8 Best Multimodal Learning Strategies & Examples to Add to Your Corporate Training

The most effective corporate training courses are ones that are tailored to the needs of your business, employees and customers. However, a single-format approach may be great for some individuals but not all.

As a teacher, educator or trainer in a corporate setting, the responsibility rests on your shoulders to make your lessons more engaging, relevant and interactive. This can be incredibly challenging since you’ll often work with groups of people with different backgrounds, expertise levels and knowledge areas.

One of the most effective approaches to corporate training is using multimodal learning strategies. These teaching methods combine different types of stimuli—visual, auditory, kinesthetic and reading/writing—to engage more senses in a single lesson or unit.

Multimodal learning strategies can help break through students’ mental blocks and get them thinking about new ideas in fun and engaging ways.

To help you do better as an LMS specialist, we decided to come up with the eight best multimodal learning strategies.

 

Table of Contents

• What is Multimodal Learning?
• Benefits of Multimodal Learning
• The VARK Model
• 8 Multimodal Learning Strategies & Examples

 

What is Multimodal Learning?

Before we introduce you to our favorite strategies, it’s essential to understand what multimodal learning is and why it can be so effective.

Multimodal learning is a teaching strategy that uses more than one type of stimulus (such as visuals, audio and tactile) to create a multisensory experience for learners. It involves using multiple modalities to promote deeper information processing by engaging more senses.

For example, if you want trainees to learn how to use a piece of new equipment, you could show them an instructional video and then have them practice on the equipment itself. This strategy would allow learners to learn through visuals (watching the video) and doing (operating the machine).

 

Benefits of Multimodal Learning

Multimodal learning strategies have numerous benefits, making them popular among educators. Some of the key advantages of multimodal learning include the following:

Improved Engagement

Multimodal learning engages learners by incorporating different learning modes, making the learning experience more interactive and engaging. It helps learners stay focused and retain information better.

Enhanced Comprehension

By incorporating multiple learning modes, such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, learners can process information in a way that suits their learning style. This results in better comprehension and retention of information.

Increased Accessibility

Multimodal learning makes education more accessible to learners with different learning abilities, as it caters to various learning styles and preferences.

Greater Creativity

Multimodal learning encourages learners to think outside the box and be creative. It presents information in different formats and allows learners to explore and experiment with other modes of learning.

 

The VARK Model

The VARK model is a framework for teaching and learning that encourages learners to be creative and think outside the box. It was developed by educator Neil Fleming, who believed that students learn best when exploring their surroundings and discovering new things through their own experiences.

And it makes sense because a recent study conducted by Research Gate showed that 72.6% of learners preferred to learn by multiple sensory modalities.

So, let's understand the four components of the VARK model.

Visual Learning

The first component of the VARK model is visual learning. It involves using images to present information and ideas, which helps learners understand and retain them more easily. Trainees can achieve visual learning through diagrams, charts, flowcharts and other similar visual aids.

If you plan to use this model, Visme can help you do it better. You can create various visual aids, such as infographics, flowcharts, diagrams, presentations and many others to support your training materials.

The best part is that our users are making the most of it. Read this case study about how physical education teacher uses Visme to create visual learning aids.

Here's an example of a visual learning aid.

Auditory Learning

The second component of the VARK model is auditory learning. This involves listening to and understanding the audio information, such as lectures or conversations.

Auditory learners often find it easier to learn through hearing than seeing; they usually enjoy taking notes while listening to a speaker or teacher.

Visme allows you to record and save voiceovers to add audio to your learning materials. This will help you create personalized learning materials that support the "Auditory" element of the VARK model.

Furthermore, with Visme's paid plans, you'll get access to 10,000+ free audio samples to add to your documents as background music or however you see fit.

Here is a comprehensive guide to creating voiceovers that you can read. Or watch the video below to learn more about it.

Reading/Writing

The "R" in the VARK model stands for reading and writing. This includes reading books, magazines, newspapers or other written material and writing notes, reports or essays. People with strong reading/writing skills are good at analyzing information and seeing how it relates to other pieces of knowledge that they already have.

