In defence of text
A provocative post about our sexiest communication medium.
Substack, the beloved newsletter platform that we use to distribute The L&D Dispatch, is adding a video player.
This isn’t an unusual shift for a social platform. Instagram, Facebook and X have all pivoted hard toward video in recent years. And, in the world of workplace learning, ‘more video’ is a frequent refrain we hear from clients.
Video is, after all, what the kids are glued to. Workplace learning should heed the lessons of the consumer market.
Or should it?
When we analyze the performance of content in our Mind Tools content library, the same format ranks highest across enterprise accounts, consumer members and free users: text.
Why?
Because text is great.
😍 The joy of text
Text is cheap to produce and quick to consume.
It is ultimately user friendly. No need to pause, rewind, or re-play. Even when complex, the reader can scroll and skim.
Text doesn’t require a lot of bandwidth or storage space.
It is easily searchable. A quick CTRL+F and you can find the word or phrase you need.
It can be used to train AI tools that re-shape it into ever-more-useful combinations.
It’s accessible, easily read by those with a hearing impairment, or voiced by a screenreader for those with a visual impairment.
On a browser, it’s responsive to the size and orientation of your screen, and can be made smaller or larger based on personal preference.
It’s easy to update, without the need for specialist software or skills.
It’s translatable, at scale, allowing for the sharing of ideas across cultures and places.
In printed form it offers permanence. We know much of what we know about the anicent world because of text. Obsolete file formats and degrading storage devices mean we’re living in a digital dark age. Printed text is our legacy.
💃 The waxing lyrical bit
Finally, great text is a joy to read.
Earlier this year, while The New York Times was getting litigious, The Atlantic partnered with OpenAI to offer snippets of articles within ChatGPT responses.
That might seem like a strange move. If people can get answers from ChatGPT, why would they proceed to read The Atlantic?
Because people enjoy good writing.
The best writing resonates because it connects.
E. L. Doctorow once wrote:
‘Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.’
In a workplace learning context, that might be setting ourselves a high bar. But to structure our thoughts as text is to offer a helping hand to those who follow us.
The process guide on your company wiki is an acknowledgement that someone else has faced the same problem that you face. It is a shortcut to higher performance, and a removal of road blocks.
The content on our Mind Tools platform shares that goal: to help managers overcome unfamiliar problems or challenges. To codify the advice of others, and help our users perform.
We’ll always offer audio, video and infographics, choosing the best content format for the context and performance outcome we’re targetting.
But, for now at least, text remains king.
Want to find out how we can help improve the performance of your managers?Get in touch by emailing custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox.
🎧 On the podcast
Technical professionals have a high level of expertise, but translating that expertise for non-technical colleagues isn’t always straightforward. Whether you’re an engineer, a researcher, or even an L&D professional, how can you communicate in a way that resonates with your audience?
On last week’s episode of The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, my colleagues Ross D and Owen spoke to Neil Thompson, founder of Teach The Geek, to find out.
Check out the episode below. 👇
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or #MindToolsPodcast
📖 Deep dive
A new report from Playful Learning DK, and funded by the Lego foundation, explores the role of 'play' in learning, arguing that:
‘we do not play in education, we use the qualities of play to create meaningful situations for students.’
While the report focuses on the student context, it offers ideas for incorporating play into the adult learning context that I think would be fun to... play with.
Specifically, it challenges the notion of timebound activities. What effect would it have on learning if an activity had no defined end time?
If a participant is hesitant to take part in a playful activity, what does that tell both the learner and instructor?
How does play disrupt the roles that we each perform? How does it transform us afterwards?
And how do our bodies respond to the notion of play? Who in a learner group grows to fill a space, and who withdraws or becomes smaller?
Skovbjerg et al, 2024. ‘Playful Learning dissemination report’. Playful Learning.
Thanks Anamaria Dorgo for sharing this one!
👹 Missing links
Ever wished your calendar responses could include a ‘Could have been an email’ option? Or that your video conferencing tool could notify you every time your name is mentioned? Designer Soren Iverson shares eccentric product features every day, usually taking existing apps and pushing them in unusual directions. I love it.
🦈 We’ve jumped the shark (teeth)
Remember ‘There’s an app for that?’ We can now safely replace it with ‘There’s an AI for that’. In this post, Steve D shares the AI-powered toothbrush, along with the observation that there is no ‘killer’ use case for AI in a lot of industries.
🧑🏽💼 I’m afraid we need to promote you to management
I’m in the middle of listening to Power to the Middle, from McKinsey. The book explores the role of the middle manager, and we’ll be podcasting about it soon. But, in the meantime, this post from The New York Times resonated:
‘At this point in your career, your only possible prmotion is to management, where you will stop doing the work you love and use a skill set you don't have and we don't teach.’
👋 And finally…
If you’re sitting comfortably, prepare to squirm. My friend Paul Brennan pointed me to RoastLinkedIn.com, a wonderful AI app that skewers you based on your LinkedIn profile.
Here’s its takedown of yours truly:
‘Ross's summary boasts being an award-winning "Learning Designer of the Year." 2019 called, it wants its small victory back. We're all really impressed that some obscure industry group decided to give you a pat on the back for making slideshows about corporate buzzwords.
‘Titles like, "Head of Content and Custom Solutions" and "Head of Learning Experience" make it sound like Ross is the king of a very tiny, very insignificant hill.’
👍 Thanks!
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Thank you from the bottom of my heart. My heart belongs to text. I hate video, I put up with it when I have to, but for anything that isn't a documentary about an artist or somesuch, I put up with video where I can't avoid it, but really, I want text. And well written text at that.