Digital Learning Shouldn’t Be Painful. For Anyone.

“Hi, how are you?”

“Great, I did this fantastic piece of digital learning the other day… it was brilliant!”

Words you don’t often hear.

“Hi, how are you?”

“I just spent an hour of my life, I’m not getting back, ploughing through an online module and half the things I don’t even care about.”

Sound familiar?

For something designed to make learning easier, digital learning can often become surprisingly painful. Painful to create and quite often, painful to sit through.

Not because people don’t care, but because those involved care in slightly different, slightly conflicting ways:

• The SME wants to include everything they know.

• L&D sometimes focus too much on 20th Century Learning Theories

• The sponsor wants something “fresh, engaging and interactive”.

All reasonable, until you put them all together.

The Engagement Trap

Somewhere along the way, “engaging” became shorthand for “busy”. More content. More clicks. More movement. More things to do.

But engagement isn’t about what your index finger is doing. It’s about what your brain is doing. You can click your way through a lot of complex, clever interactions and learn nothing, but you can read a simple, well-written, relevant scenario and be completely absorbed.

Same with “interactive”. It’s not about dragging things into boxes or clicking hotspots for the sake of it. Real interaction occurs when the learner engages with the content. Thinking. Deciding. Judging. Applying.

A well-constructed scenario, in which someone has to make a call, is far more engaging than a dozen forced interactions.

That's not to say there isn't a place for animation, exercises, and user interaction, but they need to earn their place.

Just One More Thing...

Then there’s the quiet, slow killer of many digital learning projects.

“Can we just add one more thing?”

“Oh, and maybe include this as well.”

“Just for awareness…”

Each addition feels harmless, but layer enough of them together, and the course starts to lose its shape. The core message gets diluted. The important bits get harder to spot. The learner has to work harder to find what actually matters.

If it’s not essential, it shouldn’t sit in the main flow. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful; it just means it belongs somewhere else. Give learners the option to explore further through signposted resources, links, or downloads, but keep the core message tight.

When Effort Becomes the Problem

Most digital learning doesn’t fail because not enough effort went in. It struggles because often too much effort goes into the wrong places. A simple requirement becomes over-complicated.

More content. More features. More rounds of review. More amendments.

And at some point, the focus shifts. It stops being about solving a problem and starts being about producing something to please all the contributors. Meanwhile, the learner just wants a straight answer: What do I need to know, and what do I need to do?

A Simpler Way to Think About It

This is where our RaRa approach comes in.

Not a grand framework. Just a way of keeping things honest.

Relevant

If people don’t see why something matters to them, they won’t properly engage with it.

Relevance comes from context. Show situations that feel real. Make the consequences visible. Let people see how it plays out in practice.

Focus on the problem, what triggers it, and where decisions happen. When learners recognise the situation, the content has something to stick to.

Appropriate

Not everyone starts from the same place, and not everyone needs everything. Good learning reduces unnecessary effort. It gives people the structure they need to understand quickly.

Start with the big picture, then layer in the detail. Break things into manageable chunks. - make it easy to navigate and absorb.

Most people aren’t sitting down hoping for a long module. Respect their time.

Relatable

If it doesn’t feel familiar, it doesn’t land.

Learning needs to reflect real people, real language, and real situations. It should feel like something the learner recognises, not something abstract or disconnected. That includes being inclusive in how content looks, sounds, and is presented.

If people don’t recognise themselves in it, they’re less likely to engage with it.

Actionable

This is the point of all of it.

If someone can’t do something with what they’ve learned, it hasn’t worked. Give them a chance to apply it. Make a decision. See the outcome. Try again.

That connection between knowledge and action is what actually makes learning stick.

Pain Relief

When you apply those principles properly, something shifts, the pain subsides. Decisions become easier because there’s a clear filter. Content becomes shorter because only what matters stays. The process becomes quicker because you’re not debating, reviewing, and amending everything.

And for the learner, it finally feels like it should have felt all along.

Clear. Focused. Useful.

Final Thought

“Hi, how are you?”

“Good, I just did this online module, and it was surprisingly good.”

Words you don’t hear often enough.

Not because digital learning can’t be good, but because it’s often made harder than it needs to be. People are busy, and Learning isn’t their job. It’s something they need to do to do their job better.

If you genuinely want to change behaviour, build capability, or improve performance, less is often more.

Less noise. Less filler. Less trying to impress.

More clarity. More relevance. More usefulness.

When you get that balance right, it’s not just better for the learner. It’s better for the people creating it, too.

Less friction. Clearer decisions. Faster delivery.

Less Blah Blah, more RaRa.