Blog: Does size really matter?
The size of your printed training materials or the option to use digital courseware, has an impact on accessibility and engagement for students.
In the modern learning environment which is becoming increasingly self-serve and agile, small but not too small is the best way to achieve flexibility in your training materials while improving their impact. Making them easy to carry around and use.
- Digital – Making your materials accessible digitally makes them as easy as possible to distribute and for students to carry around with them wherever they go. It can be difficult to make annotations on a mobile and distractions like modern day social media, calls and emails harm concentration
- No more A4 – There are other paper sizes available such as A5 or American Legal that offer as much as 50% reduction in volume, yet all communicate the same. These are the most convenient sizes to carry and read. You can also make notes and are able to stick markers in to pick off where you left last time, in a way that isn’t possible in a pdf without secure specicalist software
- Amenity – Convenience is key to retention as it creates more frequency of contact with your material, and a better level of immersion for the student.
Think culture. If you are running a training course in America, would the students appreciate an A4 manual? No. They want home-from-home. Of course, printing legal size (216×355) compared to the UK’s equivalent of A4 (210×297) would be slightly cheaper too.
There are many challenges within the Learning and Development industry, one of which is tailoring materials to a specific customer need. Some students have explicit requirements for their materials.
For us? No problem.
One thing you will learn in this industry is that each student has their own learning style and we accommodate that. For example; white backgrounds can often be bright for people that suffer with dyslexia and can create a visual stress. Often, printing on yellow, or a pastel coloured paper can reduce visual stress and enable the student to read more effectively. However, printing on yellow paper can be slightly more expensive.
By using an online platform, it would be more of a standardized approach to everyone learning, including people with reading or learning disabilities. In the online concept, you can alter the screen colour, zoom in and out and make notes with your choice of highlighter where required. Using an online platform does not cost any more or less for a student with a different perspective of learning.
For a long time, I believed that there was no way you can beat classic classroom learning. However, this is the 21st Century and times are changing. More and more people want to improve their knowledge and finding time to learn is hard enough, let alone finding time to go to a classroom. With this in mind, the learning and development industry decided to unleash a new platform – online.
This makes perfect sense with all the technological advances that have happened over the last 5 years. This is a quick and convenient way to learn on the go, as well as wherever you go…your phones always in your pocket, right?
Yes, size really does matter when it comes to student learning. Perhaps your student does prefer a hard copy manual, or perhaps your student doesn’t want to carry something around with them. We have a tailor-made solution for every learning platform you offer.
Ready to impress your students with the latest learning and development services?
Get in touch with us today on 0118 918 1500 to find out more.