Overview

To ensure you produce a top-quality course, which really gets the message across, you need to first think about how you structure and write your script. It’s all related to good design! You might find this guide useful: What is ECB and why use it?

The hardest thing with creating a course is scripting it well and gathering all the relevant content. You’re probably an expert in the subject, or know people who are, but getting this expertise across to your learners, in an engaging and efficient way, is not always easy. And that’s why getting the course script right is just so vital for your learners.

Set your learning objectives

You can’t start scripting until you have the learning objectives set. These are simply what you want the learner to understand from doing the course – they will drive your content, form the scenarios, and make up the questions for the end of course assessment.

A good learning objective should be clear and achievable. Make them SMART, where relevant:

• Specific – clear, so the learner is motivated to achieve it.
• ​Measurable – able to be measured so the learner remains motivated.
• ​Attainable – realistic so it can be achieved.
• ​Relevant – to the learner and what the course aims to achieve.
• ​Time-Bound – achievable within the desired length of the course.

These are good examples of learning objectives:

• Learn to recognise when someone might be struggling with a personal or work-related issue that is affecting their wellbeing, and how to act upon it.
• ​Learn about fire evacuation procedures, so you know how to keep yourself and others around you safe when leaving a building.
• ​Learn what equipment is available to you to help you carry out your role safely and efficiently, and what is the most important thing to consider before using any equipment.

Document your script

We really do recommend documenting all your scripting effort (for example using Word) - using a template ideally. It will honestly make your job so much easier, and the end result much better. It gives you a clear and good vision of the course as a whole, which you can review and revise easily, and use the spelling and grammar checker. Once signed off, you can simply copy and paste the text into your course build tool.

​It may seem quicker to type directly into your build tool, but that’s not a good course scripting habit. It’s how mistakes happen, and mistakes are costly! Neither is copying and pasting text from another source into your script – you need to put your own spin and style on the learning to tie it all in together.

A course script can have many drafts before you are finally ready to build it. This is completely normal when creating great learning. Don’t worry, the effort at this stage will pay off, so don’t be in a rush to just dive in and build it.

When an update to the course is required, you can archive the first version of the script document, then work on a new version and track the changes. Once the changes are firm, just copy them in to your course. And this is another benefit of documenting your scripts, it will make updating or making changes to courses a lot easier. Keeping track of changes to learning will also help inform your wider learning goals and measurements, and help with reporting.

(There is a function in Word called Track Changes which shows the document marked up with amends, this is useful to keep sight of everything when the script is under review.)

Script documents are your library of learning – so make sure to keep them well maintained.

Create the course structure

The best way to think about your course is as a collection of modules, items and pages. A module would need breaking up into items, then within those items are the pages. It can be tricky to visualise at first, but you need to think about the structure before you start scripting, as it confirms the flow of the course.

Smaller sections of learning are important, to make your course more engaging. Don’t let it drag on with page after page of information. People could just end up switching off and not learning! Break the information up to cater for shorter attention spans and the desire for that ‘fist in the air’ moment at regular intervals. Realistically, any course which takes longer than 20 minutes to complete should be avoided. If it’s getting too long, you can always break the learning up into two courses instead of one.

If your course has a lot of content to cover, and you must have it as one course, just remember to break it up into more modules. The end of each module gives you the option to quiz the learner – this is the ‘fist in the air’ moment!

Next, you need to think about how your pages are going to be structured. Will you be using videos? Or maybe just text with links to pdfs for more information? Or if you have lots of related information you want on one page, will you split this into reveal sections (expandable areas)?

It’s a lot to think about! The Easy Course Builder also gives you the option to have untracked quizzes – these are a good pause point, to test the learner has understood, but the score is not logged to the learning record.

Also, think about how people might continue to learn after they’ve completed the course – if you can design a single A4 page with a great summary of the course that can be printed out and stuck to the notice board that they walk past each day, then you’ll reinforce their learning. And with ECB, you can link out to PDF documents within the course, so all you need to do is create a great summary!

Remember at the end of each module, there should be a quiz item – an assessment to confirm the learner has got the knowledge required from the learning objectives. We call this the ‘mastery quiz’. Ideally, this should be written in a scenario format, so the learner can both imagine themselves in a situation and foster an emotional connection – this really helps to embed the learning.

Scripting checklist

Keep these points in mind throughout your scripting process:

• Remember your audience – who are you writing the course for? Keep the language simple – plain English - concise, and to the point.
• ​You may initially have some information from somewhere else (other subject matter experts for example) which might need cutting back and simplifying. Always re-write, and make sure it’s in the style and voice of your course.
• ​Do NOT put too much text on one page - a couple of paragraphs and some bullets is enough. Or use several reveal sections, which makes it much easier to break up lots of information.
• ​Remember that learners will be doing the course on different devices – so you must think about the mobile users too. Loads of text on screen will mean they’ll just be endlessly scrolling!
• ​Remember that you can link to PDF documents at any point during the course. Use these for important things and also things not essential enough to be included in the course itself (extras). You can create these in an infographic style, which helps further embed the learning.
• ​Adopt an appropriate style of writing, appeal to the learner – in the end, the course is for their benefit, so they need to be able to understand it.
• ​Use pause points to break the course up and check in with the learner – how would you feel if…, do you really understand…, you should be getting the point about…
• ​Use bullet points to make text easier to read and digest.
• ​Bold any key words, as some people speed read these, it helps with retention of the key points.

The next guide in this section is Creating a new course in ECB​

You may find this script template useful when creating your learning: USP+Script+Template_explained_Apr_2024.docx