Recently, online training has taken prominence over traditional in-person learning. Many corporations have already experienced the benefits of online learning, including greater personalization, more efficient training delivery, and incredible cost savings. Needless to say, online training is here to stay. The challenge that many trainers and managers now face lies within the process of creating such training. Below are 5 helpful tips for creating highly valuable and engaging online training content.
1. Clearly Define Learning Outcomes
The first step to creating any successful piece of learning material is to develop your learning outcomes. Your course’s learning outcomes should clearly communicate the goals of your course to your learners. The learning outcomes should be able to define the skills your learners will have obtained after completing the course. When writing the learning outcomes for your course, you should use specific language that reflects measurable goals. This helps prepare your learners for their training, while also illustrating clear expectations for their future roles.
2. Align Your Content with Learning Outcomes
When curating the content for your course, it is essential that you tie all information back to your learning outcomes. The learning outcomes illustrate the purpose of the course, so the content itself must form the bridge to fulfilling that purpose. It can be easy to get sidetracked with copious amounts of additional information, so it is important to keep referring to your learning outcomes in order to keep your content relevant and focused. This will help your learners stay focused too, and improve their overall retention of the course material.
3. Keep Text Brief
Often times, large blocks of text can be overwhelming to learners and can even reduce their retention rates of information. While certain topics do require a great deal of explanation, it can be easy for information to get lost in your learner’s mind. To help your learners retain the most valuable information, try to include only the most important key points of each topic.
4. Use Plenty of Visuals
Studies have revealed that about 65% of the population identify themselves as visual learners. Visual learners are individuals who are more likely to retain information that is presented in graphic forms, rather than textual forms. Research has shown that images are more likely to be retained in learners’ long-term memory. Visual cues stimulate emotions, which prompt stronger reactions in learners and thus, improve comprehension. Given this information, it is very important to include plenty of visuals within your course content. Pictures, videos, graphs, charts, infographics, and animated graphics are excellent tools to stimulate your learners’ cognitive processing and keep them engaged.
5. Include Audio
While visual stimulation is an excellent way to increase engagement in your learners, including audio in your course is another great way to appeal to auditory learners. Adding a voiceover narration of your course material is an effective way to grasp the attention of your students. Using an audio narration in addition to text or visual information can help solidify and reinforce important course concepts within your learners’ minds.
With a clear focus and engaging content, your course is sure to hold your learners’ attention and help them retain important information.