Social Learning on a shoestring
Hanif Sazen

Earlier this year, many of you may have seen David Carroll’s humorous tirade against United Airlines. Carroll, a Canadian musician, had his guitar damaged by United and although this was upsetting, the customer service he received in the following nine months drove him to distraction – United just refused to accept any liability. So he wrote a song, made a video and put it on YouTube. Following over three million hits on YouTube and Mr Carroll’s appearance on all the major news networks, United scrambled to compensate the musician – but it was too late, the damage had been done.

There’s obviously a message here for the big corporate machine: the customer now has the power to expose poor customer service and shoddy business practice. There is also a message here for us L&D professionals. Our customers, the learners, are being exposed to a multitude of technologies at a frightening pace. They get a customer service message from Mr Carroll’s YouTube video, they get information and help on their BlackBerry or iPhone, they network using LinkedIn and they participate in online seminars from home and in the office. We have a great opportunity to embrace the changes and make sure that these technologies are embedded in
our learning strategies. We need to break away from the traditional one hour course and leverage
the power and the resources that are all around us.

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Three months ago, completely new to the world of e-learning, I was given some time by Saffron to do as much research as I could on instructional design and effective learning strategies before starting my first project. It was rather daunting, but I leapt to the challenge and one of the ways I found out what good instructional design looks like was to review some of Saffron’s past courses and do some research online. Now that I have experience of both writing and reviewing courses, there are a few things that I’ve learnt. So, if you’re also new to this industry, read on for my thoughts on how best to write an engaging e-learning course that achieves the desired behavioural changes.

Firstly, anyone in the e-learning industry will encourage you to be innovative with your writing and while this is certainly a worthy aim, before leaping straight into an exciting approach, you should first look at what has worked well in the past. I’ve learnt that addressing the learner directly is really effective (using ‘you’), as it will make them feel that the course is relevant and designed specifically with them in mind. Using the active tense rather than the passive tense is often a good way to infuse some energy into your writing. Also, try to inject emotion – perhaps by adding humor – because emotion engages like nothing else does.
 
Secondly, keeping the learning outcomes in sight is essential because otherwise the training will drift away from the course objectives. So glance at the learning outcomes after you’ve written a few screens of a course and imagine being asked by an uninspired reader just why they need to know this. Keep doing this every now and again – although it may seem time consuming, it really did save me time in the long run and ensured that I kept on track!

Thirdly, really understanding the content is a crucial part of instructional design. Imagine this scenario: you’ve been given the material for a course and it’s about, say, VAT or financial management. Your task is to get to grips with said content and mould it into an engaging, interactive storyboard. How? Sustainable (and transmittable) ideas only come to those who really spend time familiarising themselves with the content – it’s an ID’s job to become the expert. Also, read a little around the area – you won’t necessarily use everything you research but it will increase both your knowledge and confidence and it’s that which will show in your writing – and engage the learner.
 
Fourthly; know your audience. You can’t structure content coherently unless you understand who they are and what they need to learn. Otherwise, you’ll be tempted to include as much content as possible, to cover every eventuality, and trawling through text which isn’t personally relevant to them can make a learner switch off double quick. Knowing your audience also means you’ll be able to use realistic examples and scenarios familiar to them. You should aim for the learner’s sigh of recognition, their empathy and emotional involvement, which is likely to lead to better retention of information.

Lastly, signposting is something which should be included in every storyboard written by a good instructional designer. The learner only has the screen in front of them to indicate where they are in the course and what’s left to cover, so it’s important that they’re reminded of what’s coming up and what they’ve already learnt. Why? Because that way they not only understand how each screen is linked, but they are also able to organise their time and choose how much of the course to take in one sitting. Having a sense of control over their own learning will further engage them and can only add to their positive experience of an e-learning course.

So here lie my words of wisdom but I’m sure there are many points which I have missed as I’m still learning about instructional design every day. But these are good pointers to start with, and I hope that they help any new instructional designers as much as they helped me!

Plain English isn’t dull writing, and it’s not about banning new or long words. It’s all about using words that are easier to read and understand, and faster to write! Here are our top ten tips for writing an e-learning course in plain English.

1. Think before you write

It’s crucial to plan the structure of an e-learning course. List the topics which need to be covered. Make a note of the points you want to cover on each screen. Focus on the learning objectives – and bear them in mind as you write!

2. Keep your sentences short

Clear writing should have an average sentence length of 15 to 20 words. Be concise. Try to stick to one idea in each sentence, and vary your writing by mixing short sentences (like the last one) with longer ones (like this one).

3. Write like you speak

One of the most effective ways to engage a learner is to use everyday English. Scrap the jargon and avoid legalese, and always explain any technical terms and acronyms. A light and conversational tone works wonders for learning.

4. Use active verbs…

Active sentences sound more crisp and punchy, and will bring life to your writing. So, for a health and safety course, instead of ‘the accident was prevented by the employee’ why not write ‘the employee prevented the accident’?

5. …but don’t ignore passive verbs

It’s tempting to steer clear of the passive voice but there are times where it may be better to use: to avoid allocating blame for example (such as ‘a mistake was made’ rather than ‘we made a mistake’), or if it simply sounds better.

6. Avoid nominalisations

Nominalisations are a type of abstract noun and are formed from verbs. They make writing really dull and difficult to read so rather than ‘the introduction for the event was presented by the team’ write ‘the team introduced the event’ instead.

7. Imagine you’re talking to the learner

One of the most effective ways to emulate the best aspects of classroom training is to involve the learner by addressing them as‘you’. Why not make them feel even more included by saying ‘we’ – it will add a human element to your writing.

8. Give instructions

Remember! Click the image below. Take a look inside your resources folder. These are all commands and are the fastest and most direct way to give instructions. Don’t be afraid to be bossy in e-learning – you won’t scare the learner!

9. Don’t be afraid to list

As I mentioned in a previous blog, not even lists have to be boring. They are useful for splitting up information in an e-learning course and, as long as they have bullets and are logical, they will draw the learner’s attention to each point.

10. Blitz those myths

You can start a sentence with ‘but’, ’so’ or ‘however’ because that’s how we speak. And you can end a sentence with a preposition, like ‘for’. You can also split infinitives and seize the opportunity to boldly cause grammatical controversy!