Let SkillBuilder® Solve Your Motivation Problems

Shauna Carson

A recent research review concluded that motivation "is critical to learning and achievement across the life span in both informal settings and formal learning environments." Hardly a surprising pronouncement, but one that's easy to overlook in the day-to-day business of corporate learning and development, especially when you're considering more technical matters such as selecting a learning management system (LMS). But motivation matters, even when you're thinking about the software that will organize, administer and deliver your learning programs. Since technology plays a role in motivating learners, let's take a look at what SkillBuilder® offers.

Ways to Enhance Motivation With SkillBuilder®

Ease of Use

While ease of use doesn't directly motivate learners, nothing demotivates them faster than technological struggles. SkillBuilder® offers learners an intuitive, user-friendly interface for all their needs, allowing them to register themselves (if you choose that option), browse course catalogs, confirm the status of their assigned learning paths and items and check for new assignments. Single sign-on simplifies log-on and prevents delays from lost passwords.

Flexible Assessments

Fear of failure is another powerful demotivator, as I mentioned in Motivate People to Register for Your Online Courses. Flexible assessments can help learners overcome their fears. Let learners set their own exam schedule with the following SkillBuilder® features:

  • Secure online testing
  • Advanced exam bank setup generates an unpredictable question set for each learner
  • Options for random question and distractor order reduce the risks of asynchronous testing
  • Customizable settings for number of exam attempts permitted

Tracking and Reporting

Pre-training prompting and positive post-training feedback can both be motivating for employees. SkillBuilder® has extensive tracking and reporting capabilities to tell you who's just accomplished something they should be recognized for and who needs a reminder to complete assigned learning.

Additionally, you can leverage tracking and reporting to learn more about what motivates your employees:

  • Are there patterns to who's taking voluntary training and who isn't? Can you identify what's driving learners and use what you've discovered to motivate others?
  • Where are you losing learners? What aspects of your content need to be made more engaging?

Automated Notifications

Sometimes the best way to motivate learners is by making training mandatory. This strategy has its downsides and should be exercised judiciously, but it can be effective, especially for learners who may mistakenly believe that they don't need training. SkillBuilder® can help send your learners a motivating nudge by allowing you to set up automated notifications. These notifications can let them know when a learning path has been assigned, when it is about to expire, or when it has expired, and more. Learners can receive these reminders when they log in to their training, or you can send them directly to their inbox (aside from the motivation factor, this is also great when you're on the hook for ensuring compliance with industry-regulated training!)

Completion Certificates

As we've mentioned before, formal recognition of accomplishments is a great motivator. SkillBuilder® features customizable, branded completion certificates that can be awarded at the end of any part of a learning program.

Collaborative and Social Learning

With SkillBuilder®, make learning a team effort. Make use of your employees' intrinsic motivation to model their peers' learning behavior and to avoid letting the team down.

SkillBuilder® supports multiple forms of social learning:

  • Seminar and classroom session scheduling and tracking
  • Webinar scheduling and hosting of pre-recorded webinars
  • Preconfigured API connection to Disqus for message board interactions

Gamification

Competition, personal improvement, recognition, a sense of obligation to one's team - all these motivational factors are available and enhanced through gamification. SkillBuilder® offers a full range of gamified features, including:

Open Badges

These are "verifiable, portable digital badges with embedded metadata about skills and achievements." You can learn more about these badges and their benefits in LMS: 6 Benefits of Incorporating Open Badges. Consider awarding Open Badges to your learners for major accomplishments. As well as recognizing the learner's accomplishments, the badges can be displayed elsewhere, letting learners revel in their glory across the web.

Point Scoring

Award points for completing learning items or acing assessments. Points are both a recognition of accomplishment and an impetus for competition. Who on the team can score the highest? Which team can collect the most points? Many of those who are less competitive will still get a boost from watching their points accumulate.

Leaderboards

Bragging rights are an excellent motivator. SkillBuilder® leaderboards display top point scorers, giving the top individuals those bragging rights and everyone else something to shoot for.

Tiers

Another metric in learner progress, especially when it comes to training, is the proportion of assigned learning each learner has completed. SkillBuilder® offers six tiers: Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. The percentage of completed training required to reach each tier is custom set by each organization.

Conclusion

In this article, I've reviewed the many SkillBuilder® features you can use to motivate your learners. Start by overcoming demotivation with ease of use and flexible assignments, then respond to your learners and assess your content with reporting and tracking. Finally, up your game with completion certificates, social and collaborative learning and gamification. Which of these are what you need to inspire your audience?

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Shauna Carson

Shauna graduated from the University of Toronto in 2002 with a Master of Arts in English before moving home to Calgary to work in the fast-paced, detail-oriented oil and gas industry. Now certified as a technical writer, Shauna is comfortable writing in a variety of styles, and for a variety of audiences.