Enhancing Your Writing Skills as a Learning Designer

Simple and practical tips you can apply any time

As Learning Designers, we need to write clearly and in a way that resonates with our learners. However, writing is an art that doesn’t come naturally, even for experienced writers.

Mastering any art is a frustrating process with no shortcuts. We must simply practice writing by doing it, receiving feedback, and experimenting constantly. Moreover, it starts with having clarity of mind and knowing what we want to say.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.

- William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well

So… it’s important to clear the mud!

To get clarity in my mind, I go for walks, meditate, and sometimes do a “brain dump“. A mind map to organize ideas before starting to write is also helpful.

Today I’d like to share 5 nuggets of wisdom that I learned recently in my writing course for learning experience designers.

1. Write with the learner in mind

Although this principle seems obvious, when focusing too much on the work, you may forget the learners. To mitigate this, you can have the Learner Persona printed out and visible when writing content. Ask yourself these questions:

• Why should the learner bother reading this?
• What is the learner thinking and feeling when they read this?
• What will they do after they read this?

When you keep the learner in mind and engage them from the start, you will be talking to them directly and they will remember your message vividly.

2. Keep it concise

Concise writing is about being effective and efficient with our words. If you use long sentences and complicated words, learners may not understand your points or just get bored and leave.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab’s chapter on Concision provides three practical tips:

• Replace several vague words with more powerful and specific words
• Interrogate every word in a sentence
• Combine sentences (to make one shorter sentence)

Additionally, this website of the UK government states that if you have sentences longer than 25 words, you should try to break them up or condense them. If you can’t, make sure they’re in plain English.

3. Use action verbs

If you’re giving tips or action items, make sure they start with an action verb, just like I’m doing in this article. You’ll see three advantages in this technique:

• You will send a strong message to the learners
• Your writing will become more interesting and actionable
• Learners will be able to create a visual in their minds about what to do

Also, you can always find ways to replace “to be” and “there is/are” with a strong action verb. This article by St. Louis Community College contains excellent examples.

4. Trust your learners

When designing content, we may fall into the traps of repeating ideas or overexplaining. It’s the equivalent of a facilitator repeating themselves with a patronizing attitude. Let’s remember that:

• Adult learners are self directed and independent thinkers
• A clearly stated purpose will spark motivation and action
• Simple text helps learners put things into their own context

A realization I had is that “trusting your learners” also means “trust yourself and your writing.” Perhaps saying too much is a sign of insecurity in addition to not understanding the learners.

5. Iterate with an Agile mindset

Learning Experience Design is a new discipline that takes elements of UX design and Agile Project Management. In that context, what you write for your learners should constantly improve and evolve. Here are some things you could do while developing content:

• After crafting the written content, leave it alone for one night and come back the next day with fresh eyes
• Seek feedback from peers, mentors, and beta testers
• Make incremental changes accordingly

Your “final masterpiece” will be a product of several iterations and may not be really “final”. That’s simply part of the process.

Final thoughts

Our written content should capture the attention of the modern learner who is overwhelmed and distracted but still wants to learn by digesting personalized, timely, and quality content.

We want to connect with our learners through writing that is relevant and meaningful. Our learners will try things out, make mistakes, reflect, and develop. As learning designers, we can also use that approach to keep exploring and growing our own skill set.

Join Medium! If you enjoy reading my stories and want to support me, consider becoming a Medium member through this link. The USD $5 a month gives you unlimited access to all Medium stories. If you sign up using my link, I’ll earn a small commission to cover my next coffee :)