Ideas for VERY dry content

Hi Jen,

There's a lot of great content in the E-Learning Heroes community. I recommend searching for "boring" or "compliance" to find some ideas on how you can liven up dry topics.

I'd also recommend focusing your course on what people need to do. As much as possible, keep the background information outside the course or in bonus content.

Cheers,
Simon

I'll second what Simon has recommended.

Something I have just done for a process was to break it down into the small steps, then create graphics to represent each step and put them into a flow diagram with numbers along side. The learner would then click on each number to find out what happens at this stage of the process.

If you don't have too many steps this can be useful to break a lot of content into manageable chunks.

Cheers

I agree with Tristan and Simon, you need to analyze the content and then break it different topics. Make sure the each topic has some attraction in it or anything makes more engaging or interactive, for example, try using the graph and flow charts in it where each and every component of the graph will be self-explanatory. 

Concise content is the key in this course and do voiceover in it especially when you trying to explain graph and flow charts.

Color schemes play a vital role here because as I can understand the audience of yours will be those people who work in the finance department. Make sure you use selected colors. Check this out.

Hope it Helps!

MH

I agree with what everyone said above about chunking the information down into bite-size pieces. And depending on the information, I find it very helpful to have an example that you refer to throughout each step of the module.

For example, I just created a module on Incident Investigation. I started off by giving an example of a real incident that occurred in our company, then I proceeded to describe the steps of the investigation while walking them through what we did to investigation the actual incident. Applying the information as they learn it can be a very powerful tool and connects those dots for them. 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions!  I will certainly take everything I've read here into consideration as I develop my module.  I appreciate your help!

Do an informal needs assessment with whomever you're developing the course for:

Ask:

• What can go wrong/where do people get this wrong?
• What mistakes do people make/can people make?
• What are some examples of things that have gone wrong recently that could be cured by training?
• Stories of when things went wrong/went right in the past?
• Where can people get more information and help?
• What training does the audience say they need?
• What training does management say the audience needs?
• What are the major gaps between actual and desired performance?
• If we only accomplish three training goals for this project, what would they be?

"Module" implies something the participant can complete in one sitting, which would be 30-60 minutes. Aim to address as many of the issues you identified by asking questions as possible in that window.

Another thing I've found extremely impactful is to start with a true story in the beginning. I tell a story of an incident where things went wrong and how it all could have been prevented if that person had the information included in the module. For me, it's safety-type stuff. For you, if it's financial information, you can probably provide what can go wrong if they don't have the information you're providing.

You could do " A day in the life of a transaction/bill/account"  or whatever financial process that goes through your company. You can anthropomorph a transaction as it experiences the process it goes through your system. This will add a character that your users can make an emotional attachment to.  And if you have quizzes or interactions, this transaction can get lost in the system with an image of a sad and depressed character if the user fails.  

Take a look at a similar technique used to antropomorph a bill going through congress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyeJ55o3El0

Have you thought about mapping the process? If you can find a good graphic designer, you can create an actual map of the financial process (this is step 1, this is step 2, etc.). Then, at each step, you can prompt the user to click into that process and learn more via videos/images/text/audio. 

That might be a little challenging if you're new to the tool, but it could be a cool way to visualize the process and give users a good sense of the overall process at a glance. 

Good luck!! 

I am from the same finance background, the above all really help you a lot. Along with those I want to make a point, "Allow pictures to speak" as most as possible replace your text with images, clip-arts, etc. Best examples are info-graphics.

All the best!