Educational content has context
Now that you know what makes a content educational, we need to make it rich, that is, well substantiated.
Adults love examples, associations, metaphors. This is a very powerful weapon for us to use with our audience, because unlike children and teenagers, adults have many experiences and we can take advantage of that. Not only that, but adult students are constantly confronting what we say with what they have experienced.
You probably can remember trainings that you have participated in the past in which you doubted what the speakers were talking about, because you had different experiences (and even opposite). This is because, even though the instructor has a lot of experience and formal background, the example (or application) that they gave did not match with your experience.
Although adults prefer straightforward classes, it is important to give context. And the context comes in two forms:
- The theory behind: where did this come from, who is saying this? Often, it comes in the form of the authority figure (I have position X, so I know what I’m talking about) or how that was invented/created, the story behind (I faced challenge X, then I had to reach the conclusion Y).
- Examples. We love practicality and applicability. It is not for nothing that technical books tend to be filled with examples — with the intention of helping you to put that framework, tool or matrix into practice, the author gives a series of different contexts. The framework applied in services. The framework applied to products. The framework applied in startups. And so on.
The objective of giving context is to increase the degree of heutagogy (next subject), uniting with the instrumentality of the content. That is, provide self-guided instruction.
We will have a class to specifically enter into the topic of script creation.
