Compelling content hooks you in and won't let go

We are told that learners are no longer able to concentrate on content that's more than four or five minutes long. And there's no doubt that, when it comes to consuming information, we'd prefer it concise. After all, we want that information to help us achieve some goal and we don't want to take too long in the process. GIGIGO - get in, get it, get out.

But meaningful learning does not take usually place in minutes; it can take days, months or years of testing ideas out, reflecting and discussing, honing our skills and building our confidence. Our content can play a valuable role in that process, not just by informing the learner of what they need to know and do, but by sparking ideas, generating insights, challenging assumptions and enabling them to take their first steps along the skills journey. But that takes time - four or five minutes will not be enough.

In this last post in the series, we discuss two elements in learning content that can hook learners in and not let them go; that will give you the time to make a more meaningful difference. We start with storytelling.

Slice our brains open and out pour all our stories

A well-told story - whether real or fictitious - will immerse us in someone else's world and make us care about their problems. We can concentrate on stories for many hours - just think how much time in a week you spend reading novels, watching films, catching up on soaps or wading through box sets.

As Jeremy Hsu writes in Scientific American, 'Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal across culture and through all of known history.� For more than 27,000 years, humans have been communicating by telling stories. I�m sure that if you were to open up our brains and tip the contents onto the floor, what would come out but piles and piles of stories. According to a 1997 study by Robin Dunbar at the University of Liverpool, personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations. That seems like an underestimate to me.

In my post Seven ways in which stories power learning, I explained why I thought storytelling made such an impact in a learning context:

1. Stories speak to us as humans
2. Stories hold our attention
3. Stories engage us emotionally
4. Stories provide us with good and bad examples
5. Stories provide us with insights
6. Stories help us to remember lots of other stuff (when we recall the story, we remember lots of other details)
7. Stories are likely to be shared

Stories also provide an escape from the mundane, as this poem by Julia Donaldson reminds us.

I honestly believe that any subject can be made more interesting through storytelling. In fact I'd go further: any subject can be taught using storytelling. Here are two of my own examples:

• The Emperor's New Slide Show: which demonstrates how dangerous Powerpoint can be in the wrong hands.
• No regrets: a short film which provides insights into good blended learning design.

Good teachers tell lots of stories. So does good learning content.

Only one thing beats a good story and that's being in the story

There is one thing that engages people even more than storytelling and that is a challenging problem to solve; something that tests our wits, that allows us to show what we can do; nothing impossibly hard, but not so easy that it insults our intelligence.

Every one of us can think of examples in which we've laboured into the night to meet a challenge; when we've been so 'in the flow' that we have forgotten about the need for sleep or sustenance: solving a puzzle, perhaps, programming a computer, developing a plan, making something, playing a game.

Compelling challenges provide us with the incentive and the opportunity to put our learning into practice and to revisit our assumptions and attitudes. In the context of learning content, these challenges might take the form of practice exercises, case studies, quizzes, scenarios, simulations and games. Challenges require the ability to interact, so you won't find them in content such as podcasts and web articles, but you might find them in a blend alongside these more passive media.

I know the word 'gamification' is a monstrosity, but we should take it seriously, because plenty of people are finding great success by adding game elements to their interactive content: rising up through levels, leaderboards, high scores, time constraints, competitions, winning badges and so on.

There are interesting examples of gamification in these scenarios:

• Lifesaver, an interactive film by Martin Percy, which teaches you cardio-pulmonary resuscitation
• Connect with Haji Kamal, designed by Cathy Moore, which looks at the cultural issues soldiers face when interacting with local people
• Sales Refresher Course (part of the More Than Blended Learning taster course), which provides practice in taking a brief for a new training programme

And that's it folks

I hope you've enjoyed discovering my six characteristics for compelling content, a distillation of hundreds of discussions I've had with learning professionals and media creatives over more years than I would like to admit.

Many of the recommendations I've made in this series require us to challenge convention and not be a corporate drone. You have to be a little brave to break away from the routine of just shoving information down people's throats. It will take a little time to develop the skills but I've seen lots of people make this transformation successfully.

Good luck!

In case you missed it:

Six characteristics of compelling content - an introduction

Compelling content requires a cunning plan

Compelling content requires some media chemistry

Compelling content requires some media chemistry

Media chemists know less is usually more

Media consumers, especially learners, want the easy life. They're interested in the content, not the container. The technology and the interface with which they interact should be invisible. Your design decisions should be invisible. And all that requires a little media chemistry.

There is a limited range of elements which make up all media formats. While there is generally more than one element capable of fulfilling any task, they each have their own particular strengths:

Text is precise. You can read it at your own pace. It requires the barest minimum of bandwidth.

Still images (photos, illustrations, charts and diagrams) show what things look like, clarify cause and effect relationships and depict trends and proportions. They are memorable.

Speech is more expressive than text and combines brilliantly with moving images (animations and videos).

Music creates an emotional response. Elephants like it (see my previous post).

Animation provides the best possible way to illustrate processes (how things work). The movement attracts attention.

Video depicts real-life action. It shows people as they really are.

Media chemists do not throw all these elements into a test tube and heat them up. They take care over what goes with what. However, you do not need a media chemistry degree to sort it out. There's a simple rule.

Text and speech are verbal elements. Still images, animation and video are visual elements. Music's an embellishment that we can put to one side for now. Generally speaking you want to major on a single visual element and a single verbal element. So ...

• text and still images work well together
• animation (perhaps even a sequence of pictures) combines well with speech
• video works just fine with an audio soundtrack (speech, sound effects, music)

But ...

• text and speech used together alongside any visual element makes for difficult viewing (the brain can only process one verbal element, so the learner has to choose which to concentrate on and try to ignore the other)
• video (say a presenter's webcam), alongside still images or animation, is equally distracting because the learner cannot watch both at the same time

See Richard E Mayer's Multimedia Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2009) to see the research that backs all this up.

At this point, you may be feeling a little uncomfortable. After all, lots of e-learning breaks these rules and so do most Powerpoint presentations. That's not an excuse for continuing as things are. A lot of e-learning courses and Powerpoint presentations are tolerated at best, hated at worst. We're trying to be compelling, remember?

It is OK to have a personality

On the assumption that you're not an artist or a video producer (the ones I know don't do a lot of reading), let's concentrate for a moment on the verbal channel. We're talking words.

Back in 2008, Cathy Moore advised us to Dump the Drone. What she meant was that we should write like human beings and not like the legal department. Why do so many talented designers leave their personalities at home when they set about creating learning materials? Probably because they believe that is what their bosses and clients expect. Something safe, non-controversial, corporate and impersonal. No jokes, no anecdotes, no practical examples. Nothing for the elephants at all.

Believe it or not, learning content is written for learners - everyone else just gets in the way. And learners want material that engages, enthuses and explains.

As a general rule:

• use simple words
• limit paragraphs to a single point
• use the active voice (the passive voice is hated by Clive Shepherd)
• use lists like this (but not all the time)
• if you're writing for voiceover, then write like you speak
• keep it brief (edit, edit and then edit again)

And we'd better act fast, because it seems the corporate drones are getting to our children:

A shoe was lived in by an old woman there was. What to do was not known, so many children were had by her. Some broth without bread was given to them, They were all whipped soundly and sent to their beds by her.

Coming next: Compelling content hooks you in and won't let go

In case you missed it:
Six characteristics of compelling content - an introduction
Compelling content requires a cunning plan