Have you ever felt overworked, stressed or overwhelmed while developing training instructional materials?

I know I have.

One of the reasons I started Oak Innovation was to provide the instructional materials that I wish I had access to when I was starting out. And what you are going to read below is a quick insight into the world of instructional materials.

I wish when I was beginning my career that I had access to the sorts of instructional materials that are so instantly available these days.

If you have ever wondered about using instructional materials and if they are right for you, you are going to gain some insights! I cover what are instructional materials, and I share simple examples of instructional materials.

What are instructional materials?

I started my company in 1995 and I’ve been working in this space for a long long time now. And, from day one, I’ve been fascinated on working how best to create and combine instructional materials to create the best learning experiences for course delegates.

Here’s the thing. Developing instructional materials is HARD, right? And it’s so easy to get lost in all the content that you think you need to have. Others make it look so easy so it’s important to have a strong definition to guide you initially. From there you can break things down to something that may suit your situation more.

To illustrate, Muraina, (2015) defines instructional materials as:

“… the human and non-human materials and facilities that can be used to ease, encourage, improved and promote teaching and learning activities. They are whatever materials used in the process of instruction. They are a broad range of resource which can be used to facilitate effective instruction. They indicate a systematic way of designing, carrying out and employing the total process of learning and communication and employing human and non-human resources to bring out a more meaningful and effective instruction. They are human and non-human material that a teacher uses to pass information to the learner in his/her class.”

I’ve come to understand that instructional materials are an umbrella term for all materials that have been created for use by course delegates and their instructors as instruction or learning resources to aid delegates in their acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Examples of instructional materials.

One of the most common questions I get is what are the main examples of instructional materials. The answer always boils down to instructional materials can be printed or non-printed, auditory or visual, and may include textbooks, presentation materials, other experiential materials, and online tools.

To illustrate:

• Print: Textbooks, handouts, study guides, manuals, readings, outlines, lesson plans, handouts, online articles, and online resources.
• Visual: Infographics, charts, photographs.
• Audio: Podcasts, expert recordings.
• Audiovisual: Slides, television, multimedia, YouTube, Vimeo, movies, and tv clips.
• Electronic: Computers, e-learning, tablets.
• Presentation Materials: PowerPoint slide deck, lecture notes, training manuals, case studies, delegate-created content.
• Experiential: Expert interviews, guest speakers
• Online Tools: Keynote, Prezi, LinkedIn SlideShare, Zoho Show, FlowVella, LibreOffice Impress, Ludus, PowToon, Speaker Deck, Visme, WPS Presentation, authorSTREAM, Genially, Canva, Beautiful.ai , Ahaslides.

To summarize, there are some great ways to access instructional materials that need to be put to amazing effect within companies these days. Remember, to focus on finding the right instructional materials both for you and your course delegates. If you do these two things, you’ll be delivering successful training courses on your own.

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