How to Brainstorm a Training Refresh to Enhance Engagement and Retention

You have a corporate training course that has been used for a few years and is beginning to feel a bit outdated. Perhaps the policies, procedures, or product information have changed since the training was initially developed. Alternatively, you might not witness the knowledge transfer or behavior change you anticipated. It’s time to think about a course refresh.

 

The good news is that breathing new life into an existing course doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. The most effective place to begin is often with a well-structured brainstorming process. Done right, this early stage can not only spark new ideas but also generate a high-level outline or concept that sets the course for a truly modernized, effective, and engaging learning experience.

Here's how to kick off your brainstorming process in a way that leads to real, actionable ideas you can actually build.

Start With What You Know

Before launching into idea generation, it’s worth taking the time to start with what you know. Enlist a team of people for brainstorming who can help facilitate conversations around the course topic. These can be subject matter experts, business unit managers, instructional designers (or other Learning & Development colleagues), LMS administrators, and even participants who have taken the course. The goal is to identify people who bring a balanced range of viewpoints and will help shape improvements to the training.

Next, gather any feedback you have from previous learners. What did they love? What fell flat? If your organization uses an LMS, gather data on completion rates, quiz performance, and time spent on different sections. This can reveal where learners are losing interest or struggling to retain information.

Think about other changes that may affect the relevance of the course content. Have the business goals shifted since the training was first developed? Are there new tools, policies, or challenges in the workflow that the course no longer addresses? Managers, supervisors, or team leads may have insights into where the course aligns well with their objectives and where it misses the mark.

Finally, go through the course yourself with fresh eyes. Does anything stand out that may benefit from an update? These insights can shape your brainstorming session and ensure that you’re solving the right problems from the start.

Use Questions to Spark Innovation

Once you’ve reviewed the current state of the course, the next step is to push beyond the boundaries of what’s already there. One technique that works surprisingly well is asking bold, hypothetical “what if” questions, such as: 

• What if learners had support mechanisms after the training to reinforce the objectives?

• What if learners only had five minutes per day to engage with the content?

• What if this training were delivered as an interactive story?

• What if learners had to complete tasks on the job as part of the learning experience?

  
  

These questions aren’t necessarily meant to yield literal solutions (although they sometimes do), but they’re fantastic at breaking you out of the “same old slides and quizzes” mindset and helping you approach training design from new angles. Even a simple thought experiment can lead to ideas that translate into real, implementable features. 

Another powerful strategy is to look outside the world of corporate learning. Consider other platforms and formats people engage with every day. What are the apps, videos, or podcasts you personally engage with? Why do they hold your attention? Is it the pacing? The visuals? The voice and tone? These tools often succeed not because they are educational, but because they are well-designed, intuitive, and built around how people naturally absorb information.

Consider how your team might adopt a similar strategy for your training course. By drawing on techniques from other sources, you can create a training experience that feels modern, approachable, and centered on learners without compromising depth or rigor.

Organize Your Ideas

Once your team has generated various ideas, it’s time to move from ideation to formulating a structure. Start by capturing every idea without filtering. Then, begin grouping similar concepts together. You might find that a few themes naturally emerge. For example, ideas focused on making the content more interactive, others centered around retention strategies, or some that make the learning experience more fun or personalized.

From there, begin narrowing down. Look for the sweet spot of ideas that are both high-impact and relatively low-effort to implement. Prioritize those first.

Focus on Engagement and Retention

When considering which ideas to pursue, it helps to consider the two critical outcomes of effective training: engagement and retention. These aren’t just buzzwords; they reflect whether learners are interested in the training and whether they remember and apply what they’ve learned.

Consider techniques like immersive storytelling, scenario-based interactions, and personalized content paths to increase engagement. Remember that authentic, day-in-the-life scenarios make the training relevant, which is key to engagement. These techniques make learners feel like active participants rather than passive recipients. Short video segments featuring real people (such as company leaders or peers) can add authenticity and relevance. Gamified elements, like badges, leaderboards, or allowing learners to select their course avatar, can also create light competition and drive continued involvement throughout the training.

For improving retention, focus on strategies that reinforce learning over time. Instead of relying on a single course event, consider follow-up touchpoints such as spaced practice activities, recap emails, or prompts delivered through a chat tool. You might also include job aids or tools that learners can reference on the job, allowing you to bridge the gap between knowledge and action.

Microlearning formats can also be effective in this situation, allowing content to be consumed in small, digestible pieces that are easier to remember and apply. And peer-based learning (whether through role-play, discussion prompts or team challenges) can deepen retention by encouraging learners to process and reflect on what they’ve learned.

Create a High-Level Outline

As you wrap up your brainstorm, your goal should be to translate ideas into a tangible output. This should include something that can be handed off to your internal team or to a custom training development partner like us. That output doesn’t have to be a fully developed storyboard. A high-level outline or list of agreed-upon concepts is more than enough to get things moving.

For example, a simple outline might include:

• An engaging introduction featuring a short video message from leadership

• A scenario-based learning activity based on real job challenges

• New interactions that allow learners to practice tasks or solve problems

• Knowledge checks sprinkled throughout with immediate, constructive feedback

• A set of follow-up reinforcement tools, such as downloadable job aids and scheduled reminder messages

• Optional social elements, such as discussion boards, action plans, or collaborative reflection questions learners complete with peers or mentors

Having a rough structure based on your brainstorm gives you a solid foundation to move into storyboarding, design, and development. It also gives stakeholders something concrete to review, giving you better alignment among your teams and faster course update approvals.

Refreshing a course doesn’t always require a complete overhaul. Sometimes, it just takes the right questions and a willingness to explore a few new possibilities. Let us know if you’d like additional guidance to make the most of brainstorming with your team. We’ve helped guide plenty of clients through exactly that conversation. You can email us at info@mnalearning.com or call us at 480-203-9373.