Yet another great post !

Am a lover of cartoons and so given a chance, I’d definitely start off with a cartoon for an attention grabber Otherwise, I use animations, tricky questions, a thought-provoking quote, etc and then guide learners through the course. My style is also to introduce all these elements in between the pages too. Just that the timing and aptness is so very important when you introduce these.

One challenge I have faced with cartoons as attention grabbers is the acceptance level of the target audience. In one of my previous organizations, one of my assignments was an awareness course on Sexual Harrassment and “preventive measures” Being a delicate topic, I did not quite want to make it a serious course quoting law points and employee termination rules. I knew my learners wouldn’t be motivated to just read law points. I preferred driving it around cartoons pertaining to each rule, while I drove home the point. My course was well accepted by youngesters (When I did a ‘sample test’ on chosen audience before the course release). However, the older fraction of the company did not find it serious enough – cartoons take off seriousness, they said. Many couldn’t catch the humor behind those cartoons too. We then recreated graphics in more serious tones. I sadly noticed that the course had to be just another e-learning course with no difference to the approach

I learnt that attention grabbers need to suit all audience levels too. What might look interesting to some may not be the same to others. It would be easier if the target audience is all the same -just engineers in the age group of 25/26 or Senior managers, etc. When you have a mixed group, where do we draw the line? Still wondering.

Regarding Kevin’s comment about maintaining interest levels after the attention graber, my way is to introduce “breaks” in the form of anecdotes/cartoons/thought-provoking questions at the end of each concept or idea. These “breaks” could subtly point to the next concept that we are going to introduce in the following slides. Just a few thoughts…

Keep writing:-)

Regards,
Indu

UB here. I am an aspiring ID presently in Koramangala, Bangalore. I just dont know where to start. I think I missed the admissions on Symbiosis course too this year and cannot seem to find any opening here. I know this is not a career guidance blog but I still think you can guide me a lot.

Thanks again.

Umi
(kindly mail me so that I could explain my case better)

Those are nice strips that you’ve used from the web. You can also create your own comic strips using http://www.toondoo.com, easy to use, an online comic strip creator with a lot of cool features! Do check it out!