5 Habits of Healthy Training Content
We know how complicated creating training content can seem. From assessments, to certification programs. From continuing education classes, to webinars, it can be quite the overwhelming task helping your employees stay effective and engaged. The payoff for creating custom training, however, is amazing! Click here if you’d like to know why it’s a great idea, and click here to see how you can get started. Our suggestion is to get started with an LMS who already knows the ropes and can do most of that content creation heavy-lifting for you. We used some tips and tricks that our content creators at Coursettra have found useful in the process.
- Don’t stray from the objectives. When it comes to creating the actual course content, it is easy to let the material veer into multiple directions. Start each course with a course objective and with each lesson establish a learning objective. Objectives can help you organize your courses and helps in avoiding piling too much content (or even the wrong content) on your trainees all at once.
- Create course outlines. Your objectives will be one of the very first and most important steps of this process. Chart out the entire course, front to back using bullet points. Keep it simple! Mark where knowledge checks and assessments will take place. While the training content will need to be refreshed with relative frequency, the outline tells you what the backbones of your training need to be. Think of it like a course map.
- Use a visual software to build your courses. Here at Coursettra, our content creation experts use Articulate to create the courses for you. If you are using a full-service LMS, they will take your training content and build it into software, including assessments, tests, etc. Otherwise, we suggest taking a training course or class on how to use these software tools as they can be complicated without prior knowledge.
- Do your research. Depending on the industry you are training in, the content of your training is going to range from very broad to very specific. If you are not an industry professional, or even if you are, seek out other professionals within in the industry. This is particularly important if your industry is moderately to highly regulated, or safety training is a large part of your training. It will help you to find those who know the specific regulations and safety needs as they will guide many of your course and lesson objectives.
- Record your audio last. According to our content creators, there’s nothing more time consuming than having to record audio time-and-time again as new changes get made. Not to mention, your voice changes throughout the day depending on what time of day it is, what you’ve eaten, how your environment changes. So make the audio your very last step, after all changes are approved and made.
More than anything, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Training is a complicated process. It’s why we are here! The initial cost and heavy-lifting of creating courses and certification programs is daunting but the net benefit is substantial. Having effective and engaging training content will provide your employees with so many lifelong industry skills. If you think we can help, let us know here!
