The types of tools and activities, presented in the previous section, are very important.
However, equally important is the approach in presenting this content in an engaging
and interesting way, avoiding confusing or overwhelming the learner.
Let’s look at four aspects of presenting content and discuss best practices.
Orientation is like checking in to a hotel – the concierge will impart all the necessary
information for your stay: room number, breakfast time, Wi-Fi password.
Everything you need to acclimatize yourself to the new environment.
In a similar fashion we must ask ourselves: what is the key information learners need
to know at the start?
Clear navigation is key, whether you’re hosting content in a database, video hosting
platform or learning management system.
Navigation must be intuitive; learners should easily understand
where to go to access specific functions.
This can be achieved with the consistent function and look of buttons and labels.
Resources should be easy to locate by implementing a search mechanism, tagging, and structuring
content into clear and meaningful categories.
To assist students with familiarization a short orientation video or introductory session
should be offered.
Moreover, to avoid having learners shift through all the content in fear of missing any changes
or new resources, it is important to communicate these updates effectively through a discussion
forum or email notification.
It’s important to decide how are the updates communicated.
Who renews the content?
Finally, to assist learners with familiarization with the learning environment, a degree of
consistency should be maintained across the elements used in terms of design and operation.
This way students can establish an understanding of site operation, avoid frustration and focus
on the learning content instead.
Learners will often be challenged, become stuck, require assistance or would simply
like to ask a question.
It is important to provide and highlight the possible avenues of communication.
Contact details - Who should the learners contact?
Their organization’s internal support mechanism, OSIsoft support or the module tutor?
Multiple channels should be available – offline, online, synchronous or asynchronous.
FAQ documents can offer quick tips and tricks and allow learners to help themselves.
These are developed gradually, but someone
needs to document user requests and include them here.
Peer support – learners can develop relationships and share knowledge.
This enables more transparency and a better understanding of
business operations and individual roles.
Discussion forums can be utilized for this, allowing again the learners to help themselves
and enabling the training solution to scale.
In terms of content we can start by talking about chunking – breaking content up into
individual sections, assists learners with developing their mental model.
Chunking can also be time-based: actually, research proves that recall is increased if
learning is spaced over time.
Examples of chunking include chapters, paragraphs and others.
Variety – as mentioned in a previous section there is no single approach that is better
than the others.
It’s better to combine different approaches and allow learners the freedom of choice.
Changing activities or mode of interaction every 7 to 10 minutes creates a more engaging
learner experience.
Expectations - before accessing a resource it’s useful for the learners to be aware
of the importance of the resource, how it links to other resources, how long it would
take to watch or read, and in general why this resource is available.
Here is an example from one of our learning modules.
Natural flow – Here we must ask: do we proceed from simpler concepts to more complex?
Are all prerequisites covered?
Does the content make sense the way it’s covered?
Opportunities for collaboration - remember that adult learning involves freedom of choice
and learning can also be collaborative or team-based.
Reveal content gradually – sometimes users can be overwhelmed or discouraged if they
are given access to all content early on.
In addition, it can feel motivational to “unlock” something after a successful assessment.
Accessibility - Does our audience include users with disabilities?
How are they supported?
Is the content accessible across devices or offline?
Is information presented in multiple formats?
For example, do videos and podcasts have subtitles or transcripts?
If you have facilities worldwide, do you have or need localization?
For example our YouTube content is available for download, workbooks as well, and our learners
are free to translate the subtitles for our videos.
Accessibility questions can be answered effectively by following the
universal principles of design for learning.
We’ll talk more about this in the next activity.