Career development and learning are two primary reasons that people join associations. Professional development and skill enhancement are vital for members to remain employable in a rapidly changing workforce environment. Associations have an opportunity to make a significant impact by helping members perform their jobs at a higher level and preparing them for the future.
Most association members must take professional education and training courses to comply with industry standards as part of their career progression. Associations can supplement on-the-job training with various learning activities to help them enhance their skills and make them more competitive in the workplace.
Read on to learn how to make learning activities impactful for association members.
Online Learning with Your Association's LMS
A learning management system (LMS) provides association members with a one-stop shop for all their learning needs. This type of platform simplifies the process of creating a continuing education program with engaging content and emulates in-person training with webinars and other video content.
Associations can also use these platforms to give members access to certifications that could help them advance in their careers. Within an LMS, association members can use a dedicated hub for their online learning content, where they can select courses relevant to their daily activities and goals.
An LMS also promotes collaboration and communication by making it easy for association members to connect with each other.
Hybrid Learning Opportunities
Over the past few years, associations have moved their learning content online. While that's an excellent way to connect with busy association members, a blended approach, combining in-person and online education, is an opportunity to engage in social learning.
A hybrid learning program means members can learn at their own pace while still benefiting from group work, shared experiences, and discussions. Associations can approach this by offering introductory-level training online with video content and conducting advanced sessions on-site.
Active Learning
Encouraging active learning is one of the easiest ways for associations to make learning impactful for their members. It requires association members to engage with the content that they're learning, promoting active thought. Instead of passively listening to a video, learners engage in various activities, including debates, discussions, and analyses, to develop their understanding of a subject matter.
There are many ways that associations can incorporate active learning into their education programs. For example, the speaker can ask poll questions during a lecture or presentation to encourage interaction. They can also send out a video for members to view before a webinar begins, to give them background on what will be covered.
Having this information at their disposal enables members to prepare ahead of time, formulate questions that they'd like to ask, and be prepared for discussions. Presenters can further engage members when the event is over by following up with an email that includes links to relevant articles, videos, or podcasts.
Interactive Content
Creating interactive content and encouraging active learning go hand in hand, both enabling learners to connect with learning material on a personal level. Instead of passively consuming content, they actively engage in it, which results in improved learning outcomes.
Interactive content captures learners' attention, helping to keep them engaged and avoid distractions. This type of content requires association members to complete an action or series of steps to receive the target information. That could include moving a mouse over an image to reveal something or clicking on a link.
Associations should consider enabling the gamification of learning topics or game-based learning to foster creativity and add fun to the learning process. You can incorporate gamification in many ways. For example, recognize members who frequently post on discussion boards within the LMS or give badges to members when they complete a learning module.
Another form of interactive content is incorporating varied scenarios to enable members to test their reactions to different situations. A significant benefit of interactive learning is that it offers association members immediate feedback, requiring them to respond to content and reinforcing their knowledge.
Since all of this is immersive and personalized, it leads to higher levels of engagement, increased motivation, and improved learning efficiency.
Microlearning
If you've ever tried to consume a large amount of information at one time, you know how challenging it can be to stay focused and remember what you've learned. Microlearning offers a solution to traditional learning, as it breaks learning tasks into small chunks instead of packing a large amount into a short timeframe.
Association members often don't have much time to dedicate to learning in a single sitting. By implementing microlearning, associations enable them to learn at a more manageable pace.
Conclusion
People look to associations to equip them with the educational experiences and skills that they need to make them more marketable and competitive in their field. Creating impactful learning activities for association members is an easy way to keep them engaged and help them reach their career goals and maximum potential.
Here at Cadmium, we make it easy for association educators to deliver personalized learning to members to keep them better engaged and improve content satisfaction. To see how we can help you better engage your association members, reach out to our expert team today!
