Watch engagement numbers rise when you introduce these strategies for active learning.
Learning isn’t hard because people don’t care — it’s hard because new conditions are fighting against us.
Learning engagement solutions have a long history, but what works hasn’t changed much at all. In ancient Greece, the Socratic method encouraged dialogue and debate that we see in live webinars, discussion forums, and classrooms. And in ancient China, Confucian learning emphasized real-world application, apprenticeships, and mentorship. All are approaches that still resonate today.
So, what has changed? Learning has become more depersonalized, and the internet is leading to information overload.
Before now, the industrial model of education introduced classrooms and employee learning with a fixed curriculum, large groups, and one-size-fits-all methods. Now, with an increasingly remote world, learning is more asynchronous and unstructured. Learners are more isolated and distracted than ever, reducing learning opportunities.
But without real-world connections, intrinsic motivation declines, making it even harder to engage with education and training.
These conditions have created new trends in learning engagement:
- 49% of employees say they don’t have time to spend learning
- 70% of learners are more motivated to learn when they use mobile devices instead of computers
- 33% of learners lack motivation to complete their training
- 25% to 54% of Gen Z K-12 students lack engaging school experiences
- Almost all online learners prefer to study at their own pace
Employees and students alike crave relevant, efficient, and lively learning experiences that compete with the rush of social media scrolling. The big question is: How do we deliver learning that meets these new conditions?
In this blog, discover everything you need to know about modern learning engagement. Learn what it is, how everyone benefits, the types of learning engagement, and how to tailor strategies for different learners.
Let’s kick it off with a definition.
What is learner engagement?
Learner engagement refers to the level of active participation and personal motivation that a learner shows in the learning process. Engaged learners understand why they need (or want) to grasp a topic, are eager for deeper insights, and actively seek out more information.
To identify an engaged learner, look for these indicators:
- Enthusiastic to ask questions and share insights
- Self-motivated to improve their understanding
- Proactive in applying learning to daily tasks
- Growth-oriented, so learning becomes routine
- Collaborative with peers to share knowledge
- Coachable and proactively asks for feedback
You might read this and be reminded of how challenging it is to foster genuine participation. But we’ve made significant progress in researching the brain and understanding how to motivate — or demotivate — learners.
In the Return on Intelligence podcast episode, How to create and measure the impact of L&D, learning expert Laura Overton shares that although we know much more about the brain than ever, we’re not applying this knowledge to learning. She emphasizes the importance of getting curious about our learners.
In the interview, she noted that we “have to understand what impact looks like for those that we're trying to engage rather than what impact looks like for us.” This begins with a deeper understanding of how and why our brains become motivated to learn.
Why is learner engagement important?
Engaging learning experiences aren’t just a nice-to-have. You need to capture their attention in a world full of distractions. From social media notifications to outdated course designs, several factors can hinder learning engagement. Understanding these challenges is the first step in creating learning experiences that motivate.
Learner engagement is impacted by:
- Limited attention spans: You’re competing with your learner’s phone notifications and TikTok rabbit holes.
- Cognitive overload: Adding more content without a clear strategy is a mistake. Learners can feel overwhelmed by their options when lacking guidance and structured goals. Too often, legacy courses are lengthy, challenging, and lack modern examples.
- Lack of intrinsic motivation: The ‘why’ behind each learning outcome is poorly communicated, distancing learners from a reason to participate. They’re left asking, “What’s in it for me?”
Learning not only correlates with our individual success but also translates into a better organizational impact. If your school’s reputation is slipping, learning engagement is your ticket to improving performance on standardized tests. And if you’re in corporate training, an engagement plan can turn your LMS into a strategic learning system (SLS), overcoming any plateaus or dips in L&D business outcomes.
Benefits of learner engagement
A well-designed learning journey hits all the marks for motivation, retention, and skill-building. Whether you’re a learner looking for a more personalized experience or an organization hoping to develop talent effectively, engagement remains the key to long-term success. Here are the benefits for learners and organizations.
Benefits for learners:
- More personal learning experiences: TikTok’s ‘For you’ page algorithm is tremendously popular because the feed is personalized to your interests. Learning engagement research shows similar trends with AI-powered personalized learning solutions improving performance scores by 8.1 points and increasing engagement by up to 42.3 minutes per session.
