The important art of gaining learner attention

Katy Montgomery

What is an artistic masterpiece if no one sees it? What is the best business plan ever if it’s never implemented? And what is an excellent training course if learners aren’t paying attention to it?

There’s a reason that “gain attention” is the first of Gagne’s nine events of instruction.  And that “attention” is one of the pillars of Keller’s ARCS model. The best laid instructional plans are of little value if learners aren’t paying attention.

Fifteen years of practical experience in higher education classrooms combined with a natural inclination to engage have honed my skills in this area. Let's discuss a few of my favorite methods for gaining attention.

Unanswered questions

Do you know what is my favorite part of instruction is?

Well, I’ll tell you later … 

That unanswered question piques your interest, doesn't it? When a question is posed, it’s a natural to want the answer. My background in linguistics has taught me that questions and answers are one type of "adjacency pair". One part generally predicates the other. One can’t feel a sense of completeness until the answer is given. Kind of like a circle that leaves just a little gap at the top.

There is great power for the instructional designer in this. Learners who came with little intrinsic interest suddenly have the interest of knowing the answer, of completing that circle. 

When I taught English language skills at a university, I frequently made use of this. In its simplest form, it involved asking learners to make guesses on a new topic before presenting the lesson. I made it clear that these were just guesses, they didn’t have to know the answer yet, and after the lesson, when we came back to those questions, they should be able to answer for themselves whether their guesses were right or wrong. Simple but it proved to be very effective.

Sometimes, it got a little more creative. One of my favorite things to do when teaching about the use of commas in adjectives clauses, a challenging topic for native and non-native speakers alike, was to write these statements on the board and ask someone to choose which one they prefer:

I explained that one meant that no one would have homework and the other meant only a part of the class would receive this benefit. Suddenly, these little commas, which seemed insignificant before, suddenly had a function, an important one at that.  The class’s interest was now piqued, and they were very tuned into the explanation.

Other times, I would devise a scenario in which learners had to read or listen to information to solve a task. They might not have been very interested in those passages otherwise, but the task-based questions changed this because they wanted the answers.

These same techniques can easily be applied to workplace learning. Easily implemented, simply having learners make guesses before a lesson that they’ll later correct themselves leads to greater mental and emotional involvement. As another example, case scenarios can be used not only after instruction as practice but also before as a means of cueing learners into what they need to know.

(By the way, to at last provide an answer to that earlier question, my favorite part of instruction is engaging the learner. 💗)

Multimedia experiences

In a language learning classroom, I frequently made use of popular songs with lyrics related to a particular linguistic point. My students sometimes laughed about how old the songs were, but in all cases, they were definitely curious about the language they used. Their interest in the topic was so much higher than if I had just leapt directly into an explanation.

Similarly, I often introduced new concepts with interesting images. Learners wanted to say something about these images, and this created motivation to learn how to linguistically go about it. And in turn their keenness on learning this cued them into my explanations.

Definitely, enlivening instructor-led lessons with images can work for many topics. A course on interior design, for example, could depict images from three different restaurants and ask learners to contemplate which design would generate the most revenue if all other factors were equal.

And multimedia is integral to e-learning. A good mix of video, text, and static images brings learner attention to material by letting them engage with it through multiple channels.

Humor

When training seems like work, learners may not respond with as much attention and enthusiasm as when it seems like play. Humor is effective for getting attention, and throughout the lesson, keeping things light improves student affect, thus leading to increased learning. 

When getting attention, jokes are one way to include humor. When I taught language courses focused on reading, I often opened the course with a “Joke of the Day” shown on a PowerPoint.  This eased the students into reading that day with something enjoyable that they were motivated to understand.

Or using more subtle humor, when teaching about misplaced adjective clauses, I would ask students if this sentence was grammatically correct: “The woman is walking a dog who is carrying a green purse.” I would ask them to imagine the scene before showing a picture like this one: