Learner Fatigue

Recently, I observed a friend, who is also a learning professional, training, where they exclaimed that they were on the phone/web session for well over 4 hours and it got me thinking about the concept of learner fatigue.  

As many of us know... when we teach classroom courses we, at least, vary the activities if we cannot take specific periodic breaks.  When we are conducting Web/phone based training it is easy to slip into lecture and forget that our learners probably stopped assimilating information way back in the lesson.  

I decided to do some research and was surprised to find there are very few studies published on learner fatigue through Google searching.  I even spent time within a college library site and still found very little.  However, I did find this nice gem:

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Here are five suggestions:

1. Get your learners out of their seats periodically to work on flip chart exercises.
2. Give periodic breaks every hour or so for learners to refresh themselves both physically and mentally.
3. Provide some opportunities for fun and laughter with brainteasers and/or icebreakers during your training so minds stay alert and focused.
4. Give your learners chances to present content in class.
5. Make sure your e-learning courses are manageable in length and encourage periodic breaks to reduce eye strain.

Keep your learners awake, alert, and focused during your training sessions so they can enjoy themselves and learn!


Retrieved from:  
http://www.langevin.com/blog/2012/12/03/5-instructional-techniques-to-prevent-learner-fatigue-3/ 

These are great for classroom based learning.  I know when I get the glazed eye look, I know that the learners are not fully engaged.  When on the web, if the connection is not great and I have to demonstrate only, it is a lot harder to assess learner interaction.  

What sort of ideas do you have for synchronous web based learning?

Should we encourage self-paced learning before synchronous sessions to turn "training" into "discussion?"

What do you do today?  What do you wish you could do better?