“Why you should offer the least possible amount of content and other practical tips on selecting content for your courses”
Three quick wins
content curation for training providers
Learners these days have seemingly endless access to learning content. Google understands your questions better every day, YouTube has slick videos on the most niche of subjects and online course offerings (such as LinkedIn Learning) are growing every day. Also, an increasing number of professionals have access to a ‘Netflix of learning’ type of platform (LXPs) or a rich collection of microlearnings.
Can learning designers add anything to those supersmart systems? If so, how can they pick the right content themselves? Let’s find out along with our Customer Success Managers (CSM), Roy and Michiel, who help training providers with these questions on a daily basis.
The gap between learners and learning content
To answer the first question: yes, learning designers definitely have an important role to play when it comes to helping learners with accessing the right content. There is an increasing gap between learners’ needs and relevant content.
On the one hand, the rate at which the relevance of knowledge deteriorates is accelerating. In other words, the shelf-life of knowledge is shortening. For example, new programming languages, new theoretical frameworks for project management and new tools for data processing are popping up quicker and quicker. That requires increasingly regular upkeep through learning and training.
On the other hand, content offering is exploding. We all know the crazy amount of new videos being uploaded every hour on YouTube (30.000 hours..!), to give just one example. Every (aspiring) expert can easily become a content creator, and social media brings them to everyone’s fingertips. Of course, learning is more than courses, but courses and training providers do have a vital role to play.
Increased learning needs and more content causes a big gap between them. Technological developments widen that gap but are also used to bridge it. More data, smarter algorithms and better (learning) content platforms are sent in to save the day. So, technology fuels the fire but also tries to put out the flames. That’s where the human firefighters come in.
Three quick wins
on selecting the right content
1. Less is more
Content, on its own, isn’t learning, and learning is more than knowledge alone. Pages read are not a measure of what people have learned. Motivation is also affected by too much content. And let’s not forget the paradox of choice: more is less. Offering more options to people will result in fewer decisions and more stress. So, more content can ultimately lead to less learning.
This also ties in with a common pitfall for trainers, teachers and course creators: you don’t have to be the all-knowing source of truth. Facilitating learning through engagement, sparking motivation with relevant content and initiating the discussion are more important than providing as much content as possible.
The goal of the content you choose to present to your learners is not to give them all the information. First of all, what is ‘all the information’? And who are you to know or decide how much context is needed or wanted by each one of your learners? Also, the moment you publish that content, something new will probably have popped up already.
Learning content is mainly intended to give direction: what are relevant terms, who are the SMEs, which questions are relevant and where to look for answers? Provide them with a standard reference work (or an introduction to it) or an engaging TED Talk from an authority in the field and then ask the right question to spark the conversation.
A practical example comes from a miniMOOC about online social learning we ran (twice) with a total of 2500 learning professionals. For each of the four subtopics in that course, one piece of content from an expert was presented as an introduction. This was followed by an open-ended question to instigate the discussion between learners. Not only was the curated content piece discussed but also new content pieces were (searched and) introduced by learners.
Quick win
Don’t go for as much content as possible. Instead, aim for the least amount of content possible, whilst keeping your desired concept intact.
“ Keeping content compact leaves room for differentiation by your learners. Those who want or need to go deeper into the subject can but it’s not necessary for grasping the concept you’re trying to get across. And resist the push from enthusiastic SMEs to include ALL the information. Knowing enough is… enough. ”
– Michiel, Customer Success Manager at aNewSpring
2. Hierarchy helps
You started out with lots of content to choose from, and you narrowed that down but now the question arises: what is the right order and structure? What will be the chapters, subchapters and paragraphs? Moreover, should that structure be shallow and broad, with lots of main chapters, or deep and narrow, with fewer chapters and more levels?
To start with the last question: the word isn’t out on what’s better. Research has been done, mainly around user design, but the answer is not simply that breadth is better than depth. There are useful guidelines, though. Intuitively, there is such a thing as too broad and too deep. More important is how you group elements thematically and how clearly you label your elements.
Think about what your learners need and know. What are they expecting to learn? Let’s say you are introducing a new work process in your course. Chapters can be the elements of the (theoretical) model behind it or each chapter represents a real-world situation. Which one you choose clearly affects your structure and type of content. The existing knowledge of learners plays a crucial role as well; build from what they know.
Creating the right hierarchy and structure is very impactful to how your learners will experience the content. Understanding the content you present starts with a clear division into chapters, subchapters, paragraphs and so on. You could say you are telling a story with your content; the hierarchy and structure is your narrative. Think about the red thread in your story and how elements connect to each other.
Want to dive deeper into this approach? In our e-book ‘Put the Learner First‘ you can find helpful insights from ten industry leaders and experts boiled down to three guiding principles. Check it out and become more successful by knowing (and giving!) what your learners need.
Quick win
Make sure your structure and hierarchy are understandable. Align it with your learners’ needs and expectations.
“ The possibilities your learning platform offers affect your structure and hierarchy. The aNewSpring platform provides course designers with lots of flexibility, with several levels to be built into the learning journey. Recently, the bundles feature was introduced to link connected courses. ”
– Tech tip from support at aNewSpring
3. Order to the chaos
The administrative aspect of curating content is not the most fun but valuable nonetheless. Having a neat archive with clear tags and a structure for your folders will help you find fitting content in the long run.
Again, it is not about the amount of content but about the right content. Evaluate and re-evaluate the content you use. Organise your content library at the backend for all of those involved with designing and building your course.
Also, the assignments and test questions in your online course can give you valuable insights into the quality of content. Looking at their performance (p-values, Rit-value, item distractors, etcetera) will tell you if there’s a nice balance in how easy or difficult those exercises are. And, following from that, it gives an insight into how well learners have understood the content.
Put effort into having guidelines for your content library and/or content management system. This way, you only have to search for the best content on a certain topic once because it is likely that you will reuse some content in your course portfolio.
Want to dive deeper into the performance of your test questions? Ask our CSM Reinier, who really knows his way around statistics and the quality of assessments.
Quick win
Create a system for how you tag your curated content on the backend. Think not only about the date, subject and type but also the rating of your content.
“ Version management comes into play as well with your content library. Once a course is online for a longer period of time and the content gets updated, think about how you should handle that. Will existing learners get that update or will you offer an updated course all together? ”
– Roy, Customer Success Manager at aNewSpring
More pro-tips from our CSM’s
Don’t start with your content; start with your learning goals.
“A common mistake for learning designers is to base or build their course on the content they have. But just dropping a video or article in, does not automatically mean that learners will learn what they need from that. It is better to start with what you want to achieve with the course: the learning goals. Use that to decide which content you want to use. And think about how you want to process that content to reach your learning goals and with which tools. Bloom’s taxonomy can be helpful, too. This gives you the best insights on what content is most useful and which content is missing.”
– Roy, Customer Success Manager at aNewSpring
‘Less is more’ also applies to how your content is presented.
“Keep individual content pieces compact as well. There can be a tendency to make your content ‘more attractive’ by adding modalities (such as audio, video, visuals) or expanding on it. For example, a sentence with more than 12 words is considered ‘long’ by learners. All of that can make the information density too high, which negatively affects transfer. Using Richard Mayer’s theory of multimedia learning improves your content based on how the brain processes information and stimuli.”
– Michiel, Customer Success Manager at aNewSpring
