A ‘very important’ writing tip from C.S. Lewis

I just came across a real gem of a letter on Letters of Note (a blog that’s definitely worth a look), sent by C.S. Lewis to a young American fan in 1956.

Isn’t it lovely and quite remarkable that he replied to his fan mail in such a thoughtful and personal way?

Aside from that, though, this letter stood out to me because of a particular piece of advice shared in it, which I think all e-learning designers (indeed, all writers!) should be mindful of:

In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible”, describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

How often do we make the mistake of telling our learners that something is ‘very important’ – especially in compliance courses? Are we guilty of laziness when we do this? Is it easier to just tell our learners that doing (or not doing) something is important and expect them to believe us, rather than illustrate consequences and impacts in such a way that they can infer the importance themselves?

Incidentally, the other four pieces of writing advice included in C.S. Lewis’ letter are equally valuable and worth bearing in mind – go and take a look.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Let’s get back to basics: why we should write more like we speak

It’s been a while since I wrote about language and tone of voice. But anyone who knows me well knows that this is a pet subject of mine.

I love words, and I love writing.

Talking, less so – but I do believe in taking inspiration from talking when writing.

Academia instills a different mindset, certainly in my experience, and so my undergraduate essays were formal in register and complex in sentence structure: that’s what was (rightly or wrongly) expected. But since entering the world of business communications, I’ve been converted. I now think that most situations call for a back to basics approach to writing.

I think it’s absolutely right that school teachers encourage pupils to find more interesting and descriptive replacements for ‘nice’ and ‘said’ and ‘get’. It builds vocabulary and encourages an appreciation for (if not necessarily a love of) creative writing. But while I’m all for e-learning scripting to be approached more like a creative writing exercise (within reason), I tend to think that in many – if not most – cases, those plain and simple words we were trained out of as children are just right for the job.

That’s why I was really interested by the results of a study by language consultancy The Writer. My impression is that this wasn’t a particularly extensive study (you can read more about how and where they gathered these results in their original blog post) but it’s interesting nonetheless. Essentially, the study supports The Writer’s belief that there are some words we use in written communication that just don’t crop up in speech. They compiled a short list of words that are found many more times in the written word than in the spoken word, and their counterparts that are much more commonly used in spoken English. Words like ‘purchase’, ‘obtain’ and ‘receive’ are replaced by ‘buy’ or ‘get’ in speech, for example.

What’s particularly interesting is that, as far as I can tell from The Writer’s summary of the study, this research is not based on any particular type of writing or speaking: it reflects global usage (global in the sense of genre, rather than geography). There’s no second list of the words most commonly used in spoken business situations, for example. This means that ‘get’ is used by speakers in situations ranging from playground chit-chat to board room presentations, and from dinner party conversations to politicans’ speeches. And if it’s good enough for world leaders, it’s good enough for learners.

So let’s get back to basics when writing for e-learning and close that vast, unnecessary divide between the way we talk and the way we write.

Image: sheelamohan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Better e-learning – Day 4: Tone of voice, style and character

After two long – but well spent – days focusing exclusively on improving your e-learning interactions, it’s time for something a little different.

Today we’re going to look at how we can bring your e-learning course to life and inject some personality into it. (For me, this is the really fun bit!)

As always, rather than simply tell you what I think, first of all I’m going to share what my webinar participants said when I asked them: what small changes can you make to your existing e-learning course to bring it to life?

Avatars are a great idea but within the constraints of our contrived scenario we probably can’t realistically incorporate these. They are a great aspiration though and something that’s definitely feasible in a more realistic situation – and don’t let the word ‘avatar’ put you off. It doesn’t have to mean virtual world style characters; many of the same benefits can be achieved simply through adding photographs of narrators or characters, for example.

Just as we found yesterday, there are more changes we could make to inject some life into your e-learning than we can possibly hope to achieve in a day. I’ve highlighted four that I think are quick, easy and high impact but ultimately it’s up to you to select the things that are most important to and will make the most difference in your organisation.

• Apply some imagination to your titles

It’s Thursday morning and I know your creative brain might need a little time to warm up, so we’re not going to get stuck into the detail of the text in your course just yet. Instead, let’s spend some time seeing what we can do with the titles.

