Ask Articulate: How do I make dry content engaging?

We asked our community members to share their most challenging projects. Here’s one of the responses we received.

Hi Bernard, 

I had a look at your PowerPoint deck and I can see why you’re finding it challenging to turn it into an engaging course.

The first thing that stood out to me was the sheer amount of content—there’s just so much! To make it more digestible, I would divide it up into a series of micro-learning courses. That way learners can take in as little—or as much—as they feel comfortable with in one sitting.

The second thing I noticed is that the law articles outlined in this presentation appear to have been more or less copied and pasted onto the slides. And given the nature of legal jargon, this leads to the content feeling dry and uninteresting. 

But as anyone who’s passionate about the law will tell you, in reality it’s anything but! One way to make the content more engaging and also help students understand how it applies to real life is by building scenarios.

For example, instead of a static, text-heavy PowerPoint slide like this ...

… you could create an interactive, scenario-based slide like this, using Storyline 360:

View interactive version | Download template

To come up with realistic scenarios, you could try asking real-life police officers if they can remember any situations where they were unsure about whether they could lawfully do X or Y. Another idea would be to use the real-life scenarios that led to the creation of the laws (if applicable) to demonstrate why they’re important. 

If you’ve never written a scenario before, be sure to check out this article for more advice on how to go about it: 7 Tips for Writing Effective E-Learning Scenarios.

Hopefully these suggestions—along with the above scenario template—will help you get started transforming your PowerPoint presentations into truly immersive learning experiences your learners will love.

Feel free to reach out with any additional questions.

Allison LaMotte

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