How to Break Up Your Text to Improve Online Learning

Have you ever read something that just didn’t click? Or maybe you bought a course or an ebook and were overwhelmed by all the information?

When creating a product or offer for adults, you have to consider the learning experience — a poor learning experience leads to a lack of understanding and feeling overwhelmed, while a good learning experience leads to student transformations and knowledge retention.

You have to apply adult learning to your products and courses to get the best results and serve your adult audience — luckily, there’s an easy way to get started! You can start by breaking up your text into slide decks, workbooks, and course learning materials.

What it Means to Create a Better Learning Experience

When I talk about creating a “better learning experience,” I’m referring to providing an experience that allows your students to easily process and gain knowledge and skills (specifically, the knowledge and skills you want to share).

Creating a better experience leads to higher completion and retention rates and prioritizes student transformations. Adult learning (what you must focus on to create this learning experience) impacts what you include in your course for them to learn and how you present it.

Today, we’re talking about how you present it (at least a few of the ways you can present it).

How to Break Up Your Course Text

I mentioned it in the beginning, but I’ll mention it again: breaking up your course text is a great way to make your information more consumable to your audience (and way less overwhelming).

And, when I’m referring to breaking up text, I’m referring to the design and aesthetics of the product you’re putting out there.

Here are four ways to get started:

#1. Chunking

Chunking (yes, ‘chunking’ — I know it’s the worst) is breaking down information into manageable chunks to help students process and remember your course content. In your slide deck, you can break down information into units, sections, and pages/slides.

#2. Headers

Notice how this post is broken down into sections, and each section has larger text summarizing (or generalizing) the information that particular section shares? Those are headers — perfect for breaking up text-heavy sections of your course content (or, really, any content) and making it easier to read.

#3. Graphics

Infographics, images, tables, etc, are all ideal ways to break up and further explain hard-to-describe or difficult concepts to your students. Use graphics to bring an idea to life and make your information memorable.

#4. White Space

Course and learning design can influence outcomes significantly. By including an appropriate amount of white space in your learning materials (and no, it doesn’t have to be specifically white — think dead space that doesn’t have text or visuals), you are encouraging the students to focus on what matters.

And, bonus tip for design: your students can’t listen and read simultaneously — which means if you’re completing a voice, you want to keep the highlights on the slide and use white space to subtly suggest those are the key points to be focused on.

Better Experiences, Better Transformations

I’m 100% repeating myself, but it deserves to be said again (and again) — a better experience leads to better transformations, which leads to higher completion rates, more raving fans about how good your course is, and more students joining in. If you want to learn more about how to create a course designed with adult learners (your students) in mind, let’s work 1:1 to build a course you feel confident in → Click here to learn more.