Digitalization of training courses: how to get to the point?

You need to digitize your content, but you encounter a difficult problem: the only resources at your disposal are long and tedious content, while your objective is to quickly train your employees. How to achieve this, while saving precious time? During a previous expert webinar, Philip Moore, Didask Educational Director, shared his main recommendations to help businesses, training institutions and independent trainers effectively digitize their training content. Here's what you need to remember! ! You can also (re) watch the webinar below.

Ease and efficiency don't always mix 

Avoid the trap of Powerpoint made available on any platform, for your employees. It seems to be the simplest solution, but it is not very effective. 

The problem? Your learners are completely passive. Powerpoint support, to name but a few, gives a false impression of familiarity, even comfort. Philip insists on a major fact: We think we have understood what we are reading, when in reality, we don't. This is a cognitive bias called the illusion of mastery or more commonly, the “belief that you know.” Result? Your learners will probably not be able to apply the concepts in question.

Moreover, there is often too much disparate information to be able to extract most of it. Paradoxically, the really useful information that usually comes up orally, during its presentation is often missing.

What methodology for effective and impactful digital training?

‍“Errare humanum est”

For digitize most of a training course, do not hesitate to take the plunge into the unknown. Dare to get away from the concept of slides or information to relay, and ask yourself a simple question:”What does my learner need?”. As Philip reminds us, the basic question to ask is that of the relevant error and the expected change. Very concretely, ask yourself”What would a learner be likely to think or do spontaneously if I wasn't there to train them? What could be a problem for him and what should I tell him to avoid this trap?”. Ask yourself what major difference you make as a trainer, what the learner would have made without you, and what you suggest to them as a result.

Finding the “right mistake”: how to proceed? 

To test the approach by error, it is necessary to adopt an optimal strategy and to be well surrounded. Depending on the subject or theme of the training, your intervention or that of an expert in the field is essential. In the second step, focus once again on the essentials: not your slides, but the errors that may occur, which automatically come to mind. Thanks to the Didask authoring tool, you first focus on relevant errors and current behaviors that you want to change, as well as the latest observations observed by your learners. By doing so, you will be able to analyze the most plausible errors in concrete situations.

As Philip points out, Didask offers a scrim educational, which makes it possible to list these famous errors. For each of them, it is a question of designing a short interactive experience, where the learner has the opportunity to test himself by himself in a concrete situation, where he could commit one of the mistakes listed above. He will thus receive explanatory feedback on his choices, with a key message that is very easy to remember, at the end of the simulation exercise.

So what happens to the slides in all of this?

As mentioned earlier, you can use your slides to identify errors. But you can also insert them from time to time into the educational framework proposed by Didask, in particular as a complementary explanation of the key message to be transmitted. In this way, after the learner interacts with the feedback, said additional information will be much better retained and will consolidate the teaching experience.

Therefore, the slides of your digital media are not useless, simply, the educational reflection does not start thanks to them. Philip Moore recalls:”It is not that we no longer transmit information, simply, we transmit it differently, one message at a time, when the learner is ready to receive it. Indeed, he had the opportunity to understand what this message was for in a concrete situation.”.

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It is sometimes difficult to take a step back when you want to create a good online course. That is why we have summarised for you, in general terms, how to avoid pitfalls and transform the way you (conceive) see learning. Now, we invite you to download the guide”How to go from 100 slides to 10 essential concepts”.

Last tip: skip sending a hundred slides by email and convert them into a digital learning experience (half an hour maximum).