Ideas for VERY dry content

Just finished visiting Virpi's site, and tracking it through to a presentation she made about Yammer (http://businessgoessocial.net/spc14/). It is all very worth visiting and taking a look at. If you've been involved with training for any length of time, you can appreciate how unusual it is to see anything like this that's so really fresh and worthwhile. HT to Virpi for sharing.

Thanks John! I know it can be difficult to find illustrations/visuals that go beyond the obvious. Finance and other dry topics desperately need this type of treatment - especially when you're communicating with a non-expert audience who might find the topic intimidating (although I've noticed that everybody appreciates visuals like this - including senior managers). The only people who seem to sometimes have a problem with illustrations are the brand police (*ahem*, brand guardians). 

I think one of the other things you can do, and this flips out a lot of folks, is ask a multiple-choice question before you deliver your content. Let's say we're in the middle of a (very dry) process, and we want to set up the next step.

I like to sort of review what we've done so far and where we're going, and ask them what they think might come next. Something along these lines:

"OK, remember, we're trying to make sure we execute the XYZ process correctly, and, when we're done, our output will be this... So far, we've done X and Y, but, before we can get to Z, what do you think we need to do?"

Then I have a multiple choice question with lots of good feedback to ensure they understand now only why the wrong answers were incorrect, but explaining why the correct choice was the correct choice. If someone gets the question correct, they get reinforced for being clever (or, granted, a lucky guesser), and if they get it wrong, they get feedback on their thinking.

Either way, though, I've already asked them to think critically about what's next, not just in terms of getting the right answer, but to consider the logic behind what we're doing.

Lots of folks think it's unfair to ask questions like this before you deliver the content, but I've found that if you get a question wrong, you're eager to find out why.

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

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!

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!! 

Most of the material I get given is dry....very dry :(

But it's up to me to make it as interesting and engaging as possible, sometimes it's hard to do but it can be done....

I try to add in some for of interaction every 4-5 slides, a couple of self-assessment questions at the end of every section and if possible add content from YouTube

Put yourself in the position of the learner and try to stimulate as many sense as possible

It doesn't always work but all we can do is try :)

Once again, I appreciate all of your suggestions and recommendations!  It's great to hear different ways to think about this project, and how to incorporate more interesting interactions when appropriate.  Thanks again!

Hey Jen, first of all, welcome to the adventure of eLearning!

As for the content, one way we bring some life into less than exciting content is to explore how that content actually appears and is interacted with in "real world" practice. We begin by collecting as many stories as we can about times the content was actually applied...looking for both good and not-so good examples of how things went. We take those individual stories and begin weaving our own, larger story, that eventually becomes the learning activity itself.

We've taken this approach with things like mortgage regulations (want to talk about dull?), policies around replacing heavy equipment (yawn), and yet another course on workplace harassment. Beginning with stories of actual use is our first step towards creating experience-based activities that work for us.

Enjoy the eLearning ride!

John

ImagiLearning, Inc. 

I like Michelle Leon's response! Mainly because that's what I was gonna say!

There's a lot to it, though.

Well-written stories do a lot of things besides just engage your audience. If you can demonstrate that you get the audience's challenges in this regard, you could garner a lot of buy-in from people who need to feel as though the training channel empathizes with their plight. In other words, it gives you a lot of credibility.