Content comes in all forms, whether it’s to inspire, entertain, ask questions, state an opinion or tell a story. There’s more to educational content strategy than handouts, books and presentations — all in all, content can be a powerful educational tool. There is a large online market catered toward English learners, and you can benefit from providing customizable, student-friendly materials that engage and help develop important skills.
What is Educational Content?
Education-focused content is content that is created by educators to engage, inspire and inform their students. Gone are the days when students learned from only a textbook and a lecture. Educational content is something that can be creative and personalized to each learner’s needs.
As a whole, educational content is versatile, accessible, informational, and should be created in a manner that helps you achieve your student’s learning goals.
For example, educational content can be helpful for teaching students of all ages the same topic and story. Say a mother and a son are learning English for the first time, and you want to teach them about English sentence structure and grammar phrases. You can easily modify your lesson plan for the young son to learn your lesson by creating an interactive game. And to keep the messaging consistent, the same lesson can be applied to the adult by showing them examples of social media posts, text messages and even news articles.
Why is Teaching Content Important in Education?
The type of content you choose to introduce while educating students is incredibly important; it can be the catalyst for growth in a student's journey. Content in education adds more context to lesson plans while showcasing various viewpoints and ideas.
Only the best structured content and information will turn the novice learner into an expert, and the pressure relies on the teachers to put their best foot forward when it comes to developing the best lessons.
The Application of Content in Teaching
There are many ways in which content provides meaningful learning experiences. Great content promotes passion and motivation throughout the learning process.
- Language Learning: Picking up another language can be tricky, content like videos and pictures allows students to bridge gaps in understanding and boost confidence.
- Problem Solving: Developing critical thinking skills takes time. Introducing visual graphs and podcasts can help students develop quicker.
- Current Events: Introducing current events and news articles not only helps students learn but also makes them well-rounded informed individuals on a global level.
- History: Allow students to reflect and provide commentary on the events that shaped the world around us. There is a reason why history continues to be part of the educational curriculum!
Challenges with Content in Education & Teaching
Educators, looking to leverage content in their lesson plans, may face some obstacles. These are outlined below:
Reliable Content & Book Bannings
Teachers need to be sure the content they use is reliable and fact-checked, which can be challenging in an age of misinformation and banned books. To date, the American Library Association noted that attempts have been made to ban or restrict access to over 1,650 titles.
To fairly represent the world and offer accurate information and context, teachers must pull from a variety of sources and content. For example: When teaching history, specific books offer insight into the cultural context, while older newspaper articles can showcase what was top of mind for individuals living through these experiences.
Access to Content
Even without book bannings, it can be difficult to access the right content for your students. For foreign language teachers, content in the target language can be difficult to acquire, making it a challenge to develop lesson plans or employ content and language integrated learning (CLIL) strategies.
Why Should Teachers Present Students With Different Content Methods?
1. To Cater to Different Student Learning Styles
Students all have different styles of learning. This can mean that different students likely learn in a multitude of ways. The different types of students may include:
- Visual learners: Those who learn by seeing the material.
- Auditory learners: Those who learn by hearing the material.
- Read-and-write learners: Those who learn by the repetition of reading and writing the material.
- Kinesthetic learners: Those who learn by doing exercises to retain and understand information.
The goal of teaching is ultimately for students to learn the material and retain it, so teachers must present content in different ways in order to achieve this.
2. To Improve Student Engagement
A large challenge, especially when teaching online, is distraction. Students can easily get distracted in a face-to-face environment where the teacher is more in control, but it becomes even more difficult to maintain that control in online environments. Utilizing different content types can help to minimize these distractions, keeping your students engaged.
6 Types of Educational Content to Explore
Depending on your content goals, there are a bunch of different types of educational content that you can explore. Each comes with its own benefits and learning components. ere are a few options that can be helpful for your audience.
1. Puzzles
Puzzles are an entertaining way for kids to learn new concepts, gain visual perception and develop confidence. Learning through play is not only beneficial for academic achievement, but it improves memory and stimulates brain growth. Plus, children who are given options to play in between their academic studies are more likely to pay attention and retain more information than kids who don’t.
For English as a second language learners, puzzles are a fantastic way to introduce vocabulary words and grammatical concepts.
2. Kid-Friendly News Articles
It’s important to share the news with your children, no matter their age! Some publications, like The New York Times, offer a kid-friendly version of their paper that breaks down intricate concepts in a way that children can grasp. This print-only option helps your kids understand the world and is targeted toward readers ages 8-13 years old.
3. Infographics
Humans are visual learners. In fact, studies show that after three days, a person will retain 65% of all visual information they have seen, compared to only 10-20% of written or spoken information. With this in mind, infographics can be the best of both worlds for educational purposes, as they present information in a more visual way. Plus, their creative nature makes it easy for brands to have fun presenting data.
4. Current Events
As mentioned with the kid-friendly news articles, current events articles allow students to understand global events in a way they can understand. This isn’t just limited to news in the United States, rather current events articles help kids of all ages understand global events and be informed citizens.
5. Educational Magazines
Magazines offer an additional method to presenting news and information in a fun, kid-friendly way. Publications like Scholastic present current nonfiction educational material like science, current events and social studies in a more digestible format. The New York Times Learning Network has a variety of online activities for students of all ages, as well as online resources to help teachers bring current events into the classroom.
