eLearning content is king when it comes to creating a great eLearning experience for your employees
Not being able to get management buy-in on eLearning training is one thing. But having to struggle with employee buy-in? That’s a far bigger problem. Lose that audience and you lose any sense of engagement metrics for your business. Sure, even though they sit and watch, who’s to say they haven’t tuned out? Maybe they’re using the down time as a break instead of a teachable moment?
So many questions to ask, yet they all come back to one simple answer: create eLearning videos like a great movie everyone wants to see. And that means curating eLearning content with many checkpoints in mind.
Things like:
eLearning Content That’s Conversational
When you’re penning the script, whether it’s for the sales team or a general compliance course, the dialogue must be conversational to really work. Don’t put together a list of tips that are being read like they’re from literary figures of the Renaissance.
eLearning Content With a Narrative
This is probably the most important piece of the pie, no? What good is creating eLearning content that has an introduction and main body, but no summary? There needs to be a story arc with every single course. Assess a workplace issue in the opening. Begin conflict-resolution with examples in the main body. End with a summary and maybe provide a great send-off to a quiz where they can refresh the information further.
eLearning Content That Teaches a Skill, Not a Trait
A great point was made in an Inc. article nearly a year ago on how training must teach a skill instead of centering on traits. While you still need courses around motivational tips and/or improving employee confidence (both traits), you shouldn’t put too much emphasis on either of those lessons when you’re trying to teach Jeff in the warehouse how to operate a new piece of machinery (a skill). Jeff doesn’t need confidence to operate the new equipment; he just needs the steps.
Bringing up too many secondary pointers to a training video that’s supposed to be a simple how-to is only going to confuse the audience.
eLearning Content That Takes Design Into Consideration
Always be mindful of the other steps when making the script. If you’re making the narrative around, say a workplace safety course, and have the presenter globe-trotting in multiple scenes, or have multiple pop up displays and font changes happening in the background, you’re making two mistakes: you lose some of the narrative impact with too many visual diversions and most importantly, you stretch the development process out by forcing the design team to create more elaborate pieces.
eLearning Content That Provides a Relatable Face
If you’re making custom eLearning videos, try to make a conscious effort to write in a familiar face of the company to deliver some, or all, of the message. That might mean bringing on the CEO to say a few words in a company-wide video, or have the sales manager deliver sales tactics to the reps. Employees might feel more inclined to lean in and listen when a co-worker or boss is doing the play-by-play.
Final Thoughts
eLearning courses are about performance improvement at the end of the day. Always will be. And to get better engagement numbers, you need robust instructional design. You need a mindset with each course that’s about solving specific problems and less about generalizations. And that starts and ends with ensuring your content is king.
