Developing effective learning management system (LMS) content starts with defining your audience and targeting your content accordingly. Business owners and learning and development managers (L&D) are turning to LMSs to create micro-formatted content. This content includes components such as short-snippet videos and modules that engage frontline employees.
Other practical tools for creating engaging, captivating content include gamified techniques such as badges and leaderboards, which promote friendly competition for learners. The goal is to develop small-scale lessons that make sense for your frontline’s workflow and can be easily digested during their workday. Below are seven tips for effective LMS content creation to help speed up learning and free up time for your employees to focus on customer-facing tasks.
1. Define Your Audience
Defining your audience is the first and most essential step in the course creation process. To do this, learning and development (L&D) managers or instructional designers should first identify their learners in terms of learning styles and job functions. This means recognizing skill gaps, experience levels, and potential challenges in the employees’ roles.
You may also want to take into account the following factors when determining your audience before course development:
Learning preferences: Different employees have different learning preferences. For instance, one focused study showed workplace fun activities enhanced team performance for frontline hotel staff. Some employees will like hands-on, interactive learning; some will prefer text-based or video and online learning.
Leading learning management systems such as Axonify track and provide content to match individual learning styles. This allows employees to learn in the ways that suit them best.
Job responsibilities: Identify specific job functions and job descriptions before creating course material. Employees are going to require different types of training materials according to their job functions. For example, front-end staff that handle customers directly may need a lot of soft-skill training development, whereas more technical employees may need to be trained more on software or technical processes.
Time availability: It is important to determine how much time an employee has to commit to training programs. Frontline employees often have very little availability to complete training courses. For instance, restaurant, hospitality, and retail staff may need to complete training during non-peak hours. Other employees may only find time to participate in training programs after their shift is over.
Your audience can be defined by understanding their learning styles, responsibilities, and time constrictions. Once you define these factors, an LMS can support courses created using various methods like videos, games, and quizzes to appeal to different learners. This content can be curated using an LMS to address specific job functions and responsibilities.
2. Keep Content Short and Engaging
Keeping content short and engaging for your employees is key to knowledge retention and motivation. Research shows that it is easier for employees to digest information when it is delivered in bite-sized portions. This approach is called microlearning, a method many advanced LMS systems leverage to keep employees invested in professional development. Creating content should be both catchy and well-engineered to the particular specifications of your learners.
Examples of how to create LMS content that is short and engaging include:
- Create short and interactive online training videos that explore industry-specific topics such as proper food handling or safety protocols in the workplace.
- Customize an existing video provided by an LMS content marketplace that teaches a specific topic or skill.
- Reimage boring PDF content into interactive formats, adding voiceovers, animation, or music.
- Integrate daily pop-ups to send to an employee’s mobile device that teaches small and actionable lessons, such as “common phrases to use when greeting guests.”
Creating microlearning content can make information more digestible, from workplace safety to industry-specific topics such as proper food handling. Employees will be less overwhelmed and respond positively when information is available in smaller doses. This type of LMS content will make learning more fun overall for employees.
3. Ensure Mobile Compatibility
It’s important to ensure that training content is accessible on a mobile device using an authoring tool that makes it available in this format. Frontline employees are always on the go, and often, delivering information to them on their mobile devices is the only way to get their attention.
When creating LMS content, it’s crucial that online courses can be easily accessed on a wireless device. A robust LMS should be able to deliver courses in a mobile-friendly format. This means that images and media presented on an employee’s phone should be clear and easily viewable.
4. Encourage Social and Collaborative Learning
LMS content should encourage a social and collaborative learning experience among users. This can be done by creating collaborative learning modules where colleagues and managers can provide feedback and evaluation in real time. This gets everyone involved in the learning process and encourages participation.
Social interaction through collaborative learning on an LMS builds community among team members. When team members engage with their peers, they can share ideas and solve problems together. A manager may also want to set up group activities and projects when creating training content on an LMS.
5. Make Sure Content is Scannable
LMS content should be easily digestible as well as scannable for the reader. For instance, when creating training modules, creators should make sure that key points are highlighted. They can do this by drawing attention by bolding or italicizing important information.
Additionally, content used to train employees could feature diagrams, tables, or infographics that help reinforce vital information. It’s also important to consider using background colors that don’t distract from the main points. Consider keeping backdrop colors light or neutral while contrasting key training content in bold or bright colors.
6. Integrate Translation Tools
Integrating translation tools when creating LMS content will ensure that every learner, no matter what their language, can access the information. Most advanced LMSs will offer translation tools or integration with third-party translation services to automate the manual translation of content into different languages.
This opens training courses up to a wider audience, making content available for L&D leaders who manage global organizations. Providing information in multiple languages will not only help frontline employees with their understanding but also lead to more inclusive environments. In addition, sharing perspectives from different cultures can narrow the language gap and promote insightful interactions among employees and managers.
7. Stay True to Brand
Content creation involves staying on brand and true to your company’s mission. Some LMSs have white-labeling capabilities, which means a company starts with a blank canvas of learning templates. These templates can then be customized and branded using the company’s trademarks. Creating content on an LMS to train individuals should flow and align with the company’s overall objectives and vision.
Words, colors, and phrases should be cohesive throughout. Before creating content for training, ensure that you understand the branding guidelines of your company. From there, you can develop content that authentically reflects your company’s identity.
Create Personalized Content for the Greatest Impact
Personalization is key to creating effective LMS content for your training programs. If you are a manager of frontline employees who work in hospitality, identifying information that is specific to their roles will help you design content. Understanding your employees’ learning styles will also allow you to create more engaging content.
Keeping content short and making it scannable will help learners digest and retain information. Offering training content in multiple languages also encourages inclusivity and accessibility no matter what an individual’s background is. Finally, keep your branding consistent across your training materials to strengthen employees’ sense of corporate identity and affiliation while they learn.
Guest writer
