How to Create Course Materials That Make Learning Stick
If your training materials aren't functional, your students won't learn - Includes free checklist
Most course materials are boring. Crowded slides, crooked black & white handouts that have been photocopied too many times, and no activities. Just the trainer reading out slides you could have read yourself, and yes, copies of the slides in the workbook.
Course materials like this turn students off. What you need to create are course materials that engage and make the learners want to come back for more.
If you want your students to stay online or come back from the tea break, you need fit-for-purpose course materials.
And I've seen trainees duck out of monotonous courses. It's incredible how urgent a day job becomes when a trainee is looking at six more hours of tedium.
Your online students can turn on mute and turn off video, and you won't even know if they are at their desks. And worse, paying students can leave and give you a poor review.
So, where does creating course materials come into the course creation journey?
Right after you've finalized the course objectives, the structure, and the rollout plan of a course.
Why?
Because your course materials must:
Align with course objectives
Meet the needs and demographic of your audience
Support the structure, format, and flow of your course
This may sound like common sense, but I've seen examples of courses where the assessments included questions that didn't relate to the course objectives but left out questions that did.
And courses that had no clear objectives but had a massive information dump. In these scenarios, how will the learners know what is critical, and how will the trainers know they've learned it?
As a Learning and Development (L&D) professional with four decades of experience, I've had the opportunity to design everything from short workshops to a series of 8-hour training sessions for various audiences. In each case, the course materials played a central role in ensuring the learning experience was seamless and impactful.
Did I know all this when I started out?
No, of course not. But as I designed more courses, I practiced my course-building skills and learned what works and what doesn't.
What Are Course Materials?
Also known as training materials and course content (or, if you are really fancy, courseware or course collateral), your course materials are simply the documents that you create when you design your course.
For example:
Lesson Plans – A detailed guide for the trainer outlining the flow of the course, content, and objectives
Slides – Visual aids to help convey key points
Workbooks – Participant guides that provide exercises and reference materials
Trainer Workbooks – Tailored resources for trainers to guide the delivery of the course
Exercises & Activities – Interactive tasks to reinforce learning
Audio/Video Files – Multimedia resources to enhance engagement
Giveaways – Tangible takeaways to reinforce learning after the course
Assessments – Tools for measuring participant understanding and skill development
Assessment Answers – Solutions for the course assessments
Well-designed course materials ensure that the trainer stays on time, covers the relevant content, and meets the course objectives. They also ensure that the learners pay attention, are stimulated, and learn whatever they are supposed to learn.
Another advantage of robust course materials is that other trainers can deliver the course as long as they have the requisite topic knowledge.
However, many people believe that creating a course is just about putting some slides together and talking through them with a quick "Do you understand? Any questions?" at the end.
And even when someone makes an effort, there are still many traps to fall into that can lead to a poor course outcome.
The most common course design mistakes are:
Overloading the audience with too much information or unnecessary information
Failing to cater to the needs and demographic of the audience
Lack of interaction
Not aligning the course content with the course objectives
Not aligning the assessments to the course objectives
Disjointed or poorly created materials
Let's have a look at the course materials in more detail:
Lesson Plan
A lesson plan is a detailed guide that outlines the structure of your course, including the timings, what the trainer is doing, what the trainees are doing, the mode of teaching, and the resources for each section.
It ensures that all necessary content is covered within the allocated time and helps the trainer manage the session's pace.
When creating a course, I always start with a lesson plan but don't complete it all at once. I make a time estimate for each section of the course, including the introduction, breaks, activities, and assessments.
Next, I fill in the main points I need to cover for each section and plan how to teach it. Only then do I create the other course materials. I often go back and forth between working on slides, workbooks, and activities to ensure they convey the same message.
If your course materials don't match, someone in your audience is bound to notice and point it out, so it pays to check.
Having a lesson plan means other trainers can deliver a course you have created, but before handing your course over, ensure these trainers are committed to running the course as it's written.
A colleague once delivered one of my courses and missed half because she was short of time and had to get to an appointment that clashed with the course.
