Educational content needs context

Now that you know what makes educational content work, we need to make it rich, meaning well illustrated.

Adults love examples and associations. This is a very powerful weapon to use with our audience because, unlike children and teenagers, adults have a lot of life experience and we can take advantage of it. Not only that, but adult learners are constantly comparing what we say with what they have lived through. Can't you remember trainings you've attended in the past where you doubted what the speaker was saying because you had lived through different (even opposite) things? That happens because, even if the instructor has a lot of experience and study behind them, the example (or application) they gave didn't match your experience. Even though adults don't like too much rambling, it's important to give context. And context comes in two forms: The theory behind it: where did this come from, and who is saying it? Often it comes as an authority figure (I hold position X, so I know what I'm talking about) or as the story of how the idea came about (I was facing X, then I had to arrive at conclusion Y). Examples. We love practicality and applicability. It's no coincidence that technical books that cover a topic tend to be packed with examples. To help you put that framework, tool or matrix into practice, the author gives a series of different contexts. The framework applied to services. The framework applied to products. The framework applied to startups. And so on. The goal of giving context is to increase the degree of heutagogy (our next topic), combined with the instrumentality of the content. In other words, to provide self-applicable instruction. We'll have a lesson dedicated specifically to scripting.