At Lessonly, we’re continuing to learn more about learning. The more we know how our software helps people learn, the better we empower them to do their jobs better. In our journey so far, one particular thing has helped us more than any book, talk, or experiment: It’s feedback.
Feedback provides a crucial component to your learning program, too. So, we’re excited to make feedback a key component of our December Release
Lesson Collaboration
When you first create a lesson, it’s never as good as it should be. There’s a reason why books don’t get released in their first draft form, why movies get reshot and edited, why the word prototype exists.
We’ve noticed some of our customers were building first drafts of lessons in Google Docs, and we asked them why. The simple answer was collaboration. The ability to discuss the work with your peers before you took it into Lessonly was vital, so we’ve added it into Lessonly.
Now, every lesson owner has a place to chat about creating great lessons, to give and receive feedback, to be better and quicker. Many companies choose Google Docs for training because collaboration isn’t prevalent in the LMS space, but we’re changing that.
It’s time to bring the discussion to your content, not bring your content to the discussion.
Ask the Expert
Collaboration allows lesson owners to use feedback earlier in the creation process, but what about the Learners? Before, the Creator of a lesson solicited feedback by including contact information or an open response question. Learners couldn’t directly ask questions or get clarification. Ask the Expert lets lesson owners assign an expert to a lesson. This person is the subject matter expert, the person who knows the information best. While going through a lesson, a Learner submits a comment via the Ask the Expert icon, which sends an email directly to the expert.
Learners ask to clarify a point they don’t understand, elaborate on something they need more detail on, or update a fact that may no longer be true. It shortens the feedback loop between the teacher and Learner, creating better learning programs faster.
It also promotes one of our key recommendations about creating a learning program. After creating a lesson, send it out to 5% of the total population that will be seeing the content (or a subset if it’s a smaller group). Let them provide feedback, improve it, then send it out to the entire group. This initial test prevents errors missed during editing and make the learning experience better for the Learner, who gets a more polished experience.
Note: Lesson Collaboration and Ask the Expert are available in Plus, Growth, and Enterprise packages.
Randomized Questions
Interactivity in Lessons engages your Learners and finds knowledge gaps or strengths. Questions are one of the easiest ways to do this, and we’ve now added Randomized Questions to make the insights you get from them even more powerful.
Randomized Questions allow Creators to write a list of different questions in a Lesson. When a Learner reaches that point, Lessonly will randomly choose one of those questions to ask. You’ll see many benefits to this, but here are a couple of our favorites:
- A/B test for knowledge gaps—Different questions give better insights into your Learners’ understanding of material. A/B testing gives Creators new ways of asking about a topic and gives them deeper insights into which parts of a subject their Learners are struggling with.
- Appropriately challenge Learners—If Learners get a question wrong their first time through, they’ll now be tested in a different way when they go back through the Lesson instead of seeing the same question again.
With Randomized Questions, you get better feedback from your Learners by varying how you test their knowledge. Especially in larger teams, you gain a richer understanding of your Learners’ mastery of a subject.
Note: Randomized Questions are available in Growth and Enterprise packages.
Feedback is King
Feedback should be ingrained across your company’s learning program. Whether it’s between Lesson Creators while building a lesson, between a Learner and an expert, or through richer feedback from questions, we’re building Lessonly to make the feedback loops shorter, and insights deeper. We’re excited to see how you use these new features to better your learning program, and we hope you’ll share it with us so we continue to make Lessonly the best learning software for your team.
