Cross blogged from:
http://eduriser.com/blog/2012/04/content-tlc/
Remember the last time process-related training was delivered to your employees?
Meticulous efforts were expended to incorporate essential elements for the program’s success. Yet when it came down to it, the training was met with varied, strange expressions; expressions that ranged from interest to apathy and struggle to confusion.
A few weeks into the training schedule you realize the training has hardly proven effective. Something didn’t go well, or went unnoticed.
Based on the reactions we believe there could be two prominent reasons
- Lack of understanding your employees learning preferences
- Complexity and unattractiveness of content
These are some things we consider as essential TLC for Content development
- Know Thy Learner!
VAKT (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, & Tactile) theory is well-known amongst the myriad of theories available in the field of learning. In general, we all learn by either seeing, or listening or experiencing. To know your learners spend a few minutes talking to the people who will take the course.
You will understand that visual learners are best suited to consume information in text with images, videos, animations or acted out scenarios. Auditory learners prefer lectures, tape or CD recordings, dialogue formats, audio-visuals etc. and kinesthetic learners connect well with group exercises that allows hands-on work with a tangible product. Get involved in groups that create scenarios, role play and activities.
Also consider talking to recent learners for getting a sense of what worked for them earlier and insights they have for improvement of the process. Include elements that will enrich the learning and keep the learners engaged according to VAKT theory.
- Provide what your learners need – No more, no less.
Many times we rely too much on our own intuition or experiences and end up building courses that don’t fit the learner’s needs. It is easy to lose sight of how much we know and the experience required by the learner to get there. Create a draft or pilot training session with a profile sample size and talk to the stakeholders and learners for a better feel of the course design. The content then built will definitely be more helpful, simplify complicated concepts, and inform the learner about what they must know. Building your content with due diligence and learner insight will make your training initiative immensely valuable and fun.
By getting to know your learners many pitfalls to build better training content and initiatives can be avoided. Poorly designed learning content wastes time and could potentially disrupt work environment. In that case the training fails to address performance issues that raised the need of it in the first place.
What other considerations for Content TLC do you recommend? Do share your ideas by adding them to the comments section.
