Educators know that tailoring teaching approaches to meet the unique needs of individual learners is crucial for keeping them engaged in the learning process. The same is true for associations offering professional development courses to their members.
When associations understand members' interests and learning objectives, they can create effective and engaging learning activities. Associations can utilize multiple methods to gather information about their members, including focus groups, surveys, and their AMS and LMS, and analyze the data.
In this way, you can create more effective, engaging, and valuable courses for your members. From increased member engagement and revenue to improved learning outcomes, customizing content offers many benefits to associations and their members.
This blog post explores strategies for gathering information on your association members' interests and tailoring your course offerings to meet their needs.
Why Understanding Members' Interests Is Important for Better Learning Activities
If you want to keep your members engaged in your association's learning program, a one-size-fits-all approach to course offerings won't cut it. Instead, you can increase member satisfaction by providing tailored learning opportunities to your members.
Here's an example to illustrate this point. After conducting surveys and analyzing membership data, a healthcare association discovers that many of its members want to learn more about telemedicine. As a result, it uses its LMS to create courses in different formats to accommodate the diverse learning preferences of its members.
Since the association took the time to understand its members' needs, the course was a hit, with high attendance rates and positive feedback. The association sees an increase in member engagement and satisfaction, and members feel more confident in their understanding of telemedicine, resulting in a win for the association and its members.
Tailoring courses to meet members' needs goes beyond increasing engagement; it can also lead to improved learning outcomes, increased retention of information, and a greater mastery of skills. It shows your members that the association is committed to their professional growth and development, which can go a long way toward growing and retaining your membership base.
How to Learn about Association Members' Interests
Before you can tailor your learning activities to your members' needs and interests, you'll have to get to know them better. There are many ways to go about doing this.
Surveys are among the most effective and efficient methods. Associations can use their LMS to conduct periodic surveys to ask members to rate their interests in various topics, learning activities, and resources. They can then analyze this quantitative data to reveal trends in members' preferences over time.
Focus groups are also how associations can delve deeper into members' interests. For example, you can gather a representative group of members at different career stages in a series of focus groups to learn about their unique challenges and aspirations.
Associations can get valuable information about their members' interests by using the reporting and analytic function on their LMS to track metrics about how engaged members are in the learning activities offered.
Tailoring Learning Activities to Meet Members' Needs
Once you understand your members' interests and needs, it's time to begin building a tailored learning program to help them achieve their goals. You can do this by offering courses in various formats and creating content on specific topics and areas of interest.
For example, some members may require specific training in niche areas, and by getting to know their learning objectives, you can provide classes that meet these needs. Other members may be looking for more general professional development opportunities. Also, be sure to consider members' skill levels and backgrounds when designing courses and offer courses at different levels to add value to members at all stages of their careers.
Associations must take into account all members' geographical and learning preferences when designing learning activities and include a mix of on-demand webinars, online classes with learning paths, and in-person workshops.
When associations take the time to get to know their members' interests, they can ensure that the courses that they offer are relevant and timely and help members achieve their goals.
Final Thoughts
Understanding association members' interests and customizing course offerings to meet their needs is the cornerstone of enhancing learning activities. This approach ensures relevance, increases engagement, and satisfies members' educational aspirations.
This strategy also fosters an environment conducive to ongoing learning and professional growth, enabling members to enhance their skills in their areas of interest. As associations endeavor to provide value, this member-centric focus becomes paramount.
By tailoring education to address the unique needs of their members, associations can promote engagement, increase satisfaction, and ultimately contribute to the sustained success of their members.
Elevate, the leading LMS for associations, enables professional educators to develop curricula, certifications, knowledge sharing, and social learning to help association members meet their learning objectives. Schedule a demo today to see how your association can use the platform to its advantage while delivering exceptional professional experiences.
