Imagine you are taking an eLearning course and bump into a knowledge check question. You read through the question stem and options and find it difficult to answer the question. Somehow you make a selection and get a feedback “Sorry, that’s incorrect! Try again.”
You don’t feel good about it as you can’t figure out what went wrong. You attempt to answer the question again but this time around you don’t even bother to read the options and click on any option randomly and keep repeating it till you get it correct.
Disheartening, isn’t it? The basic purpose of using a Knowledge Check question in the course is lost here…
Knowledge Check questions are a great way to keep the learners engaged and on track and let them know how they are doing in the course. It also helps making the learning interactive where the learner is given an opportunity to think and answer the questions based on what they have learned so far.
But you need to be careful when you are framing the knowledge check questions. A simple rule is: Keep them simple! If you try and make them tricky and extremely difficult to answer, you might end up demotivating the learner. They are knowledge check questions so let them just be at knowledge level. If the learners are able to answer the question correctly, it will boost their morale and will motivate them to continue learning.
Another important factor here is to provide appropriate feedback to your learners based on the options they select. Just saying “That’s right!” or “Sorry, that’s not the best answer.” won’t help. It’s an opportunity for you to let your learners know why their answer was correct or incorrect. Tap this opportunity and plug in some useful information in the form of feedback.
When writing the feedback, let them know if the selected option was correct or incorrect, if possible, include the option they selected, and then tell them why the option was correct or incorrect.
You can also replace questions with simple interactivities and games but follow the same rules of keeping them simple and providing customized feedback for each option.
Here’s an example of a knowledge check question.
Want to create such a screen in Captivate? Here’s a demonstration.
Do share your thoughts, tips, and examples related to knowledge check questions by leaving a comment here.