- It’s way less boring: Moments and delivery techniques that delight your learners will feed the persistence they need to keep learning.
- Easy-to-follow course design: What’s most engaging is a simple, digestible experience. Disorganized resource pages or irrelevant coursework can dampen your learner’s enthusiasm for completing a module.
- More support: It’s tough to learn in a vacuum. Opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, mentoring, or guided discussion can add inspiration and meaning to the learning process.
Benefits for organizations:
- Close skills gaps: More engagement leads to better knowledge retention. Extrinsic motivators, like gamification, can considerably improve recall and retention, giving learners more confidence to apply their knowledge.
- Develop their growth mindset: Personal improvement feels more attainable and manageable because engagement techniques reinforce their feelings of progress over time.
- Engage more learners: A variety of engagement strategies helps make learning appealing to different ways of thinking and stimulates interest in a topic. Approximately 15-20% of the world’s population shows signs of neurodivergence, including conditions on the autism spectrum, attention-deficit disorder, dyslexia, and dyspraxia, to name a few.
- Strengthen your learning culture: Continuous learning is a serious asset for businesses, non-profits, schools, or any organization seeking to thrive. A thriving learning culture makes your organization 92% more likely to be innovative and improves products, district grade standings, and administrative processes.
When learning is engaging, everyone wins. Learners stay motivated, absorb information more effectively, and feel supported in their growth. In turn, organizations reap the benefits from a culture of continuous improvement and bridging critical skills gaps.
The right learning strategies educate and inspire simultaneously. Why settle for anything less?
5 types of learner engagement and how to use them
It’s time to find your antidote to mediocre learning. These human-centered approaches to delivery will turn your mandatory content into engaging learning experiences.
1. Behavioral engagement
For turning passive learners into active ones
Everyone has their own preferences regarding what variables inspire them to learn. Think about a time when you had to adjust your behavior to meet a goal. Did you need a running group to train for a marathon? Or maybe you rewarded yourself for studying harder to earn a better grade? This is known as behavioral engagement.
Behavioral factors have the biggest impact on learner engagement. It’s about how much effort learners contribute to a learning environment. Do they participate in instructor-led activities? Are they attentive to a reading passage? Your learners’ level of engagement reflects their inner world: their emotions, thoughts, and social interactions. Factors such as their relationship with learning, personal life stress, or any life experiences will influence their investment in learning.
So, how do you cut through the noise and make learning relevant to them?
Try these strategies to inspire pro-learning behavior:
- Interactive activities: Incorporate group discussions, hands-on projects, and case studies to encourage active participation.
- Gamification: Use rewards, leaderboards, and challenges to motivate learners to stay engaged.
- Clear expectations: Set clear goals, timelines, and instructions to guide learners and keep them on track.
The key is to have variety in your teaching approach. It may ultimately be their choice to remain focused, motivated, and engaged in class or training sessions. But as learning specialists, you can influence learners’ behavior with tools for structured and friendly competition.
2. Cognitive engagement
For deeper knowledge retention
Cognitive engagement refers to how deeply learners process information. To truly absorb material, they must actively engage with and apply one concept at a time.
If there’s too much content to digest at once, learners will lose focus, leading to cognitive overload. Just like abandoning a complicated project, learners are less likely to stay engaged when information feels overwhelming or unrelatable. To avoid this, simplify the structure of your learning program to keep learners focused and engaged. Try these strategies for deeper engagement:
- Critical thinking exercises: Use problem-solving tasks, debates, and scenario-based learning to deepen engagement with learning outcomes.
- Real-world applications: Connect learning to real-life situations to make the content relevant and meaningful.
- Chunking content: Break information into smaller, digestible parts to reduce cognitive overload and enhance focus.
Microlearning is the best tool for breaking down your content into focused learning objectives. And if you add videos and infographics to maintain engagement, you can boost retention rates by as much as 20%.
3. Emotional engagement
For creating a fulfilling relationship with learning
Not every learning experience is empowering. For better or worse, a single teacher or professor can significantly impact your grades as a student. The same is true for employee training. Low assessment scores or cognitive differences may make individuals less likely to engage in training.
Emotional engagement develops positive mind-body responses to learning. By building resilience, reducing frustration, and creating a sense of purpose, you help learners stay motivated. Try these strategies to create a healthy learning environment:
- Storytelling: Use relatable stories and examples to create an emotional connection with the content.
