Few design strategies should be considered to make boring and dry subjects interesting and engaging. Let’s see what they are.
One of the most important trainings in any organization is compliance training. Technology-enabled training works best for compliance training. Since technology is being used for these trainings, a few design strategies should be considered while creating compliance training material.
Let’s look at some of the strategies to design an effective compliance training course.
On-screen agents:
Introducing a character adds human element to the course and forms a relationship with learners. The on-screen characters transform a boring subject into an interesting one. They enhance the quality of learner engagement by retaining his attention.
We have used an avatar, Adam, the Income Tax Accountant in a course to explain various concepts of income tax accounting such as fundamentals of ASC 740 and guide learners throughout the course.
Case-study approach
A case-study approach involves using a case and teaching the content using this case throughout the course. The case presents problems occurring in the organization, such as not complying with the processes/ procedures, not maintaining quality etc. The course then presents the best practices or guidelines to solve these problems. The case can then be used for checking the learner’s understanding and decision making capabilities.
We have used a case related to food safety in an organization and how the organization was not maintaining hygienic standards. The course used this case throughout to explain various standards and laws to maintain hygienic food conditions.
Videos:
Videos are informative and provide a high level of interaction and capture the learner’s attention. Merely embedding a video into the eLearning course doesn’t serve the purpose of effective learning. The video has to be woven into the eLearning course with some additional information.
For a fire safety course, we received a long video on different classes of fire, types of fire extinguishers, the band colors of fire extinguishers, etc. Instead of showing the entire video,we divided the video into small bits and showed these bits under relevant sub-topics with some additional information. This worked well making learning very effective.
Other strategies include:
- Using interactivities to break the monotony of imbibing information through seeing.
- Using the audio element and right tone to reinforce learning and bring behavioral change.
To conclude, these are some of the strategies to make boring and dry subjects interesting and engaging. Hope you find them useful.