The trainees were handed back to me 90 minutes early, and they hadn't completed some essential content. I had to schedule the trainees for the next day to go over it.
When I first learned about lesson plans, I was amazed that something as complex as a course could be broken down so simply.
Action point: Create a lesson plan for your course that allows room for discussion, questions, and adjustments based on the learners' needs. Ensure everything in the lesson plan is clearly linked to the learning outcomes.
Slides
Slides are useful tools as long as they support your teaching and are not the main show. No one wants to go to a course and hear the trainer reading out slides for ten minutes, let alone any longer.
Common mistakes when creating slides are including too much information, creating text-only slides, and missing out on charts, graphs, photos, images, and color.
Instead, use phrases, photos, and minimal text on your slides as prompts. Remember, you are the expert, not the slides.
Action point: Create slides for your course that act as prompts, are interesting, and engage your students. Use images and color.
Workbooks
Workbooks are useful for both in-person and online courses. They provide a place to include complex information that is too detailed to put on slides. You can also include tests and quizzes, exercises and activities, areas for notetaking, reflective questions, and reference material.
Avoid creating workbooks that are merely duplicates of the slides—a well-designed workbook can be a valuable resource for your students after the course.
Remember that some people find workbooks more valuable than others, so don't be disappointed if some students don't use them.
Action point: Create workbooks for your students and ensure they have interactive sections and space for notes and information.
Trainer Workbook
A trainer workbook is a duplicate of the student workbook, only with training instructions, talking points, and exercise answers.
When used with the lesson plan, the trainer workbook ensures that different trainers deliver the course consistently. Some trainers may prefer to combine the lesson plan with the workbook; however, I prefer to keep the lesson plan separate.
Either option is fine as long as it helps you deliver the course. However, if you are creating a course for other trainers to deliver, make sure they can follow your course materials.
Action point: Design a trainer workbook to help you deliver your course. Include answers to questions, tips for getting interaction, and answers to any difficult questions you anticipate.
Exercises & Activities
Exercises and activities reinforce learning and keep trainees engaged, active, and moving around. Activities also allow students to practice whatever they are learning, which increases retention.
Ensure you include relevant activities that align with your course objectives. Your students will disengage if you include lengthy, irrelevant, or uninteresting activities. Take the time to thoroughly explain and de-brief your activities so the students can discover and digest the learning points.
Above all, keep it light-hearted. A deadly serious exercise will scare your trainees and remind them of memories of their school days. I don't know about you, but I still have nightmares about my time in the education system.
Vary the activities you design. Make some solo, some for pairs and some for groups. Requiring your students to work with various other students will make your sessions more stimulating.
Remember that some of your students may dislike activities such as role-plays, and others may dislike written exercises, so put in a good mix so no one gets overwhelmed.
And never, ever ask for volunteers, for who wants to go first, or for what teams people want to join. You don't want an awkward silence. Just tell your trainees what to do, and they'll do it.
Will they really?
Yes. Never mind the power of Grayskull; the power of the trainer has no bounds!
Action point: Design activities for your course so you can assess your students' learning. Activities could be quizzes, questions, projects, role plays, case studies, problem-solving, or hands-on tasks.
Audio/Video Files
My first memories of watching visual material were at school when the teacher wheeled in a vast old cathode-ray TV on a stand, and we got to sit and watch with the lights off and curtains drawn. In those days, that was what passed for excitement.
Recently, a teacher friend told me the days we encountered the TV were the days when the teacher had a hangover. I've got no idea if this is true, but unfortunately, it's not something we can get away with in a work or business training course!
Videos and audio clips can introduce new topics, reinforce what you've said, or demonstrate scenarios. They are a great way to liven up lengthy or information-heavy content.
Videos can demonstrate real-life scenarios and be the basis of exercises, such as pointing out what the characters did correctly or incorrectly.
Avoid traps such as using bad-quality or lengthy audio or video clips or letting the audio/video be responsible for the teaching when it is merely a teaching aid.
