Learning is essential for talent development, retention, and performance. But how do you create learning content that engages your talent and motivates them to apply their new skills and knowledge? Here are some tips to help you design and deliver effective learning content that aligns with your talent management goals.
Before you create any learning content, you need to know who your learners are, what they need, and how they prefer to learn. Conduct a learner analysis to identify their goals, challenges, skills gaps, learning styles, and preferences. Use surveys, interviews, focus groups, or data analysis to gather this information. Then, use it to tailor your content to their needs and expectations.
The analysis should start with studying the KPIs and goals of the business/department/team. This step is crucial for the success of any learning program. It’s also the key step that differentiates corporate training from academic instructional and learning design. It’s essential to remember that corporate learning is a business solution which fills a business need. How? By closing learning gaps of employees (the audience).
I agree completely with this approach for large companies where the individual or team responsible for designing the learning content does not have a work or personal relationship with the employees who will participate in the learning process. If we are not dealing with a large company and management is familiar with everyone who will be involved, I suggest an exchange of ideas during a brainstorming session. Blend the ideas from the learners with those of management in designing learning events that reflect feedback from the learners whenever possible.
To create engaging learning content that prioritizes simplicity, implementation, and routinization over abstract theories or plans, leverage learning analytics. Utilize learning analytics to continuously assess learners' progress, tailoring content to their needs and pacing. Incorporate interactive elements like quizzes and simulations to reinforce learning, and gather feedback to refine the content iteratively. This data-driven approach ensures that learning remains relevant, hands-on, and adaptable, leading to improved skill acquisition and sustained engagement.
Once you know your audience, you need to define what you want them to learn and how you will measure their learning outcomes. Write clear and specific learning objectives that describe the knowledge, skills, or behaviors that your learners will gain from your content. Use the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) to guide your objective setting. Then, align your content with your objectives and use assessment tools to evaluate your learners' progress and performance.
Depending on your objectives, audience, and resources, you can choose from various formats to deliver your learning content. For example, you can use e-learning, webinars, podcasts, videos, infographics, blogs, or games. Each format has its advantages and disadvantages, so you need to consider factors such as interactivity, accessibility, engagement, feedback, and cost. You can also use a blended approach that combines different formats to suit different learning needs and situations.
When creating learning content for adult learners, it is important to apply adult learning principles. To engage your talent, relate the content to their existing knowledge and experience, provide clear and meaningful context and examples, encourage active participation and collaboration, offer choice and flexibility, provide feedback and recognition, and support self-directed and lifelong learning. Adult learners have different characteristics and motivations than children or students; they want to learn what is relevant, practical, and applicable to their work and life while having some control over their learning process and pace.
One way to make your learning content more engaging and memorable is to use storytelling and gamification techniques. Storytelling involves using narratives, characters, emotions, and conflicts to convey your message and connect with your learners. Gamification involves using elements of games, such as points, badges, levels, challenges, and rewards, to motivate and stimulate your learners. Both techniques can help you create learning content that is fun, immersive, and relevant.
Finally, you need to evaluate the effectiveness of your learning content and improve it based on feedback and data. You can use various methods to collect feedback from your learners, such as surveys, quizzes, tests, interviews, or observations. You can also use data analytics to track and measure your learners' behavior, engagement, completion, and retention. Use this information to identify what works and what doesn't, and make adjustments accordingly.
From my own experience overseeing talent development & management at my company, I ask the following 3 questions when it comes to developing learning content that maximizes engagement. I find that when I address these, I get closer to genuine engagement. 1. Personalize: How can we incorporate a learner’s unique passions, interests, needs, desires, goals, skills, and interests into our learning interventions? 2. Connect: How can our learning interventions connect learners to each other, colleagues, mentors, and timely resources needed for success? 3. Guide: How might we design our learning interventions to guide learners down pathways, rooted in data and research, that we know will promote their success?
Typically when producing content for learning & development... I think it is a great idea for the teams who will be consuming it... too actually create it themselves (or in small groups) Even if it is merely more of a refresher you would be surprised the amount you may have forgotten or has become an after thought! Similarly if it is a new skill, sometimes I find someone explaining it who is also learning it at the same time can be more effective than someone who has already done it... You may also find that you pick up that skill quicker.