Want to boost student engagement? Elevate your course material with a PDF or interactive online workbook. Here’s how to create one to enhance your learners’ experience.
Are you genuinely engaging the students of your online courses? Many businesses, schools, and organizations use interactive PDFs to elevate the student experience and enhance their learning.
A PDF is a digital file that retains all the source files’ formatting and layout. A PDF document can be sent to anyone via email or chat, or uploaded online to be downloaded to the recipient’s computer. In the past, static PDFs were used to share read-only documents. Today, while office tech has come a long way, PDFs are still stuck in the stone ages. While PDFs can be made fillable, they’re usually slow, require using third-party programs, and aren’t that pleasing to look at (unless designed using software like Adobe InDesign or Canva).
Interactive PDFs can be used to replace physical print-outs of online course workbooks and handouts. And while they elevate the student’s online learning experience by providing a more hands-on way to practice and understand course content, there’s still a way to go to truly elevate the learner’s experience.
In this article, we’ll cover how to make and use interactive PDFs, and introduce digital workbooks—a revolutionary alternative to these archaic methods to quickly and easily enhance your course materials:
An interactive PDF contains elements the reader can view or interact with. It often includes things like links and fillable forms. According to Demand Gen Report, interactive content is two times more engaging than static content, quickly replacing legacy, static PDFs. Here are some places you may have already been using interactive PDFs in your everyday life:
A traditional PDF is meant to be a static, view-only document. It’s great when you don’t need users to do anything other than view or read the document. But they can’t be easily updated without sending or uploading a revised copy to users.
Whether you create an interactive or static PDF file, your learners need a PDF reader like Adobe Reader to view the file. And while interactive PDFs may sound cool, they’re hard to use on a mobile device, not that great to look at, and not as dynamic as interactive workbooks .
An interactive workbook is replacing PDF worksheets. It’s a digital workbook where students can write notes, do reflections, take quizzes, and where students can keep their work safe on the Cloud (no more “my dog ate it” excuses). As an instructor, you can view a student's work in real-time to provide valuable feedback. Students can download their work into a PDF to save it for future reference after the course is done.
Unlike a PDF, you don’t need any special software to view or interact with the content when your workbooks are created with Wobo. You just embed the workbook into your existing course player experience.
PDFs have been used for years to distribute content that the recipient can’t alter or change. For example, you can send your learners a PDF file of a worksheet, and they can’t accidentally change the layout or branding. Your recipient could view the document online or print a hard copy.
With today’s technology, PDFs are more interactive than before, but still don’t meet the detailed interactivity provided by digital and interactive workbooks. With PDFs, the interactivity is limited to clicking links and filling in form fields. With interactive workbooks (like ones created with Wobo), you can include all the engaging elements you want, including:
When designing an online course, your challenge will be to keep students engaged so they take an active role in their learning and better understand the concepts you’re teaching. Using an interactive PDF helps keep students more engaged online.
Here are the steps to add an interactive PDF to your online course:
Students can then view the interactive PDF to see the rich media or fill in text fields. That can save their answers to their local drive at any time or it can be submitted to their instructor or peers for feedback.
The interactive features and rich media content in interactive workbooks help better engage students during their learning. Most students will learn better by being hands-on in their education. This could mean applying learned theories and concepts through real-world applications and projects or writing down their learnings in a journal or workbook in a fun, memorable way. Doing more than just sitting and listening can boost learning comprehension.
When you provide an interactive workbook with an online course, you give your students a place to make connections and increase their understanding of your course material. It’s also a great way to stand out from competitors who don’t offer interactive content. It makes your brand more memorable.
Learn more about how you can better engage your students with digital workbooks: How to make online classes more interactive.
To create an interactive PDF, you’ll need to take two steps as follows:
Microsoft Word
Beginners may find it easiest to use Microsoft Word (or a similar word processing program) to create their files. When you have designed your file in Word, save it as a PDF document.
Word's design and graphic capabilities are limited (compared to other, more advanced software) and once the PDF is created, it’s no longer editable without creating a new version and redistributing it. This process works when you only need a few type-able fields and links. It’s not ideal if you want interactive elements like videos and rich media or the ability to view the file on any computer or device without special software.
Canva
You can also use the free online graphic design software called Canva to design your PDFs. They have many flexible templates that you can add your branding to. Once you’ve created your designs, you can export the content as a PDF file.
Adobe InDesign
If you have more advanced design skills, Adobe InDesign will allow you to create more advanced layouts and branding. Create your PDF in InDesign, then create an interactive PDF from the file. This will save any links you’ve added to the content, but you’ll still need to add fillable text fields using Adobe Acrobat.
While Adobe InDesign works great, the learning curve can be steep, and you need to create all your templates from scratch. You’re still missing out on adding the interactivity (like sliders and clickable buttons) students crave to better engage with your learning content.
If you want to add clickable hyperlinks to your PDF, the process may vary depending on the software you’re using and how you’re exporting your PDF document. You’ll usually add the hyperlink in the text directly (usually through your “Insert” menu).
Then when you actually create your PDF, open up any “Save As” settings and ensure any settings referring to “Interactive” elements and hyperlinks are turned on. We always suggest testing the links in the PDF after export, to ensure they’re clickable and the links are correct.
Once you have your PDF file, you can distribute that to your students. If you want to add interactive elements like fillable form fields, you’ll need to use a program like Adobe to add these. You can also add additional links and buttons, so they are clickable.
Wobo is an excellent, much easier alternative to the PDF options above. And, it takes online learning documents to the next level, beyond just a fillable PDF. With Wobo, you can create beautifully designed, engaging digital workbooks to add enhanced interactivity to your course material. It’s the easiest, fastest, and most effective process. Using pre-built, professionally designed templates, you can customize to your heart's desire and add near-limitless interactive elements like tables, buttons, and sliders. Once downloaded, it also creates a PDF document that is mobile and tablet-friendly.
Unlike Word or InDesign, you don’t need a second software program to create interactive exercises when using Wobo. It’s all in one. And, if you need to make updates later, all updates are reflected in real time for your students. This makes correcting typos and updating links and information easy and fast.
Depending on what rich media and interactive elements you want, there are some free ways to create a free interactive PDF or workbook:
An excellent interactive document contains a mix of passive resources (also known as reference material) and interactive elements. You can include as many of these in the same document as you need, but don’t overwhelm the student with too many passive or too many interactive resources. Find a balance to help cater to different learning styles. With Wobo, you can include features and activities, including:
Creating a digital workbook full of interactive content will help enhance your students' learning experience. Not only that, creating it with Wobo has many advantages beyond design and interactive features, which other PDF software doesn’t offer, including:
It’s free to try Wobo to see how easy it is to create digital workbooks for your students. Sign-up for a free trial of Wobo today.
What software programs can be used to create an interactive PDF?
Many word processing and graphic design programs can be used to create an interactive PDF. Look at the save or export options to save your doc as a PDF. Popular applications to generate PDF files include Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, Google Docs, and Adobe InDesign.
What types of digital content can I include in digital workbooks?
Your PDF template can include many interactive elements, including fillable text fields, videos, audio files, links and animated gifs.
Do I need to password-protect my files?
When you use a workbook builder like Wobo, advanced security features ensure people can’t share your document with others or copy the text. Password-protecting your content is unnecessary if you store it in a secure Learning Management System (LMS). You can use Wobo to disable copying and add watermarks if needed.
How do you create an animated PDF?
PDFs themselves are not animated, but they can contain animated elements, referred to as GIFs. In interactive workbooks, these can be inserted onto a page, much like you would for an image or other graphic, but can’t be added into classic PDFs.
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