Avoiding Hitting the Wall: Setting the Right Pace for Learning

Hit the Wall: (verb)

1. To become suddenly and extremely fatigued, especially when participating in an endurance sport, such as running.

2. To lose effectiveness suddenly or come to an end.

I have a very unique perspective on the risks of falling behind in on online course. Currently, I work as an Instructional Designer and design online learning courses and curriculum for a large hospitality company. That’s my day job. When I get home, I turn on my computer to go to school online for my master’s degree. It makes for a pretty full day and some late nights.

In my work, I’ve had the opportunity to create a wide variety of eLearning, instructor-led, and blended courses for different roles and departments. When I create these courses, I have to balance what the business needs from the learning activity, what the student needs to learn, and make sure that the business doesn’t suffer from the learners being “off the job.” What this means is that sometimes I have a short amount of time in which to stuff a large amount of information into someone’s head.

On the flip side, as a student in my graduate course, I feel the pain I’m sure my learners feel as I try to remember all the information I learn each week in my courses. Sometimes the work and the readings and the discussion postings and the blog posts feel overwhelming and I have to push myself to stay on top of everything.

So, how do we find the balance between making online learning fast and informative and pacing out online learning so that learners don’t get left behind? I believe there are some simple steps that course designers/instructors can take to create a pace that supports both rapid learning and effective online learning:

1. Take a long hard look at your content before you start building out your class or course. What is essential content and what is “nice to have” but not 100% needed? Ask for an outside opinion if you can’t decide if certain content will be helpful to learners.

2. Evaluate how each type of learner is going to interact with the content. Do they need to learn it all in one sitting or can it be pared down into more bite-sized modules?

3. Evaluate how familiar your learners are with the delivery method and how good are their general learning skills. Will they be comfortable with the depth of the content and how it is presented? Will they need follow-up learning activities after they’ve completed each module or lesson?

4. Check the clock and the calendar to determine how long each class or activity will take to complete. Will the pace you’re setting challenge your learners or leave them breathless or confused? Are you spending too much time on the details that learners miss the big picture?

5. Make sure you content is exciting and interesting enough that learners want to learn it. Create a sense of momentum and rhythm that keeps learners moving and engaged. Will they stick around to the end if they’re falling asleep in the middle?

6. Create deliberate time for reflection. Learners need time to absorb what they’ve learned and mentally file it away in the correct places so they have room to learn more.

7. Follow-up! If you haven’t heard from a learner/student/participant in a while, reach out to them to check-up.

Will these steps catch every learner who is falling behind? Probably not, but it will help online courses become more user-friendly, accessible to a wider audience, and manageable for learners in an increasingly busy world.