I think this is a great place to start, because the course title has a big impact on first impressions. I suspect many e-learning courses are effectively nameless until they’re completed, when a descriptive but not particularly engaging label is attached. This makes me sad for two reasons. Firstly, the course title is your chance to set the tone for the learning experience and to make sure your learners come to that experience in a positive frame of mind. Secondly, coming up with creative course titles can be really enjoyable.

I’d recommend thinking about it throughout the project lifecycle, jotting down ideas as and when they come to you, rather than setting aside a particular slot in your schedule to come up with the name. Having said that, I am putting you on the spot now with a challenge to review and improve your course title. To give you some inspiration, here’s what we came up with when I gave my wonderful webinar participants the same challenge.

Everyone came up with very different ideas, and in this there is no right and wrong. Clearly you need to consider the culture and constraints of your workplace, but a brainstorming session like this might well throw up some ideas for pushing the bounds of what you can do within those constraints. It’s a great exercise for challenging yourself to be a little more imaginative.

So once you’ve come up with a refreshed and revamped title for your course, see if you can take this further. Review the module or unit titles, and even the individual screen headings, to see where you might be able to inject a little burst of creativity. Remember, this is a quick and easy way to change the atmosphere of the course and influence learners’ first impressions.

• Add contractions and shorten sentences

A friendly, conversational tone of voice is something that was suggested by a few webinar participants and this is definitely one of my top tips for improving an e-learning course. It almost goes without saying that an e-learning course which adopts a less formal and more natural ‘voice’ is more enjoyable and user-friendly than a very stuffy, formal course.

So how do you make your course’s voice more conversational? One of the easiest ways is to add in contractions: replace most instances of is not with isn’t, and so on. This reflects the way we speak in everyday conversation and is instantly easier and more pleasant to read. You don’t necessarily need to add a contraction in every single case; I’d suggest reading the text aloud to yourself, as this is the best way to discover where it sounds forced or unnatural. Those are the places where contractions will make the most difference.

Reading aloud will also help you identify any sentences that are too long and convoluted. If you’re struggling to get to the end of the sentence without taking a breath, perhaps you can rephrase it. These are quick and easy changes that really do have a big impact on the overall feel of your course.

• Switch from third-person to first- and second-person

How many courses have you seen which talk about ‘the business’ or ‘the organisation’ and the things ‘it’ requires from ‘its employees’? Regardless of the content, for me this instantly creates a ‘them and us’ impression and the feel of top-down instruction.

I’d much rather my e-learning courses were inclusive and personal, and I’m sure you would too. Your learners all work for the same organisation, after all, don’t they? Luckily, this is not difficult to fix. It’s just a case of reworking the text from third-person (‘the business’, ‘employees’) to first-person (‘we’, ‘us’) and second-person (‘you’). Yes, this will probably take a bit of time – and it’s important to be consistent so you’ll probably need to check it through a second time in case you missed anything – but it’ll be worth it.

• Add real-life examples or employee quotes

I’m probably being a little cheeky including this one as you couldn’t really do this on Thursday afternoon without having done some prior preparation. Nonetheless, you may well have some case studies, quotes and war or success stories from people in the business that are perfect for illustrating your key messages. Now is the time to dig them out and see where they might fit in. Just one or two will do, so don’t panic if you don’t have reams of examples to hand.

Obviously there are lots of different ways you could integrate this kind of material using animations, video, photos and audio. But even without much time or money, the benefit of this material can still be delivered simply by adding it in text format. It might just be a sentence or two here and there to illustrate a key point – perhaps highlighted using italics or bold formatting if you really want it to stand out. Even this low-tech approach will help add character.

So despite having no graphic design resource, we’ve made some significant changes today to the overall feel of your e-learning course, simply through making some subtle changes to the way things are written. You’ve now got a friendly, lively course that will make a positive first impression on your learners and maintain that impression throughout.

Better e-learning – Day 1: Learning outcomes and structure

Today we’re going to make sure that your e-learning course will have a positive impact on the business.

We’re going to do this by looking at the learning outcomes and making sure that the course content aligns with those learning outcomes and flows well.

I’ve broken this down into four individual activities.

• Review and improve the learning outcomes

First things first: we need to re-examine the learning outcomes of the course. (Or perhaps write them, if they were never defined in the first place, but I hope that’s not the case!)

