How to Turn Your Instructional Material from Boring to Brilliant

You need to teach a skill. Whether your subject matter elicits cheers or groans from your audience, you want maximum engagement and retention. So how can you teach new material without putting your class members to sleep? 

Here are six ways to make your instructional material shine.

1. Use relevant examples

Students have been bored with ordinary characters doing mundane tasks since the days of See Spot Run. Making your material relevant to class members by including examples can help them think of solutions, understand the practical use of what you’re teaching, and personalize the material. The time you invest in crafting examples will be worth the effort.

Use examples matched to class members’ job skills, demographics and interests. You can incorporate several different types of examples such as case studies, current events, guest experts, role plays or field trips to help students understand the real-world impact of their new knowledge and skills.

For example, if you’re a tech company teaching graphic designers how to use new task tracking software, give examples of employees using the new software to organize real-world tasks such as designing brochures or creating a new logo.

You could also demonstrate situations where effective or ineffective use of the software plays out in your workplace, organize an excursion to a company that already uses the software, or ask your students to imagine a scenario in which they could use the software to their benefit. The possibilities are endless!

2. Tell a story 

When I was a sleep-deprived student, one of my courses required me to read about 100 pages of academic papers per week. Most of these papers started me snoring faster than an Ambien pill. 

But some papers began with a story. One text described the Crandall Canyon mine disaster and its subsequent communication failures. The text sparked my interest. Because of the mine collapse story, I still remember that paper, while other concepts have since disappeared from memory. The story helped me relate to the characters and follow the text more easily so it became memorable.

Research shows that people remember six to seven times more when words are constructed around a story. No matter what story you tell, your students will be far more likely to remember a concept with a narrative than one without.

3. Mix it up

Nothing provokes a blank stare faster than a giant wall of text, especially if your materials are in digital format.

If you want to win over your students’ fickle attention spans, break that text into sections. Start each section with a subheading. Vary your text by sprinkling in short sentences after your long ones. Ditto for paragraphs. Instead of telling all the time, why not ask a question?

If your writing will appear on a screen rather than in print, you’ll need to modify your writing style. Check out these tips on writing for the web.

4. Incorporate color and design

You may not be a graphic designer, but effective design can help students remember concepts. Of course, you don’t have to color all your subheadings red (nor should you!), but effective design requires planning the layout of your text.

What concepts do you want to emphasize? How can you use color, white space, typography or other graphic design concepts to make your text reader-friendly? Can you create an infographic to synthesize your information? Check out these tips on using visuals, and, if possible, enlist the help of a graphic designer.

5. Use multimedia

Even if you’re a text-loving word nerd, there’s no guarantee that your students feel the same way. In fact, it’s more likely that other types of media will grab their attention.

Take a cue from the internet—some have projected that videos will account for 80% of internet traffic by the end of 2019. Video’s added bonus: YouTube’s search engine is one of the most popular on the planet, so creating video for instruction and re-purposing it as strategic content development is a great way to increase your online exposure.

Of course, your multimedia options are not limited to video. You can also include photographs, illustrations, audio files, gifs, animations and more.

6. Create opportunities for interaction and collaboration

Interaction and collaboration help students learn. The more opportunities you give your students to work together, the more you’ll reap the benefits. Not only can you improve learning, you can also foster soft skills and relationships that will benefit the workplace in other ways.

Be creative in thinking of ways for your learners to interact. For example, gamification dramatically improves outcomes. How could you turn your material into a game? Other interactive options include group discussion, group practice, skill demonstration, student teaching and group presentations. No matter which type of interaction or collaboration you choose, learners often learn more from each other than they do from the teacher.

Bringing it all together

Although adding these techniques to your instructional material may require extra effort at the outset, incorporating examples, stories, variety, design, multimedia and interaction will pay off. By adding these elements to your material, you can improve participation, completion and retention. That will save you time in the long run. And maybe you’ll even keep your employees awake.

Thinking about hiring a content agency to make your instructional materials more engaging and effective? At Comma Copywriters, we offer a variety of wordsmithing services for your business, from content marketing strategy to editing & copywriting. Schedule your free consultation today to take your team’s learning to new levels.