If you agree (in a moment of weakness) to sit through a "get to know you" meeting with a vendor trying to sell innovative 21st century training solutions, the term "short form content" will come up. It will rear its head in the elevator speech somewhere around the third floor and will be hit upon again in PowerPoint slides 3, 6, 7, and 20.
The definition varies depending on whether there are training professionals in the room or C-Level decision makers, but it boils down to this. Short form content is a broad term covering videos, recordings, graphics, and blog posts that are designed to be brief, informative, entertaining, and relevant. It is meant for people with short attention spans. If you drifted off while reading that definition, short form content is probably the best way to reach you.
The vendor paints a picture the reasons to move toward short form content in generalizations, sometimes supported by studies, often by anecdotal evidence. The case for going to short form is that people have shorter attention spans and have less time to focus on training. Managers don’t want their folks wasting an hour on a webinar when they could use the time more effectively. It is no longer good enough to inform and educate, we have to do so quickly.
During the “get to know you” gathering, a member of the sales team asks a leading question that exposes the fact that your training does not have enough short, cool videos, one page pdf files, or things said in 140 characters or less. Before you can object, you know you’re team has been sentenced to 10 weeks of hard labor on an initiative to convert all existing training to short form content.
The meeting is sidetracked by a “training is boring” rant from someone who is two levels further up the food chain than you. An underling agrees. The 5 courses that your team had to develop in 72 hours are being slandered. Someone says that it would be great if you could use that video of the cat chasing the mailman into a lake to teach your marketing team conversational Mandarin. By Wednesday.
You mentally write your resignation letter. Then you decide that a YouTube video of you singing the reasons you decided to quit to the tune of “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone” would be the better way to go. And suddenly, you realize that you have embraced short form content. You see how it can get a message across through action sequences and effective storytelling. You begin to see how you can create a memorable, painless learning experience. For the first time in a month of back-to-back deadlines, you experience joy.
Then reality sets in.
It is the reality that no one thinks about. You know why you should include short form content in your training arsenal and you know what it could be like. What no one tells you is how you make it happen.
Here are some tips:
- When you look at the content that will be covered, focus on the learner. What should they know?
- Once you have determined what to cover in your short form output, think about how you would explain the concepts covered to a fairly bright third grader. This will help you identify themes and possibly develop structure. It will also help you eliminate what gets in the way of learning- the jargon and all the SHAs and RATSCs but NOU (Short Hand Anagrams and Ridiculous Abbreviations That Sound Cool but No One Understands)
- Don’t treat your audience like third graders. Respect their intelligence while keeping it simple.
- Find a hook. Ask yourself (or ask them) what would be interesting to learn? How can I tell a story that helps the learner interpret the content?
- Ask yourself, “What is the best way to make learning happen?” If creating a video doesn’t make sense, don’t use it.
- Recognize that not every subject is suited to be learned solely by passively watching short-term content.
- Experiment and don’t be afraid to fail.
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