Consider your audience when choosing the media. I attended a leadership course many years ago, and every video clip featured a white middle-aged male. OK, we all love Simon Sinek and James Clear, but think about your audience and whether they will relate to the people who created the clips.
Follow up any multimedia with questions, discussions, reflections, or action points.
Action point: Consider whether audio or video clips will enhance your students learning. Select concise, relevant clips and check them for relatability.
Giveaways
Giveaways are digital or physical items that the participants take away at the end of the course. Some businesses give away branded items such as pens and mugs, but the giveaways we are talking about here are tools or resources that help the students apply what they've learned.
You could provide templates, checklists, e-books, or process charts, but make sure whatever you provide is relevant to the course content and objectives.
Consider your students' workplace environment. For example, there's no point in giving a heavy book to someone who would have to carry it around all day or a digital resource to someone who has no access to a work device.
I've received plenty of giveaways, and the ones I used were of high quality and helped me complete the tasks I'd learned.
Action point: It's easy to create giveaways, charts, graphs, checklists, and templates to help your students practice what they've learned. Create whatever you think will be most beneficial to your students, and if you aren't sure, ask them.
Assessments
There are two types of assessment: formative and summative.
Normative assessments are the quizzes, tests, demos, questions, and tests that students complete throughout a training course. These assessments help the trainer check the learning of each module or topic before moving on to the next.
Summative assessments are the tests, demos, etc., that you do at the end of a course to check that your students can perform all of the tasks in the course. Summative assessments could be a pass/fail exam or a series of verbal questions.
If you are creating a course in which your students must be able to carry out what they've learned because of legislation, organizational mandates, or industry standards, or if the client wants it to happen, you'll need a written assessment.
For online courses where your students are your customers, you may carry out formative assessments but only summative assessments if appropriate or when you provide certification.
Assessments check whether the learning objectives have been met and provide information about where a trainer must provide further support.
All assessments must relate to the course's learning objectives. When designing summative assessments, you must ensure that you weight questions or assessment tasks appropriately. The more important the task, the higher the weighting.
For example, if a task or question is important, it may be allocated a weighting of 5 out of a possible total score of 25. If a task is necessary but not as important, it could be allocated a weighting of 2.
Action point: Design various formative assessments for your course to check the learning. If appropriate, design a final (summative) assessment, ensuring you vary the type of questions (short answers, essay, multiple choice) and set the questions at an appropriate level of complexity for the course.
If your summative assessment is a pass/fail assessment, set the pass mark and decide if retakes are possible and, if so, how many.
Assessment Answers
Providing assessment answers as part of the course material is essential, especially in the case of a pass/fail assessment. Any assessment must be fair, so students must be graded similarly.
It is easy to provide answers to a multiple-choice quiz, but if your assessment is an essay or a paragraph of text, you need to include the elements that must be present to gain a point. Otherwise, it's easy to be inconsistent between courses, especially if they are spread over a long time period.
Provide examples of good, better, and best answers to ensure consistency in marking for you and any other trainers who deliver the course.
Action point: Create detailed answers to your assessments to help you and other trainers remain consistent.
Takeaways
A course can vary from a 45-minute online class to a five-day in-person extravaganza, and the course material you create should be appropriate for that course.
You may include all types of course material or simply slides, a short lesson plan, and a workbook. It's up to you to decide.
But do take the time to ensure your course materials are well-designed, aligned to the course objectives, and drive the learning outcomes.
Remember to consider the needs and demographics of your audience and design course materials that will resonate with them.
Without robust course materials, you are unlikely to get the desired results, so it pays to learn how to create them.
Here’s a Course Materials Checklist to use when you create your course:
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Such an excellent overview of what it takes to create an engaging and high-impact course. I always forget to incorporate enough moments of engagement and activity for the participants because I get so excited about conveying information. But as you so aptly noted, a successful session isn't defined by how much information you threw at your audience. Success is based on how much they retained and can put into action.
Always love your insights, Wendy!!
Courses are as much about the subject being taught and making the content fun and interactive with examples helps the student apply what they are learning. Great guide Wendy.