Why Drip-Feeding Content is Crucial for ELearning

By: Justin Ferriman • September 5, 2013
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dripping

When it comes to elearning programs, drip-feeding is all the rage these days. That said, the whole “drip-feed” terminology is new to many people (although most are familiar with the concept). “Drip-feeding” is just a fancy way of saying, “scheduled lesson delivery”. Essentially, you can determine when you want certain content in your course to become available after someone purchase or signs-up for a course.

One benefit to this approach is that you only need to set-up the delivery date once, and then it will deliver the same way for every user no matter when they sign-up for the course. So, if you have a lesson set to publish two days after sign-up, then it will always be on a two day delay. Pretty cool huh?

Many learning management systems are seeing the benefit of this, especially as it relates to large courses that are meant to be delivered over a longer period of time. Drip-feeding content is effective for delivering larger amounts of content into manageable chunks without overwhelming the user. For example, let’s say you have a website teaching a language. You can use a drip-feed feature to ensure that everyone progresses at the same pace in order to truly digest the content.

In addition, drip-feeding is a good strategy for keeping users engaged with the content and interested. If you are teaching a new skill, tip, or trick – then systematically delivering the content keeps users coming back to your site eager for the next lesson (which helps to build loyalty). In my experience of developing elearning programs, this is a great way to prevent people from going through all the content in one-day and moving on.

Schools and classrooms can also benefit from this kind of set-up. As a teacher, you may be using a blended learning approach in your classroom. Prior to the school year starting, you can get all your course and lesson content configured and then set-up the sequential delivery of the lessons. On the first day of school, you manually enroll your students and the “clock begins” so to speak. The site will auto-drip your content to your students without any more work on your part.

The drip-feeding concept has many uses and possibilities. If you’re interested in learning more, or perhaps just have some questions, feel free to contact us and we would be happy to be of assistance.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter