New User seeks advice on how to engage a learner on highly technical content

Jul 18, 2019

Hi All,

I am very new to Storyline 360 (and E-learning in general).  My background is as a Scientist and a Face to Face Facilitator of technical content.  I am building training for a manufacturer and distributor of a specialist industrial product range in the building/coatings industry.  This training is aimed at new starters in their sales force.

I have to provide a lot of technical content, and I have mastered the whole click to reveal information and popped drag and drop learning checks and quizes in for the mix, but I am after any ideas on how to make my content delivery more engaging (not just interactive). 

I have had a look through some fantastic story templates that are on the forums which look fantastic, but am yet to see anything that delivers technical content.  If anyone has any ideas or examples of how they have done this I would be very grateful.

Thank you

Kim

4 Replies
Nicole Legault

Hi there Kim!

Welcome to the E-Learning Heroes community... and also to the field of e-learning in general since it sounds like you're pretty new to it!! It's pretty exciting to learn about it all, but it can also be a bit daunting (at least that's how I felt when I started in the industry! so much to learn!). 

Sounds like you're looking for ways to make the content more meaningful and engaging. One of the top ways that you can do this is by incorporating some scenarios into your content. Even if you're building training on technical content, you can still come up with scenarios that work with that content. Usually when we're building training/e-learning we're trying to teach someone how TO DO something, right? So what do you want these learners to do with the info you're giving them? You're not just giving them all this technical information and product knowledge for them to NOT use it right? They need to learn this information so they can use it in the real world.. when talking to customers and having to make a sale or deliver accurate information. These are all examples of scenarios you can create . 

You just need to think of "in what situation will the learners need to use this technical content?" and then come up with the situations or challenges/problems that they will encounter on the job and have to make decisions about how to use the information practically. 

For example, once I did a contract for a pharma company who had a medical product and they were building training for the sales reps about the new product. It was all just specs, product information, dry stuff. But to make that engaging, we turned it into a scenario where various types of customers would pose a question or state a need or what they were looking for, and then the sales rep would have to choose the correct response/choice/course of action (in this case, respond with the correct information / data about the right type of product) . Then they'd get feedback. Based on if they provided the correct information or not, they might make a sale and get promoted, or lose the sale and the promotion. 

Here's some examples of scenarios:

 

Here's some resources on building scenarios:

Also I recently did a presentation at ATD ICE on building scenarios in 6 steps, and I'm attaching my files here in case they are helpful. Hope this helps!! :) Can't wait to hear what others in the community have to say. 

Daniel Brigham

Kim: Nicole has given some fantastic info above. I'll give one piece of simple advice: vary the way you present content to your learner. Vary how the learner interacts with the screen -- click, hover, slide, drag. Vary voiceover slides with text only slides. Vary quiz question types and add in a scenario-type question every so often. Break up chunks of content with mini-assessments. Variety is the spice of life, and does a good deal to aid engagement.

Hope that helped. --Daniel 

Kim Baker

Thank you so much Nicole and Daniel,  I am playing around with some templates now.  Unfortunately my client is very specific about the number of modules they want and I dont think they will let me split up the content.  I will have to work around that to try to keep it interesting.  I have been thinking of creating natural resting points within the content.  Spots where the learner can comfortably walk away and come back at another time. 

Thanks again for the feedback.

Kim

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.