As training professionals, we live our lives (at least our work lives) creating training programs to impact our organizations. Our well-developed training is constant competition against project deadlines, reports, meetings and so much more. Attention spans have changed dramatically over the last decade.
These changing dynamics beg the question, “How do we know our adult learners are really learning or if they are just ‘checking it off the to-do list’ for required training?”
How can you help your learners hear the message, understand it, retain it, and put it to use? How can you make it stick?
Here are some ideas that Orgwide puts into practice to make our clients training stickier.
What’s in it for me?
First, we need to ensure that the knowledge we are teaching is relevant to the learners and that we clearly define how it is relevant. As we develop our content, remember that adult learners pay attention to information that they deem as important and relevant to them. We need to clearly state the benefit, or “what’s in it for them,” early and reinforce it often.
In which area below, will your learners find relevance and value:
- Growth
- Performance
- Job Satisfaction
- Promotion
- Compensation
- Efficiency
- Safety
Chunk it!
Creating smaller bursts of learning helps people digest information and retain it. Instead of creating one 30-minute eLearning, create two or three smaller segments.
How often do you click on something online that interests you only to stop after a couple minutes because it’s just too much? There’s a reason why so many social media sites have limits to word count or video length. They have done their research and know that shorter can be much better.
Try it, you’ll like it!
Give learners a chance to use their new knowledge before introducing another concept or skill. This ties directly into creating shorter segments of learning instead of bombarding them with too many topics at once.
Remember when?
Give learners opportunities to recall the information throughout the training. Share the concept or skill and let them test their own memory. In eLearning, this can be done through an interactive exercise like drag-and-drop or matching activities. For instructor-led classes, polls are an effective way to practice recall during virtual sessions and small group discussions.
Remember these key concepts as you create learning that is engaging, impactful, and truly sticks.