What makes a good learning environment?

Posted 3 years ago

A learning environment is a term that can be defined as an approach to teaching and learning, a culture, or a location where education takes place.

For many, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a learning environment is a school or university, which are more typical examples of a learning environment. However, learning can occur in many different settings. For example, all workplaces have some sort of learning environment.

Depending on the age, experience, and context in which an individual is learning, their learning environment can look different. A variety of components make up a learning environment, including:

Types of activities and tasks
Assessment methods
Working culture
Where the training is delivered
How the learning space is decorated

Whether a person is creating a positive space for themselves to learn, or if it’s for a different group of people, it’s crucial that they understand how this environment can affect a person’s ability to absorb information.

Why is a good learning environment important?

A good learning environment plays a crucial role in ensuring learners can effectively engage and absorb information that they are being taught to help their personal and professional development.

Without a good learning environment, it can become difficult for learners to focus and they may end up not retaining some of the information from their training.

A good learning environment requires minimal distractions and maximum support for creativeness, curiosity, and a desire to learn.

How employers can create a good learning environment

With the importance of a good learning environment being established, you may now be wondering how you can create and encourage a good learning environment.

Although this is massively dependent on a number of factors, here are some of the best practices when it comes to creating a good learning environment…

Creating a culture of support

It is crucial that when working with a group of learners you must create a learning environment that demonstrates a high level of support. It is difficult for individuals to share ideas and to ask for help if they feel a lack of support, hence why you must establish a strong culture of support immediately to ensure all learners are comfortable.

A useful way of providing support is by providing mentors or support systems within a learning environment to ensure help can be provided when required.

Praising success

A good learning environment means that a learner’s efforts should be recognised and shared with others.

It is crucial that you give everyone positive feedback, regardless of their level of understanding, providing that they are committed to learning.

This demonstrates that you appreciate their hard work and helps to motivate the individual being praised, as well as others seeing them be praised.

Engaging training

Information is much more likely to be retained if it is delivered in an engaging way, and although PDFs and Powerpoint presentations have their purposes, they are often not the most effective way of delivering information to a group of learners.

The concentration of a learner will decrease if they are required to read lots of text, and this is not helpful for retaining information. Instead, offer your learners a way of learning that requires them to do something other than reading.

Not only will engaging training help users to retain important information, it will also help to create a more positive and fun learning environment.

Here at iHasco, we offer over 130 online training courses that have been developed with user engagement as a primary focus.

Some of the key features that keep our courses engaging include: