How To Make Online Learning Fun

How to Make Online Learning Fun

Don’t Just Show or Tell—Do

I’ve written a lot about ways to make connection and engagement easy in a virtual context. For this chapter, I want to specifically unpack how to make online learning really fun. 

I’m going to keep it short and share a simple but brilliant framework. Understanding and applying this will go a long toward making virtual learning more enjoyable for your students—whoever they are. The most important thing to remember to make online learning fun is to do rather than just show.

I was working with a university career center, helping them transform a two-day, in-person academy boot camp that they had for sophomores into an all-remote, online learning context. They were so excited about the in-person program. It was going to be experiential and hands-on. The flow was built to be fun. But after learning they had to do it all virtually, they felt let down.

When they came to me, I encouraged them to change the way they looked at this shift to an online learning context. 

There’s so much opportunity with virtual learning because everybody is on their device, with access to the internet—which holds a library of infinite information. In about seven keystrokes, you can find anything you want and learn more about it. 

Learning by Doing

There’s so much learning that can happen by doing. Specifically for this group, one of the things we talked about was a resume writing workshop. Originally, they were going to have everybody print out their resumes for the boot camp, so they could get feedback in person. There was movement and live feedback. It felt dynamic. 

We talked about using virtual breakouts and screen-sharing. Students could share their resumes as a Microsoft Word document or through Google Docs or another program, and have their resume edited live. They could make changes based on feedback from a coach, all online. Students could actually leave the workshop with a polished, edited resume; whereas in person, they’d leave with just one more thing to add to their to-do list. 

Can you imagine how lousy an online learning course would feel if it was just telling you how to create your resume?

Some showing is fine. These chapters and my YouTube videos are showing rather than doing because it’s asynchronous learning. 

But when you’re synchronous, you can invite people into an experience, rather than just talking about maybe doing things later. With that in mind, we transformed that resume writing workshop into an experience where everybody would actually end up with a polished resume that they could use to land an internship or job. 

That kind of breakthrough created what I would call “deep fun” in online learning. The satisfaction that a student gets from making real progress toward a career goal or an objective they’ve set for themselves is irreplaceable. The more we keep both in balance, the more engaging our online learning will be. Next time you go to teach a concept, ask yourself, “how could we do this live with the group?”

I find with that intention and just a pinch of creativity, you can radically redesign your content for contribution, not just consumption.