Visme offers a variety of printable templates for creating effective learning materials that enhance the learning experience for students by providing visual aids for better comprehension.

Here are the five types of printables you can create to focus on this model's “Reading/Writing” aspect. We’ll also share templates for each printable document you can customize and make your own.

1. Flashcards

Flashcards are a popular and effective tool for memorization and quick recall. They are beneficial for learning new vocabulary, key concepts, or formulas. By utilizing Visme's customizable flashcards, you can create tailored content to suit your learners' needs.

Here’s an example of a flashcard template that you can use to support your learning materials.

2. Ebooks

Ebooks offer an interactive and engaging way to present a large amount of information in a digestible format. Using Visme's ebook templates, you can incorporate multimedia elements such as images, videos, and interactive links that cater to various learning styles.

You can easily access them on multiple devices, making them a convenient and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional textbooks. Additionally, Ebooks can be easily updated, ensuring that learners always have access to the most current information.

3. Worksheets

Worksheets are essential to the learning process, providing opportunities for practice and assessment.

Visme's customizable worksheet templates allow educators to create targeted exercises reinforcing specific concepts and skills. For example, you can create a worksheet to guide students through a series of lessons, quizzes and tests.

Or you can create a worksheet and give it to your students as a self-assessment tool, encouraging learners to take ownership of their progress.

4. Infographics

Researchers say using colors in visual learning materials increases reading comprehension by 70%. Infographics are one of the best examples of learning materials that combine information with colorful visuals to make complex information easily understandable.

Using graphics, charts and icons, you can use Visme's Infographics to break down complicated concepts into digestible chunks. This visual representation of data can enhance comprehension and retention, particularly for visual learners.

You can also use infographics to summarize key points, facilitate comparisons or highlight trends and patterns.

Explore more infographic templates in Visme that are divided into several categories: informational, statistical, hierarchical, timeline and more.

5. Syllabus

A well-designed syllabus is crucial for setting clear expectations and providing a roadmap for the course. It can help learners understand the course content, objectives, requirements and other aspects. Additionally, it serves as a reference point throughout the course to help students and educators stay on track.

Visme's customizable syllabus templates allow educators to create visually appealing and organized course outlines.

Kinesthetic Learning

The "K" in the VARK model stands for kinesthetic, tactile, or experiential learning. This means that people who are kinesthetic learners tend to learn best through doing rather than just listening or reading.

They enjoy hands-on activities such as sports and crafts; they often find it easier to retain information when they can touch and feel it instead of just hearing about it or seeing it written down on paper.

 

8 Multimodal Learning Strategies & Examples

Below are ten multimodal learning strategies, examples, and Visme templates you can use to implement these strategies.

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

 

 

1. Use Mind Maps to Organize Your Thoughts and Ideas

Mind mapping is a diagramming technique allowing you to organize information and connect ideas visually. It’s an effective way to learn new concepts, especially for visual learners who like to use pictures and diagrams to understand things better.

Examples:

• Create a visual overview of the company's organizational structure, policies, procedures, and key contacts.
• Summarize and visualize key product features, benefits, and specifications. This helps employees to understand better the products they are selling or supporting.
• Visually represent workflows, decision trees, and other processes employees must follow. This helps employees to understand how to perform their tasks accurately and efficiently.
• Plan and manage projects by visualizing timelines, milestones, dependencies, and resources.
• Develop leadership skills by summarizing fundamental leadership principles, models, and best practices. This helps employees to understand what it takes to be an effective leader and how to apply leadership skills in their daily work.
• Summarize and visualize the sales process, customer profiles, objection-handling techniques, and other vital concepts. This helps sales representatives to understand their customers' needs and preferences better.

This way, trainees can get an idea of what happens in which order, making it easier for them to remember when they’re actually working on the project later.

Visme offers a wide range of mindmap templates and a free mind map maker that you can use to create your own.

Here is a template below to help you learn more about how mind maps work.

2. Use Interactive Whiteboards

Interactive whiteboards are an excellent way to make your trainees feel more involved in the training process. Using an interactive whiteboard, you can engage your trainees by having them participate in activities that allow them to apply their knowledge.

This is especially useful for training sessions with a lot of content and requires trainees to take notes or complete exercises.

Examples:

• Display multimedia content such as videos, animations, graphics, and audio. This can enhance the learners' visual and auditory learning experience and create a more engaging and dynamic learning environment.
• Facilitate collaborative learning by allowing multiple participants to participate in the discussion and group activities. This helps build teamwork skills and encourages participation from all learners.
• Encourage interactive activities such as quizzes, polls, and games. This can provide a fun and interactive way for learners to test their knowledge and engage with the content.
• Provide real-time feedback to learners, which can help them to identify areas where they need to improve and reinforce their understanding of the material.
• Use them for virtual meetings to facilitate collaboration and engagement among remote team members. This can create a more inclusive learning environment and ensure that all team members have the opportunity to participate in the training.

With Visme’s free online whiteboard tool, you can explain everything to your learners by creating flows, sketches, wireframes, plans and more.

Take advantage of the professionally designed whiteboard templates that are categorized to meet your varied needs. Here is a template that you can use:

3. Include Collaborative Learning for More Effective Training Sessions

Engage your trainees by allowing them to work together in small groups. You can use this strategy during training sessions in which you have a lot of content or require trainees to take notes or complete exercises during the session.

It’s also beneficial because it allows trainees who may not always be comfortable speaking up in large group settings to contribute their thoughts and opinions.

Examples:

• Assign group projects to learners, where they work together to complete a task or solve a problem.
• Encourage learners to review and critique each other's work. This will build critical thinking skills, improve the quality of work, and provide a more well-rounded perspective on the content.
• Ask learners to share their thoughts and ideas on the learning content and discuss it.
• Collaborative learning can involve role-playing activities, where learners act out scenarios and practice skills in a group setting.
• Learners can work together to discuss a specific case study, identify the key issues, and develop a plan of action.

4. Use Training Manuals to Provide a Roadmap

You may have a group of new hires who need to learn how to do their jobs, or you may have a team that just needs some refresher training. In either case, it’s crucial to create a training manual that outlines the procedures your trainees need to follow, including any forms they need to fill out and where they can find additional resources if they are struggling with certain aspects of the job.

Examples:

• Combine training manuals with online videos, interactive e-learning modules, and virtual simulations to provide diverse learning opportunities.
• Use training manuals as reference materials that employees can use to reinforce their understanding of a particular topic.
• Encourage employees to annotate and highlight important information in the training manual to aid their retention of information.
• Deploy multimedia elements in the training manual, such as images, infographics, and charts, to reinforce critical concepts and make the information more engaging.
• Use the training manual for on-the-job training, where employees can apply what they have learned in real-world scenarios.
• Utilize the training manual as a foundation for ongoing learning and development, where employees can refer back to the material and build upon their knowledge over time.

Browse through Visme’s wide range of training manual templates and select the one that suits your needs.

Here is a training manual template to quickly onboard your social media managers.

5. Take Advantage of Visual Elements

Visual elements such as illustrations, icons, symbols and other graphics can enhance the effectiveness of your teaching materials. They can help you communicate ideas more clearly and make it easier for trainees to understand concepts that might otherwise be confusing.

You can use visual elements in many different ways, such as

• Creating diagrams that show how a process works or demonstrating how different parts of an application interact with each other.
• Using illustrations to illustrate technical concepts or processes that are difficult to describe in words alone.
• Using interactive graphics to provide learners with a hands-on experience, allowing them to explore and interact with different elements of the training material.
• Visual cues such as color, typography, and layout to highlight critical information create emphasis and navigation aid.

While visual elements can be really beneficial, they can be intimidating to create. To solve this problem, Visme features various design elements such as illustrations, 3D graphics, animated graphics, vector icons and more.

6. Use Lectures Accompanied by Written Notes or Handouts

By incorporating auditory and reading/writing learning strategies, you can cater to the learning preferences of a wider range of employees/trainees. Some learners may prefer listening to information, while others may prefer reading or writing it.

Providing information through multiple channels can help employees better understand and retain the presented information.

It allows you to present information more engagingly while allowing participants to process this information at their own pace.

Examples:

• Use slideshows or presentations to provide visual aids for the lecture material.
• Provide written notes or transcripts of the lecture to help learners follow along with the content and reinforce their understanding.
• Use annotations and callouts on the slides to draw attention to key concepts and ideas.
• Use bullet points or lists to break down complex information into more digestible chunks.
• Incorporate images and graphics into the presentation to illustrate concepts and ideas.
• Use quizzes or assessments after the lecture to test learners' understanding of the material and provide feedback.

Creating a presentation is the best way to implement this strategy. This is the most effective way to deliver content and engage learners with the material.

Visme’s free online presentation tool can help you create effective presentations for your training sessions. You will find 500+ presentation templates divided into several categories: business, marketing & sales, research, creative and more.

With Visme’s presenter studio, you can deliver your presentations asynchronously. Record yourself presenting using your camera and microphone, and send it to the learners.

Here is a video to learn how to use the presenter studio.

 7. Explain Concepts Using Videos

Video is a powerful tool for delivering content. It allows you to show concepts and ideas in action while providing commentary and additional details that may not be available through other media types.

• Assemble longer videos that explain complicated topics in a way that's easy to understand.
• Use quizzes or assessments after the lecture to test learners' understanding of the material and provide feedback.
• Deploy pre-recorded videos to provide a consistent learning experience for all employees.
• Use live videos or webinars for more interactive and personalized training experiences.
• Use animations or explainer videos to illustrate complex concepts and make them easier to understand.
• Make use of interactive video quizzes or assessments to reinforce learning and provide immediate feedback.
• Utilize social media or video-sharing platforms to create a community around the training material and encourage ongoing learning and development.

Visme has launched a new feature to help users easily resize videos into various shapes. This is especially useful when you want to include videos in other learning materials such as presentations, training manuals, etc.

8. Use Storyboard to Explain Broader Ideas

Help your learners keep track of the course’s main ideas and concepts without becoming distracted by the details using a storyboard.

A storyboard is a visual aid used to plan the sequence of events in a story or project. In learning, a storyboard is often used to break down a lesson or course into smaller, more manageable pieces.

A learning storyboard typically includes a series of panels or frames that depict the key elements of a lesson, such as the main concepts, examples, and activities. Each panel may include a brief description or instructions for the content that will be presented.

Here are some examples of using storyboards:

• Illustrate different scenarios and situations that learners may encounter in the workplace.
• Depict different personas or characters representing customers, clients, or colleagues.
• Illustrate the consequences of different actions or decisions, particularly for compliance and ethics training.
• Create a narrative that engages learners and makes the training material more memorable.
• Map out different paths or options for learners to explore, particularly for branching scenarios and decision-making exercises.
• Leverage storyboards to prototype and test different approaches and ideas before investing in producing the final training material.
• Use storyboards to provide a visual reference for learners to refer back to and reinforce their understanding of the training material.

Visme offers a wide selection of storyboard templates to help you explain your ideas in the best way possible.

Here is an example storyboard template explaining how cloud computing service providers operate.

 

Develop Stunning Multimodal Learning Content with Visme

While the number and types of learning strategies are seemingly unlimited, the more you get into doing and creating, the more you will learn which ones work best for you. Experiment with different methods, styles and mediums and identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Visme’s drag-and-drop interface makes creating a wide range of powerful visual content easy when creating interactive and engaging learning materials.

With Visme, you can create infographics, presentations and other types of effective training materials for SCORM/xAPI export without an extensive design skillset.

More importantly, Visme makes it easy for anyone to add interactive features such as hotspots, quizzes and polls into your visual content so that learners can interact with the material on screen.

Visme comes with dedicated tools and templates that cater to the exact needs of training and development teams. Sign-up to start creating beautiful and interactive training and development materials today!