Interactivity: Required by Law?

The word “interactive” has been showing up a lot lately in a variety of compliance and credit-eligible training requirements. For example, New York State, New York City, California, Illinois, and Connecticut have all passed laws in the past few years that specifically require sexual harassment prevention and awareness training for all employees. And many of these jurisdictions specifically require that the training be interactive.

Why is that?
And what do they mean by interactive?

​The reality is this: Interaction increases engagement. And engagement increases retention, and thus, the likelihood of compliance. That is, the more that you engage in—and engage with—a learning experience, the more likely you are to actually learn from it.

Each state and locality defines and describes “interactive” in a slightly different way, but all descriptions point to active, participative learning as opposed to passive. Think about interacting with an engaging, responsive online learning program vs. the passive watching of a video. The laws give a nod to the continued evolution toward online learning, and acknowledge that harassment awareness training need not be done in a live setting to be effective—as long as it engages the learner by requiring meaningful participation.

NYC, for example, defines interactive as “participatory teaching whereby the trainee is engaged in a trainer-trainee interaction, use of audio-visuals, computer or online training program or other participatory forms of training…” It notes that “such interactive training is not required to be live or facilitated by an in-person instructor in order to satisfy” this requirement.

California requires “effective interactive training,” which it defines to specifically include “E-learning training.” The training must include questions that “assess learning, skill-building activities that assess the supervisor’s application and understanding of content learned, and numerous hypothetical scenarios, each with one or more discussion questions so that supervisors remain engaged in the training.” It must also enable the participant to submit questions, which must be answered in a timely manner.

It should come as no surprise to our clients that we welcome this focus on the value of interactivity, as it is something that we’ve embraced for years with our signature SkillBurst® approach to on-demand learning.

To learn more about how we've incorporated interactivity into our award-winning harassment awareness series, check out Respectful Workplace for Law Firms and Respectful Workplace for Corporations.