#1 Know your users/students/participants. What is it that they really need? Don’t ask only one question like "will you come to training if we offered xyz?" Most will say "of course" emphatically, but when it is offered are no where to be found. In actuality, they often don’t sign-up because it’s not a high priority. To make it a higher priority you need to ask two more questions. Firstly, "how important is it to you for your job to know about xyz?" Have them choose from the following: Very important, Important, Somewhat Important, or Not that Important. If they pick both "I would come to xyz training" AND it is "Very Important," this is the course to offer them. But ask one more question, "Rate your skill set in xyz?" Their options should be: Very Experienced or Expert, Experienced, Somewhat Experienced, and I know very little about this topic. If many of your users select Experienced/Expert this course may not be well attended as it may be important for their job but they're already knowledgeable. You can also ask the same question of supervisors regarding their staff. As a supervisor… What do you think your staff need to learn? How important is it for your staff to know this content? And What is the skill set for your staff regarding this content?
#2 Now that you really know what content should be included, case studies/examples are one of the best ways to engage the learner. Case studies can be delivered in the classroom as role playing or in online content as a story with visual and audio (video or cartoon animation). Instead of presenting them with a bullet list of what you need to know you present a story. For example, "here is Emil and he received this email from HR to click on a link. The email looked like this! What would you do?"
#3 Quiz your learners, but don’t make it too easy. Learners like to check their knowledge. Quiz them before and after! If they know the content already then either the questions are too easy or they know the content already.
#4 Get to the point, state up front for the learner what you really want them to know/learn. What is the point of this module? State for them the learning objective.
#5 Lastly, tap into your own learners experiences. What did you like about a course/session/seminar. What made it valuable to you? How was the content delivered? However, keep in mind everyone learns in a different way: some auditory, some visual, some by doing, and some by a combination of these methods.
