What are Voids and How to Use Them?

• A void is leaving space.

• A void is leaving a question unanswered (temporarily).

• A void is making a suggestion and leaving space for your participants to think before giving them the answer.

Voids are a valuable educational tool that can stimulate engagement and active participation from your audience and fast track their learning.

Let's get into some practical examples to bring this to life.

Please note, I have been using voids all throughout this training. I am using more than I would normally for an online training course to illustrate this point.

Let's work chronologically, as I list the voids I have used, think of how you can replicate these strategies in your own training and content.

On the first page of this training in the Overview, I refer to what will be uncovered in the training and list the steps covered. This is a void. It gives you an idea without any detail. This motivates the reader to want to know more and therefore to go to the next page (or step in this case).

At the end of each page, a 'cliff hanger' or 'teaser' is included suggesting what's to come next. A similar strategy used for page turning novels or TV mini series.

Throughout the training, I mention content and then explain it later. For example, the content on this step is mentioned on earlier pages as being important or 'the gold' or a phrase to emphasise it is important content. As I build the content up from basic to important or essential.

Please note, it is important to make sure, when you say a point is:

• important
• critical
• must read
• essential
• the gold
• you must do or something similar

Make sure the points are genuinely important etc. This one 'you can't fake'. So if it is nice to have then just include in the training but don't necessarily highlight in this way.

An example of an indirect void is when I mention that I have created another training called: How to Navigate the WA Training Menus. For those interested in this topic they may save this title and then go looking (therefore to fill the void) this training after completing this one.

It is also good to refer back to previous voids that have been filled. This is an effective strategy to help your participants to review and process the knowledge you are sharing.

Now to the 'gold' of this training the last step: Include Calls to Action - let's go: