Is Content King or Killer? — Learning Development Accelerator

We had a great discussion about content yesterday in Learning Insights Weekly, and I’ve compiled some of the wisdom that you and your fellow LDA members brainstormed about content.

Here it is:

Content must be valid and credible.
We must be careful because when selecting content, we can have confirmatory bias, being lazy and grabbing content that supports.
To uncover CONTENT, there is important work to do. That is, we should do some serious needs assessment work.
When too much CONTENT, not enough learning supports.
A focus on CONTENT could take focus away from the performance and away from the performance context. We might build knowledge-centric learning, not performance-focused learning.
Great CONTENT inspires attention, curiosity, devotion!
Too much CONTENT = cognitive overload.
Maybe we should focus more on designing the activities, less about the CONTENT .
Not all CONTENT is created equal, some is more true, some is more compelling, some is more energizing, some is more relevant, some is delivered by people who are more credible.
In the right context, the learners have all the “CONTENT” or background knowledge they need. They just need some facilitation to help think about and debate or discuss it.
If we have too much CONTENT—and hence little or no time for strategies to support Understanding, Remembering, Motivation for Application , and Transfer, then training will not be effective.
Try this learning designers: Try to cut out all the CONTENT that you can until you break your learning design. Do this to find the right balance.
"Great design is not achieved when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.” Someone shared this quote thinking it might be from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (but I couldn’t quickly verify that it was he who said it). Still, I love the quote!
Consider putting some CONTENT into performance support, job aids, reference materials.
Use a flipped classroom design, letting people digest CONTENT first on their own, and then bringing people together for deeper learning, practice, challenges.
Too much CONTENT leads to LOI (loss of investment), instead of ROI.
Be respectful to people. Don’t waste their time with CONTENT they don’t really need, or don’t really need now!
Maybe, in general, we should devote one-third of the time to CONTENT, and two-thirds to learning supports.
The CONTENT we select must be based on our learners’ previous knowledge and level of knowledge.
Asynchronous learning designs enable learners to wrangle with CONTENT, reflect on it, practice with it—but like everything, must be designed well.
Providing CONTENT is essential. Research shows that pure discovery learning is not efficient and not effective, so some well presented content is key to good learning (in general).
Often—too often—we are judged as learning professionals based on CONTENT we curate and convey. We probably should work to change this calculus within our organizations—and maybe in our industry as well.
Don’t include CONTENT “just in case” people may need it.

Thanks to all the people who participated in the great discussion during our Learning Insights Weekly meeting yesterday! Together we are smarter than we are alone! I am grateful!