As a trainer, your content and how you deliver new information can enhance or diminish a learner’s experience. “Content is king” when building good training. Therefore, content development should be strategic. Here are a few tips for developing strong, effective training content:
Identify your team’s needs
Generic training content won’t yield results if your team has specific learning needs. Therefore, it’s important to identify those needs before developing your training content. But you need to go beyond simply thinking about what you want to share with learners to identify knowledge, skills, or behaviors that will help them be more effective in their roles. You need to answer questions like: In what areas are your team members underperforming? What organizational processes have proven to be inefficient and require new approaches? Do your team members require new skills to utilize emerging technologies? These are important areas to consider when developing content that will improve productivity and enable employees to meet/exceed performance expectations.
Develop clear action-oriented learning objectives
Once you understand your team’s needs, you can develop clear learning objectives for your training. What do you want your team to be able to do differently or better by the end of this training?
When developing these learning objectives, think of action verbs, such as “perform,” “identify,” “demonstrate,” and “apply.” Your learning objectives communicate what you want your team to be able to do once training concludes, for example, “The learner will demonstrate an understanding of the importance of value-based sales relationships.”
Utilize AI
Gathering information, sources, and media for training content can be time-consuming. That’s where AI comes in! Utilizing AI streamlines the content development process and allows you to focus on your instructional delivery.
With AI, you can source and summarize relevant research, pull images or videos that support training materials, and even generate PowerPoint presentations at the push of a button. You can also utilize generative AI to simplify new concepts; simply enter a few talking points, and AI will summarize these points in a way that is easily digestible for learners.
Note: Properly cite all AI-generated content as you would any content you incorporate into your training.
Incorporate media and gamification
Effective training engages learners for greater information retention and improved skill application. There are several ways you can engage learners. First, consider how you can incorporate visuals like images, videos, maps, and charts. Visuals often convey more than a body of text can. You may also consider incorporating games and activities into your training program to encourage your learners to take charge of their learning. Some examples include quizzes, simulations, problem-solving discussions, debates, polls, and more.
Interested in learning more about developing training content that drives results? Schedule a consultation with one of our professionals today!
