Your content creation strategy plays an important role in ensuring that knowledge retention is not compromised. The way you present the content will help employees remember what you taught them. But for that to happen, you need to correct certain myths surrounding knowledge retention. You need to have a firm grasp of the facts about it so you can deliver the content in the right manner.
There are two myths that people usually associate with the retention of knowledge. Let us discuss them here.
Myth 1: Failure to remember means a weak memory.
While a weak memory can be a valid reason to be forgetful, this is not always the culprit for a low retention rate. Sometimes, you can have a strong memory but still, fail at knowledge retention – if the circumstances are not working in your favor.
According to reports, an employee’s ability to remember is compromised by how they juggle multiple tasks at the same time. There is a certain level of stress associated with multitasking. And memory usually fades when you are constantly under stress.
As you can see, creating a course for corporate training purposes will be more challenging if you want to have a high knowledge retention rate. Unlike students in an educational institution, they are focused on their studies. Employees, on the other hand, have a lot going on every day. Their workload is not reduced just because they have some training to attend to. The elearning course should be created in such a way that will ensure knowledge retention will not be compromised. At least, not by the stress that they have to go through.
So how will the correction of this myth help you with content creation? First of all, you have to make sure that you get to know how busy the employees are. If they are busy, you might want to allow them to control the pace of the learning. That way, they can choose the right time to go through the course – during a time when they can focus on the lesson and not be disturbed by their other responsibilities at work.
Myth 2: Only important information can be remembered.
It is true that relevant information is more likely to be remembered. However, the way it is presented will increase knowledge retention significantly. For instance, preschoolers have an easier time to learn the alphabet if they sing it. But if you just recite it to them, it will not stick. That is because it is easier to remember the letters of the alphabet if it is sung in a song.
As you can see, our brain does not focus on certain information or retain it simply because they are important or relevant. It has to be highlighted or in the right color for it to stick in our minds. Our mind should be visually stimulated to help it remember. This is one technique that you can use as your create the content in your elearning course.
Now that you have corrected your perception about knowledge retention, you should be able to implement the right content creation strategy. This will help increase the retention rate of the course – regardless of how busy or preoccupied the employees are with their work.