Digital Learning Content Writing Skills

The quality of instructional designed content is measured on three key parameters: 

· Effectiveness: How well the instruction enables learners to achieve stated goals or expected outcomes?

· Efficiency: How much energy and time invested to complete the instructions?

· Cost of Development: How much expense incurred for its design and delivery? 

It often starts with the understanding your customer’s expectations vis-à-vis learner’s demography and profile. You have to look beyond statistics like age, educational qualification, comprehension of language and occupation to understand the learner’s profile. Your learner is a sum of his or her past experiences, desires, aspirations, and expectations. Their learning styles and media preferences are shaped by their familiarity with and access to technology and available infrastructure. Their cultural upbringing influences their perception of symbols, images, words, or analogies. The more closely you would get an opportunity to interact with the end users, the prescriptive solutions to their actual problem statements you would be able to capture and define while writing the content. Better to design a valid questionnaire (both open and closed end) based on the initial inputs from your client before meeting the end users of the course. This will provide an insight into the audience and their existing and expected knowledge gaps. Use existing information as a benchmark for what they know, and compare this with expected outcomes in order to identify areas where training is needed. If needed you may use skill gap analysis technique as well. Sometimes valuable inputs are also captured by observing the end user during on-the-job as well. At the end your content must reinforce the learner’s professional goals.

The key role of the Instructional Designer is to understand the learners profile and thus using their language skills “chunk” the content from the raw content so that the learner’s cognitive load is kept at a reasonable level and giving them a heightened ability to absorb, recall, and retain. Thus, they develop a storyboard for the designer to build the course based on the instructions given in it. The key challenge is therefore, to compete with distractions, making this a great option to hold the attention of their learners with the help of logical flow of content, rich graphics and interactive options to continually engage the learners.

Instructional Design Models

Instructional Design models will enable you to choose the right approach of treating the content in right context. Some of the popular models are:

1.   Situated Cognition Theory: It is based on the principle that you cannot separate knowing from doing and the knowledge that a learner acquires is somehow situated within activities that are socially, physically or culturally-based. It emphasises that how important people apply things they learn in context and how can they expand their knowledge through discussions and group problem-solving techniques. In 1989, Brown, Collins, and Newman developed the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model which is based on 6 types of tasks for designing digital learning content;

1.    Modeling

2.    Coaching

3.    Scaffolding

4.    Articulation

5.    Reflection

6.    Exploration

2.   ADDIE Model: AIDDE: It allows Instructional Designers to identify the needs, learning objectives, and desired outcomes so as to create personalized learning content. Though this model was first designed in the 1975 by the U.S. Army but still relevant. It comprises of following five factors:

1.    Analyze: Why is the training needed?

2.    Design: Strategy to follow, write objectives, choose appropriate media and delivery

3.    Develop: Development tools and techniques

4.    Implement: Impact of learning is monitored

5.    Evaluate: Is course providing the expected results?

3.   Merrill's Principles: According to Merrill there are following four core phases of learning which is task centered: 

1.   Demonstration

2.   Activation of previous knowledge

3.   Application

4.   Integration into real world challenges

4. Gagne’s Nine Events of Instructions: This is based on the behaviorist approach to deal with cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. It helps ID to adapt to following nine different learning situations: 

1. Gain attention—with stimuli (e.g. Thought provoking questions) that catch and engage brain.
2. Informative— Establish the expected outcomes and criteria.
3. Stimulate recall—Leverage existing knowledge before introducing new knowledge and build on it.
4. Presentation— Deliver the content in easily consumable doses.
5. Provide guidance — Guide learners with examples, case studies, etc.
6. Elicit performance — Engage with different activities
7. Provide feedback — Reinforce knowledge with immediate feedback (informative, remedial, corrective, etc.)
8. Assess performance —Test knowledge and understanding
9. Enhance retention and transfer to the job — Use content retention strategies (concept maps, rephrasing, summarizing, job aids, etc.)

5.   Bloom’s Taxonomy: Bloom focussed on cognitive process of learning and in 2001, the six dimensions were modified by Anderson and Krathwohl and are known as the "Revised Taxonomy", which includes :

1.     Remembering

2.   Understanding

3.   Applying

4.   Analyzing

5.   Evaluating

6.   Creating

It is a great way for drafting learning objectives starting with the action verbs classified under the above heads. See the attachments for the classified verbs.

6. Kirkpatrick Model for Assessment: It is undoubtedly, the most widely used method for the assessment. This helps ID to design the assessment questions:

1. Level 1: Reaction: The degree to which learners find their learning journey favourable, engaging and relevant to their jobs.
2. Level 2: Learning: The degree to which learners acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence and commitment based on their participation in their learning journey.
3. Level 3: Behaviour: The degree to which learners apply what they learned during the process when they are back on their job.
4. Level 4: Results: The degree to which targeted outcomes occur as a result of their learning, training & development, support, and accountability package.

The Phillips Return on Investment (ROI) Model to capture the financial impact on training program. 

7. The SAM Model: This model allows the Instructional Designer to make changes by performing repeated small steps and multiple iterations. It is an agile e-learning development process built specifically for the creation of performance-driven learning. He addresses the key challenges of learning content design such as quality, timelines and budgets, and managing Subject matter Experts. He suggested three phases:

1. Preparation Phase (Quick Phase): Gather information and get all the background knowledge.
2. Iterative Design Phase: According to him, the initial collaborative brainstorming meeting with client is required as Kick-off meeting, following by prototype development and review by the client. This will help to develop a realistic project plan based on solid framework of customer’s expectations and project scope.
3. Iterative Development Phase (Quick Phase): This is the phase of actual development, implementation, and evaluation. It starts with design proof, moving to Alpha, Beta and finally Gold delivery to the client. He suggested that as the instructional product is being developed, you continually analyze and evaluate, so that at any point if a change needs to occur, it can be incorporates quickly and thus reduce the risk involve with the project timeline or budgetary constraints.

Good Instructional Designers are trained in the latest cutting edge technologies and are adept at using creative techniques to build custom digital learning solutions. They are generally avid readers, and possess great writing, researching, and communication skills. They must also be effective project managers and flexible problem solvers. In modern days, IDs are expected to be well versed on rapid authoring tools for digital learning course productions such as Articulate, Captivate, Vyond and others. They should be ready to adapt their story boarding skills to the future technology blending with learning ecosystem such as high level Gamifications, immersive technologies such as Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, etc.

It is now necessary for the learning and development departments of organisations to train invest judiciously on training their subject matters experts or experienced resources on Instructional design methods and also on hand-on training on course authoring tools. This will not only save the overall cost of production but also make the learning ecosystem more effective and efficient.

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We have more than 15 years of rich experience in developing customised digital learning content and training solutions (blend of asynchronous and synchronous mode) to many global and domestic companies. We can help you design, develop and deploy online courses or videos as per your specific requirements and help you in building future oriented learning ecosystem.