An important aspect of the content building phase happens before the actual content build.
Once you have content ready to put in Learn to Win, we suggest making an outline for your content.
How is creating an outline beneficial?
Outlines help organize your thoughts and ideas in a neat fashion and can help you best utilize the time spent in the Learn to Win platform.
Learning Categories
To start outlining content, let's take a look at different learning categories in Learn to Win:
- What is my biggest learning category? Folder Groups
- A folder group is our largest category of organization in Learn to Win. The folder group is the broadest theme of your training, or may be created based on who is receiving the training.
- A folder group is our largest category of organization in Learn to Win. The folder group is the broadest theme of your training, or may be created based on who is receiving the training.
- What is my next largest learning category? Folders
- Folders in Learn to Win are more specific to the actual content going inside. Folders may be titled based off the title of a PDF or PPT, or may just be titled the overall theme of the training course.
- Folders in Learn to Win are more specific to the actual content going inside. Folders may be titled based off the title of a PDF or PPT, or may just be titled the overall theme of the training course.
- What is my medium learning category or categories? Packages
- Package names are a good way to break down the main themes that go within a folder. If you have a smaller piece of content, your package may have the same title as the folder. With larger content, you may have many packages within a folder that are titled based on the main theme of lessons inside.
- Package names are a good way to break down the main themes that go within a folder. If you have a smaller piece of content, your package may have the same title as the folder. With larger content, you may have many packages within a folder that are titled based on the main theme of lessons inside.
- What are the smallest units? Lessons and Quizzes, which make up the 'meat' of Packages
- This is where you would actually build out your content, chunking the different sub-topics into lessons within your packages. Quizzes typically match the lesson or lessons within a package, summarizing the most critical content of a package into questions to be answered by learners.
- This may be the most time consuming part of the outlining process as this is where the most judgement takes place. There may not be a clear distinction between titles for lessons and quizzes, so you need to read through and understand the content in order to make a decision.
Organizing Your Content
To best organize your content, it may be helpful to do so in a Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel document where you can visualize the content.
- Columns: Learning categories
- Within the columns, you can insert the titles of different folders, packages, and lessons/quizzes you will create based off your content.
Folder | Package | Lesson | Quiz |
Microlearning | |||
How do learners learn best? | |||
Microlearning | Microlearning Quiz | ||
Growth Mindset | |||
Growth Mindset | |||
Growth vs. Fixed Mindset | Growth Mindset Quiz |
Example
Let's walk through an example of what an outline may look like based on the organizational structure of Learn to Win.
Company ABC has a 60 page PPT for their sales department titled, 'Sales Pitch'.
- Largest Category/Folder Group: For this purpose, all training for the Sales Team will be housed in this group, so the folder should be titled 'Sales Training'
- Next Largest/Folder: Since this specific piece of content is all about the Sales Pitch, let's call the folder 'Sales Pitch'
- Medium Learning Category/Packages: Inside the PPT, there are different sub-categories on the sales pitch that all have at least 10 slides of content. Each of those sub-categories would best work in Learn to Win as a Package. For example, 10 slides of the PPT cover 'Problem Discover' which becomes a package, and another 10 slides cover 'Pricing' which also becomes a package
- Smallest Unit/Lessons and Quizzes: Typically, this is the area most open to interpretation and where you can be flexible. This is where the creator of the content would decide which slides can be chunked best together. Ask yourself, where is a natural break in the content? Where can I separate these 10 slides into different lessons?
- For example, let’s say slides 1-10 belong to package ‘Prepping for a Sales Call’ and you can clearly tell that pages 6-8 should be a lesson about ‘Prepping Questions to Ask’. Slides 8-10 are all about ‘Listening to the Prospective Client’. Even if these slides are not explicitly chunked within the PPT, you may be able to tell that they have a natural theme or break. These natural chunks of content would work as one lesson within the larger package.
- Sometimes there is no clear connection between the slides, for example if page 11, 12, and 13 all cover slightly different things but are still related to ‘Sales Pitch’. In this case, choose a thematic word that encompasses each of the slides to become the title of the lesson.
- This thinking and planning would be repeated for each slide of a PPT or portion of content.
Note: You may have some folders with a single package inside of the same name. Or, you may have a package with a lesson inside of the same name. This is okay! If there is not a distinction between different sections of content, or the content is small enough in size, some of the learning categories may share a name.
If you have any questions during the outlining or content building phase, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or our support team.