The three most effective tips for successful custom eLearning content development align with the first three principles of our Superb methodology.
1. Using Stories To Deliver Content
Once upon a time, stories were used to teach. They were used to deliver powerful meaning and messages. They were fables, bedtime stories and fairy tales. Stories were told around a campfire or more recently, read in books or watched in an engaging animation or film. In today’s learning environment, eLearning often becomes a massive data dump. We are ignoring the value and impact of a good story. Learners are exposed to massive amounts of disengaging content that they can’t connect to. They end up unable to see why and how the content applies to them or their jobs.
Stories have the ability to “encapsulate, into one compact package, information, knowledge, context and emotion” (Norman, 1993). That is why you will remember your favourite bedtime story as a child yet struggle to remember what you did at work on Monday. When you use stories as part of your training:
- It grabs and retains learners' attention
- The learning becomes fun as opposed to meeting a list of objectives
- It establishes the content flow, provides context and engages your learners
Because stories communicate best practices and behaviours in a specific context, learners will have a better chance of understanding what you are trying to teach and how they can use that knowledge appropriately. A story contains elements that appeal both to your head and heart, and that’s why they work.
So, when developing your eLearning content, use stories, case studies or scenarios and allow opportunities for your learners to practise what you are teaching. Give them options to choose from, allowing them to see the consequences of their choices. Provide them with the learning as part of the feedback, after they have engaged with the story.
2. Be User Focused
“The medium is the message” (Marshall McLuhan). In other words, how it’s said is just as important as what is said. The way you deliver your message when training will affect and impact how your participants will learn.
Being user focused means making your participants your number one priority because they are the reason you are there. You can do this by:
- Using appropriate design elements to engage and motivate. Adopt user experience design principles that support and enhance the cognitive and affective processes of learning.
- Considering the different experiences and levels of skills and knowledge. Content should not be one size fits all.
- Providing opportunities for users to access content through different means, and be able to pull the content they need, rather than having the content pushed at them.
The focus should also be on the users' need to be social creatures. By providing the social interaction and opportunity to discuss and learn from each other. By providing social interaction it encompasses attention, memory and motivation. By prioritising your participants experience, you:
- Make your participant feel valued
- Create an engaging and effective experience
- Put your participant in the driver seat
- Create a personalised connection to your content
- Make it easier for your participants to implement what they learned
3. Focus On Performance
Learning and development occurs to develop an individual’s skills and knowledge to do something. All learning should be focused with this end goal in mind, focused on the performance that the individual requires. If training isn’t directly linked to a change or improvement in performance or to solve a performance-related problem, why bother? Having a performance focus means:
- Training is directly related to the outcomes you need
- Participants will have the confidence to practice the skills they have learnt
- Expectations that performance improvement is required from the participants
- Greater ability to be able to measure performance changes and improvement
- Participants will be able to perform their job role more effectively and efficiently
But let’s not forget the financial benefits of focusing on performance. A performance-focused training approach will result in a greater impact on other areas, all of which have a positive impact on the bottom line of the business.
By targeting specific performance outcomes, rather than teaching broadly applicable skills and knowledge that the participant must then figure out how to apply on the job, the training will be more cost-effective and have a greater return on investment. So what do you do to improve your performance focus?
- Make your learning objectives directly related to performance improvement requirements
- Develop practical interactions in the eLearning that your participants can use
- Change the focus from completion to performance
- Define performance measurements that can be assessed back in the workplace
Applying these three tips can help to create succesful eLearning content development.