Just Give Me the Information I Need to Know!!! Please!

Do you ever hear learners say this when they take an eLearning course?

I love beautifully designed courses. I really do. I love when a course is put together with nice colors, fonts and visuals. As an Instructional Designer, I can appreciate the talent that goes into making a course look great.  And yet, I’ve seen courses that are beautiful but miss the mark on content. The course just doesn’t get the right information out to the learners. It may be too wordy, too long, or have too many silly interactions, just to name a few reasons.

People ask me how I know when I have the “right” content for my audience. This is where course development becomes an art. Finding the right balance for your content goes well beyond performing a needs assessment.

Haven’t you ever noticed that it’s much easier to explain something that you truly understand versus a topic that you barely know? When you understand a topic and you have to explain it to another person, your mind categorizes information. You know what information is important to mention so that your listeners can follow your story; and you know what information to omit because it may be too much to process. It’s about finding the right balance between getting to the point too quickly and over explaining. Both these extremes will result in losing your audience’s focus. That’s where the art of instructional design comes in.

Think about your audience

When designing an eLearning course, I first put myself in the shoes of the learner. What do they need to know to perform this task, solve this problem, or learn this topic? Some of this information is collected in a needs assessment. This is usually a questionnaire. Some questions you would find in a needs assessment would include: “Who is the audience? What is their experience level? How many people are we targeting? What is the goal of this training? What are we trying to tackle? Specific problems? New Information? Skills development? And it goes on until you get a better understanding of your project.

I will admit that it’s easier to come up with the right content when you know the topic.

But most of the time, we’re hired to produce a course on a topic that we may know very little about. This is when developing a good rapport with your Subject Matter Expert or SME goes a long way. A good SME will share their expertise, and they will know how much information to impart so you can translate it into a great eLearning course.

But what happens if the SME is not an expert, or is not good at explaining the topic to you, or just doesn’t have time for you? How do you get to the “right” information for your project?

Gather Your Resources

In addition to working with SMEs, I develop my understanding of the subject from various sources, such as prior policies, presentations, user guides, manuals, you name it. If there is information out there about the topic I am tasked to develop, I read it, learn it, and digest it.

ELearning must get to the point and give the learners what they need to know quickly because employees are generally busy and have little time for training. The information that our learners need to know must be up front, obvious, clear and helpful.

Outline Your Content

Once I’ve read all the resources and have met with the SME, I’m ready to start. My process is to write out an outline and start the narrative. My goal with this step is to try to explain the topic back to the SME. Depending on my level of understanding, I may even start a course prototype where I begin scripting the course and laying out the slides (usually in Articulate Storyline). During this step, I start seeing the holes in my understanding, and where I need more information. This gives the SME focus when they provide me with feedback and build my knowledge.

Seek Feedback from the Beginning

The feedback and input I receive from the SME finetunes the content. Something interesting happens when you relay information back to the SME, especially when you share your first prototype. They see the course taking shape and they better understand how the information will be presented in its final format. This sometimes leads the SME to reevaluate some topics. They may decide that some topics should be expanded, changed, added or deleted.

In addition, the quality of the content will be much better if you widen your input circle. The additional feedback will confirm if your content hits the learning mark. Once your course has the right content, you can design it to maximize visual appeal.

A Word on Evaluations

I know that we are supposed to evaluate our courses for effectiveness, as part of the ADDIE process. You could say that if you get positive results on an evaluation then you probably have the right content. However, some projects may be difficult to tie to metrics and therefore we can’t say with any measure of certainty that we have the right content. In my personal experience, I haven’t found robust evaluations in organizations. I’d be interested in discussing this topic further in another blog post.

In the end, determining the right balance of content will ensure the success of your course. Employees will be thankful that we used their time wisely and you won’t hear them say: Just give me the information I need to know!!! Please!!!