In recent weeks, we’ve been talking a lot about Epic Meaning. This is the desire to do something that matters, and it’s a hugely powerful way to engage your learners with their online learning.
There are many ways to instil Epic Meaning into the minds of your learners, and one of the most effective is to get your imagery and terminology right!
So before you start rushing around crafting your training programme, take a step back to consider the wording and the types of images you’re going to use throughout.
Here are a few of the ways this might have a big positive impact:
There’s nothing worse than a boring training unit with rubbish stock images. You’re turned off the very moment you lay eyes on it…
But the way you phrase something can completely change how it’s received. No-one is excited to learn about health and safety, but as soon as you start framing it as “become a certified life-saver!” then you’ll find it much easier to drum up interest.
Similarly, if you spend a bit more time sourcing more relevant and inspiring images, you can go a long way towards bringing your content to life! The better the imagery, the easier your learners will find it to understand the training.
Personalise your training
Personalisation is one of the most powerful ways of creating an engaging training programme. If you’re able to tailor your imagery and terminology to suit your audience, then your learners will feel as if the training is speaking directly to them.
Any imagery you use should be relevant to your audience. For instance, if you’re training a group of bakers, then images of cakes are going to make a lot more sense than people wearing suits.
In terms of wording, getting the tone right is essential. Also, if your audience has its own terminology then make sure to speak their language. So if your workplace always refers to dress-down Friday as Funky Friday, make sure to call it that in the training content! It just goes that extra step towards showing the learner that this training is meant for them.
Added immersion
If you want to create a theme or narrative for your training, then getting the imagery and terminology right will help massively with immersion.
Take Growth Engineering as an example. Our philosophy is all around waging war against dull online learning and transforming learners into superheroes. In everything we create, including training content, we make sure to use both superhero terminology and superhero imagery.
It helps to reinforce the message you’re sending to your learners, and lets them get more engaged with the narrative. Once engaged with the Epic Meaning, your learners will take more interest in the training and get more out of it.
Tie everything together
As you develop your training programme, you’re sure to create a vast library of content which spans a huge number of topics. If left unchecked, this library could become a jumbled mess of different styles, and these jarring styles could be unpleasant for the learner to wade through.
However, if you use a style guide of approved imagery and terminology, then you can keep everything consistent. This means that whether a learner is find out about the latest products or brushing up on the disciplinary process, they can clearly see that this unit is part of a bigger whole.
Now think about the learner experience. If everything is inconsistent, then it seems as though they’re just taking random module after random module. But if the imagery and terminology match, then it becomes obvious that they’re working towards something big and meaningful, and that everything they’re doing is feeding into that ultimate goal.
To wrap up
Imagery and terminology are nothing complex, but by using them properly we arrive at something very special – Epic Meaning.
Your training is something exciting which speaks directly to your learners. It’s something they can get immersed into, and they can see how it all comes together into something spectacular!
