Who is the 'modern' student?

In order to improve your online course, you need to know the target audience. What are the main characteristics that "modern" students look for in eLearning?

Who is the 'modern' student?

In order to improve your online course, you need to know the target audience. What are the main characteristics that "modern" students look for in eLearning?

Since the beginning of the last century and, above all, with the arrival of the internet, the "train" of technology has gone faster and faster. For this reason, mainly in the IT and web sector, it is necessary to be always updated on the latest news. This also applies to those who work in the world of eLearning. In addition to being always up to date on the latest programs or trends at the planning or design level, it is always essential to know what the target audience of our course is.

One of the questions that eLearning experts should ask themselves is: regardless of his / her age, who is he and, above all, what is the "modern" student looking for? As well as technologies, in fact, also the way of studying, of approaching the training path and the interest in certain objectives change over time. In fact, more than the technology itself, it is the users, in this case the trainees, who push the experts to make changes and modernize a product or service.

Here are some features to watch out for if we don't want students to lose interest in our online course:

1. Drop in attention

Due to the stimuli to which we are often subjected through, for example, cell phone notifications, but also due to greater difficulty in reading on the screens, the attention of students can drop very quickly. For this, it is preferable to create short and direct content. The answer? Microlearning, a teaching strategy, which we discussed in several articles,
which allows to offer short-term contents.

2. Research possibilities

Search engines are a tool that helps us find the answers to all our questions. Even within an online course, it must be easy to access lessons and various topics. For this reason, it can be useful to provide students with tools that help to search and move through the contents.

3. Use of different devices

Not only millennials or the newest generations are used to switching from one device to another, from smartphone to tablet, but also those who have not used new technologies since childhood. For this reason, it is essential that the online course we offer to students is available not only on the computer, but also, for example, on the mobile phone. In this case the answer is mobile learning

4. The times (and places) of study

The difficulty of keeping attention high is only one of the reasons why study times have changed. Often, those who enroll in an eLearning course are already professionals who, however, need to update their curriculum and constantly increase their working skills. For this, an online training course must be flexible, so that it can be easily followed, for example, during the lunch break.


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