- Celebrate achievements: Recognize learners’ progress with badges, certificates, or verbal praise to boost motivation.
- Supportive environment: Foster a safe, inclusive learning space where learners feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and experiences.
Another pro tip? Emotional upskilling. SAP Business Suite increased employee engagement by 6% after introducing emotional training. Courses in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social interaction also prepare your employees to be resilient to change and emotionally prepared to learn.
4. Self-directed engagement
For learners who need intrinsic motivation
A learning expert might have thousands of corporate learners or 30 students in a classroom, but does anyone have the time to support each individual’s needs? Not me!
Still, learners want a personal reason to make time to learn. Remember how self-awareness is important for learner engagement? Learners become more invested in the process when they understand their strengths and weaknesses. And when they can tie their efforts to a personal goal. This is self-directed engagement.
Your role is to leave room in your program structure for individual decision-making. For students, this might involve selecting an elective as part of their degree. Corporate learners can use this strategy, too. Try these strategies to encourage a growth mindset:
- Learner autonomy: Allow learners to choose their own learning paths, topics, or projects to increase their sense of control.
- Feedback opportunities: Encourage learners to ask questions, provide feedback, and share their ideas to actively shape their learning experience.
- Personalized learning: Adapt content to learners’ needs, interests, and skill levels through adaptive learning technologies or individualized learning plans.
Self-guided learning pathways are helpful, but career development ups the ante. Establish clear learning paths for different roles to promote leadership, encourage internal applications, and build a habit of continuous training.
5. Social engagement
To create a culture of learning
What’s the number one reason to invest in social engagement? Learners understand its value. 87% of employees identify social knowledge sharing as critical, resulting in an 85% increase in course completion rates. Whoa!
Try these strategies for social learning engagement:
- Peer collaboration: Encourage group projects, study groups, or peer reviews to enhance teamwork and social learning.
- Discussion forums: Create spaces (online or in-person) where learners can exchange ideas and ask questions.
- Modern mentorship programs: Use mentoring software to pair learners with mentors or peers for guidance and support.
Mentoring is no longer a stale obligation for unenthusiastic executives and young professionals. Modern mentoring is for all ages, addresses skills gaps, and is mutually beneficial for both the mentor and mentee. And combining coursework with mentoring? It’s a game-changer.
Strategies to engage different types of learners
To increase learner engagement, you must know your audience. Students, employees, customers, partners, and suppliers all have different motivations to engage with learning. Here are some tips and extra resources to get you started.
Students (K-12, higher education)
Most engaged by guided and interactive learning
Some teachers have a way of turning topics into a theatrical experience, making subjects that would otherwise bore students come alive. We can’t all be that lucky, but it’s more important than ever to keep their attention. For Gen Z students, six in 10 are most excited about school when their teacher presents the subject in an exciting and interesting way. By using data to modify learning content for each student, you can increase test scores by as much as 62%.
Try these strategies to engage more students:
- Interactive learning: Polls, gamification, quizzes, challenges
- Social learning: Discussion forums, debates, study groups
- Clear learning pathways: Milestones and certifications
- Real-world applications: Case studies, internships, projects
- On-the-go learning: Mobile-friendly access for flexibility
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em! 64% of students use their mobile devices for instructional purposes, so why not offer some resources that are mobile-friendly? Want tips on how to create engaging mobile learning content? Read the top ones from eLearning industry.
Enterprise learners (employees, corporate training)
Most engaged by career development and convenience
Enterprise learning has shifted its focus from compliance to talent enablement, resulting in significantly increased engagement. An impressive 8 in 10 people say that ongoing learning initiatives add purpose to their jobs. Their enthusiasm is an opportunity to improve retention, close skills gaps, and accelerate AI adoption. But are you fully capitalizing on their eagerness to learn?
A learner-led approach will give your program momentum. That’s where a strategic learning system (SLS) comes in. An SLS can help bridge the connection between learner engagement and business goals to create a more personal, accessible, and social experience while reaching goals for efficiency and knowledge retention.
