se­lec­ted fea­ture.

Key takeaways

An in­ter­act­ive course is de­signed around its ob­ject­ives, learners and access con­straints. Videos, quizzes, scen­ari­os and game mech­an­ics are op­tions to select and eval­u­ate, not a guar­an­tee of re­ten­tion or per­form­ance.