Interactive e-learning elements that actually work

Many courses count as interactive because you can flip cards, expand sections or drag elements around. Such interactions can be useful if they demand thought. Often, however, they are just another way of displaying text: the learner clicks, reads and clicks on, without doing anything different from reading a page.

Effective interaction requires learners to retrieve something from memory, make a decision, explain something in their own words or solve a problem. Mistakes happen along the way, and mistakes with good feedback are where much of the learning happens.

The table ranks common interactions by their typical effect.

The simplest and at the same time one of the most effective interactions is the question along the way. Anyone who has to answer a question after a section actively retrieves what they learned and remembers it better. Learning research has documented this effect well.

Feedback is decisive. A bare “right” or “wrong” helps little. Better is an explanation of why the chosen answer is right or wrong, ideally addressing the misconception behind a wrong answer. It also helps to let learners state how confident they are before answering. Someone who was sure and wrong learns a great deal from the correction.

Scenarios suit application and judgement: a realistic situation is described, the learner decides and sees the consequences. Good scenarios have several plausible paths, not one right one and three obviously wrong ones.

For communication, such as customer conversations, negotiations or staff reviews, role-plays work well. With AI characters, such conversations can now take place inside the course: the character plays the other side, and at the end there is an assessment against criteria set in advance. This does not replace training with real people, but it makes practice possible at any time and without inhibition.

Anyone who has to explain something in their own words quickly notices where their understanding ends. When explaining back, the learner formulates the material themselves and receives feedback on what was well explained, what is missing and where a misconception lies. AI makes this kind of exercise possible for many learners at once for the first time.

Socratic questioning works in a similar way: instead of receiving an explanation, the learner is guided to the solution through questions. It is more demanding than listening but more lasting.

Both forms have one prerequisite: feedback must be fair and transparent. Someone who gives a short but correct explanation and is criticised for it quickly loses motivation. Good assessments therefore say specifically what was well explained, what is missing and where there is a misunderstanding, and politely decline answers that are too short rather than marking them down.

In the Universe course player, learners ask the presenter questions by voice or text. Four learning modes are available on every slide: being questioned Socratically, explaining back with an assessment, seeing an example or an interactive exercise. Authors can set up a role-play on a slide with role, goal and assessment criteria, scored from 0 to 3 points per criterion. There is also a pocket quiz in which learners state their confidence, flashcards and an optional peer question in which a character from the group asks a typical question.