To engage enterprise learners, try:
- Personalized learning: Pathways based on roles and skills
- Just-in-time learning: Learning pop-ups for immediate application
- Modern mentoring: Deliver and track matches and peer learning programs
- Integrate your LMS with HR data: Mobile learning, microlearning, embedded learning
- Employee recognition programs: Rewards, badges, and career progression incentives
To engage enterprise learners, remove as many barriers as possible. We know the list is extensive; employees are busier than ever, some work off-site without computer access, and others struggle with imposter syndrome. Keeping training accessible and simple makes it more likely that your employees will engage.
Are you new to reporting on enterprise business outcomes? Read 8 problems solved with an LMS integration
Customers (end users, product learners)
Most engaged by self-paced and community learning
Customer learning is about engaging two main audiences for adoption and upselling: decision-makers and users who can influence decision-makers. Influencer customers will want to use your training to make their lives easier or build their careers, while decision-maker customers will want content that showcases the business outcomes of add-ons and other upsells.
The more you know about how to engage both types of customers, the better you can drive engagement.
Try these strategies customers will love:
- Quick and effective: Self-paced, easy-to-navigate onboarding
- Interactive product training: Videos, guided tours
- Extra resources: Knowledge bases and community forums
- Certification programs: Power users appreciate advanced and structured training built around different use cases
- Automated suggestions: AI-driven recommendations for continuous
Another pro tip: Gathering data about your customers’ learning patterns can help you identify who is most and least engaged in training. And if you integrate your LMS with a CRM like Salesforce, your sales team can upsell to more engaged teams.
Partners (resellers, distributors, consultants)
Most engaged by incentive-driven learning
Engaged partners are profitable partners, and a learning hub is the perfect foundation to make them champions of your brand. When partners complete a training or course, they earn an average of six times more than those who do not. If your training is valuable and targeted to their audience, your products and services will stand out from competitors.
To engage partners, try:
- On-demand training: Anytime learning with easily digestible microlearning content
- Sales enablement resources: Case studies for different use cases, battle cards
- Incentive-driven learning: Certifications, rewards
- Keep up the momentum: Regular training for product updates and refresher courses
- Partner network events: Collaborative learning through partner networks
An LMS can elevate their experience through microlearning, videos, simulations, gamified quizzes, and interactive activities. The more they engage, the better they’re able to pitch your product to their network and increase the average total purchase amount for your partner program.
Suppliers (vendors, compliance learners)
Most engaged by critical and timely content
Engaging suppliers through training can boost efficiency, cut costs, and strengthen your position. While external learners may appear less motivated, they are committed to improving their processes, such as quality managers meeting your standards. By providing targeted, relevant content, you can maintain their engagement while fostering stronger relationships across teams.
To engage suppliers, try:
- Mandatory supplier onboarding with role-specific content across the production line
- Compliance-focused training with tracking
- Share news articles in a public dashboard
- Access to knowledge hubs for ongoing support and updates
- Microlearning for quick updates to ISO standards
In frontline work, turnover is high. Extra training helps your suppliers’ employees feel confident in their roles, making it less likely they’ll leave the company. But the benefits don’t end with learner engagement. You’ll also help them in improving their manufacturing processes, packaging standards, and employment ethics, while building a relationship of trust and accountability.
What’s next: Dig into your data
If you feel overwhelmed after seeing what goes into different types of learning engagement, learners, and strategies, let’s consider a few steps to find out how you can start to improve your learning program.
First, use this article to consider where your learning programs could be improved by asking some straightforward questions. Are your students disinterested? Then look at behavioral engagement. Are they interested but underperforming? Try improving cognitive engagement for better retention.
Then, dig deeper into how you can engage your audience of learners more effectively. If course completion has dropped for your enterprise learners, think about implementing new methods like microlearning or gamification.
Finally, look at some real-world examples of successful learning engagement strategies. For K-12 teachers, try the research and resources from the National Center on Education and the Economy. For higher education professionals, the Open Educational Research Commons has thousands of resources catered to the types of learning and learners outlined in this article.
For L&D professionals, check out these learner engagement case studies:
- 330% increase in AI adoption with Atlassian’s AI training
- 92% course satisfaction rate for Geotab’s 2,000+ employees and 1,000+ global partners
- 99.8% increase in content consumption at PGA TOUR Superstore
What happens next? It’s up to you! You can consider an LMS built to engage the modern learner. Or try out different methods using classroom craft supplies and a can-do attitude. No matter your path, we hope this information gets you on the right track!