6. How-To Guides
What’s a better way to educate than by creating a how-to guide? Typically, how-to guides are quite lengthy, which allows for a brand to go in depth with their content. You’ll need to show multiple steps in these guides, so to help you, you can incorporate infographics, lists, videos and other visuals.
Language Learning Content
When teaching a foreign language, it is more important than ever for content to be informational, engaging, and above anything else, interesting. Content is an integral part of teaching and learning a language, since it can introduce a new culture and provide new vocabulary. Below are some ways you can use educational content to reach English learning language objectives.
1. Newspapers
Newspapers can be a great tool for those trying to learn a language. A newspaper showcases strong writing, which helps to reinforce grammatical concepts, as well as helping develop real-world vocabulary. Newspapers in a language learning setting can also help students go beyond basic conversation skills. As a teacher, you can focus on CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency), which takes longer for students to develop. CALP includes academic and career-oriented language, which helps prepare students for the future.
2. Business Content
Each one of your students will have different language needs, and for more advanced English learners, business content can be exceptionally educational. That’s because financial and business news can give them the vocabulary needed for their professional lives.
3. Videos
Language learners need to be able to grasp how a language is spoken and what it sounds like, not just what it looks like on paper. Videos and short clips allow for your students to hear the natural cadence of the English language, as well as helping with their pronunciation and listening comprehension skills.
Examples of Educational Content in Action
Here are some examples of successful educational content in action.
1. Busuu
Busuu is the world’s largest community for language learning. It provides learning courses for 12 different languages and reaches more than 90 million learners through web and mobile platforms. Busuu integrates journalism from The New York Times with their award-winning teaching methodology to create an immersive online learning experience to engage users on current events.
2. Educational Testing Services (ETS)
Educational Testing Service (ETS) is the world’s largest private nonprofit educational assessment and measurement organization. Their assessments and learning solutions allow students to reach their educational goals, whatever they may be. ETS works with The New York Times Learning Network by incorporating question prompts into their Writing Mentor® Google Docs add-on app. The Writing Mentor® app is meant to help students develop their academic writing skills, reflect on and review their writing and become more comfortable with the writing process.
3. Obunsha
As the leading publisher of educational materials in Japa, Obunsha utilizes articles from The New York Times to supplement their English language offerings. And it’s proving to be quite successful; Obunsha reports that the articles from the NYT are the most heavily used English-language content throughout the Japanese national exams that they publish as practice for the next generation of standardized test-takers.
6 Tips for Educational Content Development
Developing educational content doesn’t have to be complex or confusing. Get started with these steps.
1. Pinpoint Knowledge Gaps
Before developing content, you will want to consider surveying your audience in order to learn more about their backgrounds and levels of experience. It can be easier to identify skill gaps by having learners take a pre-assessment test. You can then address these gaps in your training.
2. Plan Your Teaching Strategy
Creating a list of significant topics, as well as sub-points and then breaking them down into categories can help you plan your strategy. These may include:
- What Learners Need to Know: Critical content that is necessary to achieve learning outcomes.
- What Learners Should Know: Content that covers major concepts which learners need to know at the core of training.
- What Learners Can Know: Content that adds value to a learners’ understanding of the subject matter, but that is not critical.
3. Check Your Content Inventory
It’s always a good idea to check what you have in terms of existing content before you start out on any new project. There are many opportunities for reusing and repurposing existing content once you realize what you already have.
4. Create a Storyboard
Using a storyboard to lay out the content direction, while also trying not to load too many concepts into one course can be helpful in terms of planning. With a storyboard, you can more easily follow the outline you create for your course. This organization makes sure you include all key points, avoiding less important topics.
5. Develop Your Own Educational Content
This option is great for companies that already have a robust in-house content creation team. Utilize these team members to create your own educational content from the different types of educational content listed above. The world is your oyster, there is no such thing as too much educational content, so have fun creating!
6. License Your Educational Content
If you’re diving into an educational topic that you’re not well versed in, or your company doesn’t have the bandwidth and resources to explore, consider licensing your content. Licensing content is an excellent way to bring expert commentary to your content strategy while associating yourself with thought leaders in the world of education.
Final Thoughts
Educational content is an incredibly versatile method of educating, informing and engaging your learners. There are plenty of ways of creating educational content, but if your brand needs an extra boost doing so, consider licensing content from The New York Times Licensing Group.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Teaching Content?
Teaching content refers to the material used in class or to construct a lesson plan. This content can include newspapers, books, podcasts, and puzzles. The goal of this content is to promote learning.
What is Content Based Instruction?
Content based instruction (CBI) focuses on providing content to educate students in learning a new language. Since people use language as a means of obtaining information, content becomes a valuable tool in the teaching process.
How is Content Used in the Teaching Process?
Content based learning helps students remain motivated and engaged as they study. The teaching process required teachers to strategically plan out lessons with diverse content. This helps students learn with context so that they develop a deep understanding rather than just mere memorization.
What Kinds of Content Should be Added to a Student's Curriculum?
The instructional resources that teachers use play a crucial role in the development of students. Lesson plans can include but are not limited to news articles, video documentaries, photojournalism, graphics and even games. Relevant content acts as a vessel in elevating and propelling education strategies forward.
What Are Examples of Educational Content?
Educational content can be any type of content that informs, engages or inspires students. Examples include:
- Puzzles
- Games
- Newspapers
- Photographs
