How to create *effective* instructional content

When you create effective instructional content, you enable flywheels for your course and the marketing of it.

Here are those flywheels in action:

Learner Transformation Flywheel

When your instructional content is clear and easy to follow, your learners more readily experiment with applying their new knowledge and skills.

The more they practise, the more confident they'll feel, the more they'll achieve the transformation they came for, and the deeper their mastery of it as they continue to take action.

Referral Flywheel

When you combine effective instructional content that reliably enables transformation with a referral program, you can reward your most successful students for spreading the word about your course and increase sign-ups.

Infinite Content & Audience Building Flywheel

This flywheel answers the questions “What to share with my audience?" and "How can I grow my audience?”

When you create effective instructional content, the easier it is for others to:

Engage and feed you a constant stream of ideas for future content.
Share your educational content and attract new connections and followers.
Build trust in you as your educational content adds value to them.

The result is audience and relationship growth that builds credibility and resonates with your audience’s struggles/goals, which attracts more of the right people.

So, what is instructional content?

Instructional content is the materials, resources, or information designed and intended to facilitate learning and enhance knowledge.

It can take various forms: books, courses, mobile apps, talks, articles, videos, newsletters, quizzes, podcasts, social media posts.

But how do we make education content that helps people make sense of the new material?

By helping them to select, organise and integrate it with their relevant prior knowledge.

How do we do this?

By helping people better process new material (enhance encoding).
By supporting the construction of models in the material (create schema).
By minimising distractions in the material (optimise cognitive load).

These principles helps people make sense of the new material because they process information using verbal and visual channels.

This helps them:

Efficiently take in the new material.
Actively process and use the new material in their working memory.

This is how they develop knowledge.

Using verbal and visual channels is also known as dual coding.

Here is Oliver Caviglioli's breakdown of it (click on the image to enlarge it).

How do you create instructional content that helps people better process new material?

Pre-Train

✅ Begin with an overview or pre-assessment.
✅ Learners know the names and characteristics of key concepts.

Segment

✅ Provide information in meaningful bite-size chunks.

Modality (method in which to do something)

✅ Present words as speech rather than on screen text.

How do you create instructional content that supports the construction of models in the material?

Multimedia

✅ Use words and visuals
❌ No words or images alone.
✅ Use static images versus animations.

Personalise

✅ Speak / write with plain language.
✅ Use a conversational tone.
✅ Be polite.

Voice

✅ Use a warm, friendly and human voice.
✅ Provide good quality audio.

Instructor Image

✅ Show the instructor's face / body when it adds value.

How do you create instructional content that minimises distractions in the material?

Contiguity (having corresponding things next to each other)

✅ Place printed words near corresponding visuals.
✅ Synchronise spoken words with corresponding visuals.

Signal

✅ Use signals (arrows, etc) to direct attention.

Redundancy (exceeding what is necessary)

❌ Avoid adding on screen text when speaking about an on screen visual.

Coherence (logical, making up a whole)

❌ Don't add extraneous words, visuals or audio.

A visual summary

Here is a summary on how to create effective instructional content (click here to download a PDF of the image and see it larger):

The principles in action

To see an example of the principles I've shared in action, check out my Twitter thread on how Olly Richards built a $10m education company by writing words on a screen.

Here's the first two tweets:

How Olly Richards built a $10m education company by writing words on a screen

The research and inspiration behind today's newsletter

The guidelines I've shared are based on the work of Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer in their book e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning.

The book title might not be the sexiest out there, but its principles stand the test of time and is one of the most referenced books by learning designers.

The guidelines I've shared are also inspired by Dave M's visual wheel of the Clark and Mayer's book. Dave is the Associate Director of Instructional Design & Media at Columbia University.

Thanks to Nathan Barry, Kieran Drew and Julia Saxena for inspiring my flywheel insights.

A shout-out to my friend Francis Miller who introduced to me a year ago the core diagram shape in my visual mental model 'How To Create Effective Instructional Content'. I love how it makes it very easy to process the 3 key concepts versus using a Venn diagram or circle shape.