One of the important objectives of content creation is retention. You want to make sure that everything that you will put in your elearning course will be remembered by the participants. Of course, that is not as easy as it sounds. This is especially true if you are delivering your course online. When learning happens outside a traditional classroom, there are a lot of distractions to be faced. These distractions vary and it is difficult to address them one by one. The key to make your elearning course successful is to create a content that is memorable to begin with.
The reason why you want to make retention high after your course is to boost the value for your students or participants. After all, they are investing their time, money and effort in your course. You need to make sure that they will remember the core lessons in your course.
The primary way to make your course memorable is to concentrate on a learner-centric content. Know who your learners are and you should be able to go through content creation with the right ideas in mind. Apart from that, here are other tips that will help raise the retention rate in your elearning course.
- Apply what is learned. When you introduce a new concept, knowledge or skill, make sure that you leave room for application. The best way to learn is to allow your students to experience what you are trying to explain. Create activities that will allow them to apply what they just learned.
- Make your course relatable. Always try to show your learners how the new concepts presented to them are related to their everyday experiences. If they do not know how your course will be applied in real life, they will hardly pay attention to what you are teaching them. It is like teaching farmer how to fish. They may not remember how because the skill is not really necessary in their line of career.
- Connect new ideas to the old ones. This is one of the best tips that you can get to help with content creation. Link your lessons to what the learners already know and retention will increase. What is already stored in our minds can easily be recalled. It is our brain’s natural instinct to relate new concepts to what is already stored within. Make it easier for your learner’s brain to make the association.
- Appeal to their emotions. Most of our memories are actually linked to what we are feeling. You cannot remember accurately how an experience happened. However, if you try to look back on how you felt at that time, then remembering will come easier.
- Be creative. There is a way for content creation to be creative without compromising the serious lessons that you want to deliver. You can use stories to help present the different concepts in your course. If you make these stories emotionally appealing, that would be so much better.
- Give time for reflection. Another tip that you need to remember during content creation is to give your learners time to reflect upon what they have learned. Allow the lessons to sink in before you proceed to a new one.
- Keep your content short and clear. Lastly, you want to make your content short and clear to avoid an overload of information. When you give someone too much information, they tend to forget some parts of it.
These tips should help you come up with a memorable elearning course during content creation.
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