Working with Short Attention Spans
Take a look at these key tips for working with short attention spans:
Hooray, content chunking!
We write about content chunking a lot at the Lectora® e-Learning Blog because it’s a valuable strategy, and come on, doesn’t the phrase “content chunking” just make you smile? Seriously, though—content chunking breaks down massive amounts of content into manageable pieces. And when those info pieces are just the right size of small, your learners with short attention spans don’t have time to get distracted before they get through each piece. If you want to read even more about content chunking (more reasons to smile), check out this awesome post: 4 Benefits (and Tips) for Content Chunking.
Say farewell to clutter.
Don’t be an e-Learning hoarder, afraid to lose extra content, graphics or games. Maybe you spent a long time creating them; maybe your coworker told you to insert an extra video to each section of your course and you don’t want to offend him; maybe you just think those comics you added between quizzes are super cool. These are all terrible reasons to be an e-Learning hoarder. Clutter will just hurt your learners with short attention spans.
If something doesn’t support your learning objectives or if you’ve already sufficiently supported all your main points, then it’s time to say farewell to the clutter. After that, you can say hello to focused learners! To get some support when you send that clutter packing, read this post: Stop Making These 5 Mistakes in Your e-Learning.
For those of you who need a detailed breakdown of frequent e-Learning clutter suspects (and how to choose the right elements to actually include in your course), I collected some resources to help.
- Images: How to Choose the Best Images for Your e-Learning Course
- Text: 6 Quick Tips for Proofreading Your e-Learning Course
- Games: Is Gamification More Than Just a Buzzword?
- Humor: The Dos and Don’ts of Using Humor in e-Learning
- Other random stuff that doesn’t line up with your learning objectives: 4 Tips for Creating Effective Learning Objectives for Yourself
Take the offensive, and grab your learners’ attention right away. Read this post for great tips: 5 Ways to Grab Your Learners’ Attention.
Need an authoring tool to create your focus-friendly course with? New Lectora® Online V2.0 puts the power of Lectora in the cloud. Email Info@Lectora.com to learn more.