What makes a good learning outcome? I asked the lovely people on the webinar and this is what they came up with. (The size of the words and phrases corresponds to how frequently they were mentioned.)

One of the most popular responses was that learning outcomes should be focused on behaviour or, as Colin Steed put it, they should focus on what the learner can ‘do’ rather than what they ‘know’. Nick Simons described Saffron’s approach, which also follows this philosophy:

‘At Saffron we like, and I like, that outcomes should be directly testable. That means you don’t want to be asking if people can list or recite something. That’s not the behaviour people go around doing; they go around making choices and that’s what you should be testing. Let’s make them relevant and make them testable, through good interactions that test the learner’s ability to make the right choice.’

I couldn’t have said it better myself. So it’s well worth spending the time reviewing your learning outcomes against this approach and making any adjustments as required.

• Check and re-order the flow of topics

It’s still early on Monday and we’ve already established what we want your course to achieve. The next step is to make sure the content in the course supports those learning outcomes.

The way I do this is to run through the course and make a list of all the topics covered. (By this, I don’t mean list all the screen titles; I’m talking about your broad topic areas.) I do this because it helps you review the flow of the content, the headline topics, without being distracted by the detail.

When reviewing this topic list, you’re looking to identify whether there is anything missing, duplicated or unnecessary. Are there any learning outcomes that aren’t addressed in the current course? Conversely, is there anything in the course that doesn’t contribute to the learning outcomes? And is the sequence of the topics logical and clear?

If you notice anything that’s not quite right during this review, it’s easy enough to move things around and re-sequence the screens. This is something that requires a bit of thought rather than any particular technical skill, and it’s well worth taking the time to do that thinking.

• Insert clear signposts and smooth transitions

It’s probably around lunchtime now and you’re comfortable with the flow of content in your course. Now we need to make sure the learner will also be comfortable with that flow – we’re switching from a designer viewpoint to a learner viewpoint, and zooming in from the headline topics to the detail.

Work through the course from end to end, putting yourself in the shoes of the learner. Do you always know where you’ve been, where you are and where you’re going next? Are there clear and helpful introductions and recaps around topics? As well as these high level signposts, take a look at the transitions between each slide or sub-topic. This is all about making the learner journey as smooth as possible.

(I gave another webinar on structure and signposting for the IITT a little while ago, and a related post is in the pipeline.)

• Break the content into shorter units

I’m not sure that, with our various constraints, we’ll be able to create separate ‘mini-courses’ from your original course, but one thing we can do is create smaller chunks within the course itself. We’re trying to move away from a small number of 15- or 20- minute units and towards bite-sized sections. Take another look at your topic list from this morning: are there any units that contain five or six topics that might be better structured as two shorter units, for example?

Likewise, take a look at how content is divided across screens. If your screens tend to be very full or text-heavy, it’s worth considering whether any would be better broken down into two separate screens. I think it’s better to have a larger number of manageable screens than to have fewer overloaded screens. I was interested to see that Craig Taylor made a similar point in relation to Plain English recently, pointing out that sometimes the version which is easier to read is also slightly longer.

One other thing to look at this afternoon in relation to breaking down the content in your course is whether there’s any content that, although relevant to the learning outcomes, doesn’t strictly need to be in the course itself. Are there any elements that might be better placed on the intranet or produced as a job aid, for example?

Okay, that’s it for today – we’ve focused on reviewing and improving the learning outcomes, structure and flow of your course. Now, go and take a break and I’ll see you again tomorrow!

Five tips for e-learning they’ll fall in love with

Willing and able learner (computer-literate, time-poor), fed up of meaningless encounters with outdated ‘CBT’, seeks a refreshingly different e-learning course offering that ‘special something’ for a fulfilling and enjoyable relationship with the potential to change the way I think and act.

 

• Must be respectful: don’t treat me like an idiot but don’t assume I know more than I do
• Good communication is essential: be clear, to-the-point and chatty (conversations preferable to lectures)
• Must understand and respond to my concerns: take the time to find out what matters to me
• Good sense of humour preferred: not too cheesy, but boring, corporate-drone types need not apply
• Must keep me on my toes: a thought-provoking and sometimes surprising relationship is most likely to lead to engagement

Image:  Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net