How to make online training more engaging

by Brock Horning | February 2025

If you want learners to retain information and truly upskill themselves, they must be effectively engaged with the learning experience. This is especially true for eLearning, where there are no instructors to address knowledge gaps and tailor learning sessions accordingly.

A successful eLearning journey must be engaging, memorable and spark curiosity. It must allow learners to go at their own pace yet encourage the self-motivation to take all this new information in. This can feel like a big challenge but a well-crafted online training course can do all this and more.

To start, let’s round up a few stats. Instructional videos have long been proven to get better learning outcomes than training manuals – 83% of people prefer instructional or informational content by watching a video but nearly 4 in 5 don’t give training videos their full attention. Interactive video is 81% more effective at keeping their attention, leading to better information retention.

Still from Precision TEFL’s online training course. Even simple moments of interaction can boost online training sessions

Thomas Mullet knew this when he took on the challenge of creating an eLearning course for Precision TEFL. An organization equipping aspiring teachers with the skills and knowledge needed to teach English as a foreign language.

“A real downside to online courses is that the linear setup means users can easily feel tempted to click through until the end. We wanted to move away from presentation slides and video playlists—both of which feel outdated and stifle the experience—and transition to something far more coherent and enjoyable to use.”

34% of people always click through linear training videos without watching. To combat this, Thomas turned to interactive video. Interactive training courses keep learners engaged by requiring regular responses. Giving learners agency means they can tailor their learning experiences and keep their journey relevant – increasing engagement. Ultimately, it turns them from passive viewers into active learners.

During interactive training videos and eLearning courses, learners are active participants – even if the interactivity is simply ‘choose the next module’. The simple act of selecting their preference from a multiple-choice menu encourages active engagement in the training video and subsequent learning material.

A decision moment from Precision TEFL’s online training course.

Returning to Thomas’ Precision TEFL course, the switch from passive to active learning was transformative. “120 hours is a long time, so it was vital that the course was varied in terms of the types of learning material that trainee teachers have access to. We developed scenario-based training to give users the option to navigate the learning materials with menus and sub-menus instead of being restricted to a linear learning experience.”

“It sounds simple but having three menu buttons to choose from instead of the standard ‘click to the next page’ button creates a fundamentally different experience from the learners’ point of view.”

And it’s this fundamental change that is increasing engagement in online training.

Where the magic happens. The Stornaway Story Map side-by-side with the final audience view.

Each learner is different and will be drawn to different elements of the course. Allow learners to follow their curiosity and experience the course in the order that makes sense to them. Look to create environments where learners are actively finding the knowledge for themselves.

Giving learners the freedom to explore a topic at their own pace and in a manner that suits them will boost engagement. However, this should be balanced with the structured guidance of effective teaching.

Let learners see how far they’ve come and split big topics into smaller chunks. Each module achieved can be automatically ticked off and splitting it out in this way makes learning seem less overwhelming.

Use interactive project data to analyse how viewers move through the learning modules and track against their learner profile. This not only offers feedback to the learners but will give learning designers invaluable insights and reveal how to improve the online training videos to get even better results.

We pride ourselves on designing an interactive video platform that anyone can quickly pick up and play. So it’s lovely when we hear this kind of feedback from our creators:

“I loved how relatively easy it is to use. I have zero coding or programming knowledge, so finding a platform that didn’t require that type of expertise, and that was highly intuitive and logical, was a lifesaver. Once I worked out how Stornaway functioned, I was able to teach my wife, who then took charge of all the mapping, button creation, and uploading. Without her, I would never have completed the project, so the fact that it was so easy to teach her to use it really made the project viable.”

And the most helpful feature? “The ability to update individual videos without having to take the map offline. It’s a simple swap-in, swap-out process that makes minor edits and adjustments possible and stress-free.”