The sign of a truly successful learning experience is when students can apply their knowledge to a new situation or under a different circumstance.

This concept, called Transfer of Learning, is key to enhancing student outcomes. We sat down with the team from Course Studio to chat about how they’re aiming to boost the application of course concepts with their new interactive workbook tool: Wobo.

What is “Transfer of Learning”?

Transfer of learning occurs when a student engages with the material and applies their newly-learned knowledge to their work or life, and it’s one of the most challenging elements to include in an online course.

How can you be sure that your learners can actually use the knowledge you give them?

How can you be sure they feel a return on investment in taking your course?

How can you ensure a seamless transfer of learning?

Research shows that incorporating problems and exercises allows “learners to create connections between theory and practice to develop the required ability to handle complex challenges of real-life situations”.

So, to make sure you’re fully including these concepts in your course, you need to include both theory (your content) and practice (interactive exercises).

Why should I stop using PDFs in my online course?

Course creators often get tripped up on the very first step of creating a fillable PDF: designing it. PDFs are difficult to plan and design in a way that’s consistent with your brand and actually works. When it’s time to update it, you have to re-design, re-upload, and ask your students to download the newest version. Students end up with a mess of separate files they need to find when they come back to course, and they need to leave the course player to fill out responses.

With a PDF, you lose all visibility into student progress, and you’re significantly limited in the types of interactions you can provide.

“Asking students to download and complete a workbook in a different window really kills the flow of the course player experience” says Erin, product manager at Wobo. “We decided to build a product to address this because in our research, we learned it was essential that activities seamlessly integrated with the course delivery experience in order to keep students engaged and interested.”

What is Wobo?

Wobo is an interactive digital workbook that incorporates the concepts of transfer of learning into any LMS by allowing instructors to create interactive exercises that can be interspersed throughout the course experience.

“By building interactivity into an online course, instructors can reinforce learning material and improve student outcomes, even at a large scale.” according to Erin. “LMS systems tend to focus on assessments and assignments, but we set out to build a tool that caters to course creators who want to improve transfer of learning by incorporating moments for students to pause, reflect, and apply their learning.”

Key Wobo Features

  • Include interactive exercises in your online course to reinforce the learning material (fill in the blanks, custom tables, lists and drop-downs, and more).
  • Protect your IP with watermarks and the ability to prevent text copying.
  • Push updates live instantly to all students.
  • Integrate the workbook inside your course player to retain students’ attention.
  • Support visually impaired students with accessibility features like alt text for images and screen reader compatibility.
  • Download the workbook into one document, even if you’ve embedded sections into your course separately.
  • Thinkific App: single sign-on means students never need to log in, but get to retain their answers.
  • Collaborate with your team and customize their edit/view permissions.
  • Workbooks are secure and private to each individual student.

If you want to improve your student retention rates, help students apply and interpret concepts they’ve learned, or simply just want to make your course more fun, we highly recommend checking out Wobo.

 

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