Long lists from source material

Apr 11, 2018

Hi everyone! I'm curious how any of you have dealt with long, bulleted lists from PowerPoint source material. I've done a number of things to break this content up and make it engaging, and I'm wondering what others have done as well. 

Thanks!

8 Replies
Brian Allen

I'm assuming you've done analysis, determined business needs and learning outcomes/measurements, etc, and as a result you have come to the place where you've decided that these powerpoint files are important content that needs to be transformed into learning.

If that's the case, I like to use the ROPES model as I'm storyboarding my training (both in person and online/elearning).

The ROPES model will help you determine the correct ratio of content/instruction to hands-on exercises and/or learning interactions.

It's possible that as a result of this you'll lose some of the content in the bulleted lists due to it's (lack of) relevance in achieving the learning outcomes for the course.

In other instances some of your bulleted lists may turn into interactions/activities, such as drag and drop, games, etc.

If you implement ROPES as part of your storyboarding process it will transform your projects.

Hope this helps!

Bob O'Donnell

We've done the following with big bulleted lists:

  • slid the options in and out so they replace each other on screen
  • build on screen using a smaller font
  • created an interaction that pops up the bulleted list
  • created an interaction that displays large content in a PDF file
  • created an interactive tab folder that splits the bullet content up (if applicable)
  • used a "continued" or "more info" option to display additional content
  • told our ISD team to write less!

As Brian noted, ROPES may help you chunk the content out so your lists are smaller on each slide. If you're replicating existing content, just get creative.

You mentioned breaking up your content to make it engaging. Please share what you've done.

Robb Kramer

I like all these. This is content I'm stuck with ROPES or no ROPES (not uncommon in my environment). 

For some list type content, I've been able to create image banners from obvious categories in the list, then use pop-up info markers to supply the relevant bits of information about each category; this has worked well, blows apart the list and offers more engagement and visualization to the user. Once I used a sticky note board in Engage--that worked fairly well too. I've also pointed to a PDF resource for this kind of content, usually R2A2 lists. 

Thanks for the, er, uhm, list!

Brian Allen

If the long bulleted lists are coming to you from your instructional designers, that's a problem.

If the lists are coming to you from SMEs, and it's your job to apply the instructional design, then as long as you're able to measure success at hitting your learning outcomes you should be able to do whatever you want with those bulleted lists, whether it be using them as they are, transforming them or completely getting rid of them. Most of the time our SMEs give us waaay too much info, and it's our job as instructional designers to keep what's needed to achieve learning outcomes, based on our pre-determined measurements of what success will look like for this training initiative.

The ROPES model only became useful to me when I saw it applied with percentages for each step in the model. Applied appropriately a learning program will only contain 25-35% "Presentation" (or content) and 35-50% "Exercise" (learning interaction).

When you apply those requirements to the instructional design process it automatically eliminates a lot of unnecessary content (and bulleted lists) and allows you to focus on meaningful knowledge transfer through application.

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