We refuse to pretend that training is always the answer. When a client says, “We need training,” we don’t say, “Sure! Would you like fries with that?” Instead, we start asking questions.

We require clients to set a measurable goal. We help each client identify exactly how the organization’s performance is suffering and how our project will measurably, observably, provably improve that performance, because we’re here to make a difference, not to put 97,000 PowerPoint slides online.

We rejoice in the power of needs assessment. Oh needs assessment, you faithful but tragically neglected guardian of time, money, and learners’ souls, we welcome you back into our profession and with eager minds ask you for each and every project, “What do people need to do?” and “Why aren’t they doing it?”

We advocate for the rights of the humble job aid, email, and PDF. If the problem is caused by a simple lack of information, we show the client how a nimble solution placed in the workflow can avoid the expense and tragedy of a 107-slide presentation pointlessly read aloud by a talking avatar whose lips really move.

We design activities, not information. When instruction is part of the solution, we don’t preach or present to learners. Instead, we let them practice what they need to do and draw conclusions from that experience like the grownups they are, and for that reason we rock scenarios.

We stand firm in our belief that learners have brains and should be allowed to use them. We fiercely protect our learners’ time, minds, and souls from clients’ whims, information dumps, patronizing narration, “learning styles,” office politics, “motivational” training, SMEs’ favorite details, locked navigation, “awareness,” feeble multiple-choice questions, “knowledge transfer,” “knowledge checks,” academic learning objectives, flying bullet points, and alien abductions.

We are legion! Here are just a few of our noble warriors, in no order whatsoever.

• Julie Dirksen: her book Design For How People Learn and her blog
• Tom Gram’s blog, including the series on Practice and the Development of Expertise
• Dave Ferguson’s examples and analyses of job aids
• Clark Quinn: “Yes, You Do Have to Change“
• Dick Handshaw on proactive consulting
• Marc Rosenberg: “The Fall and Rise of Performance Support“
• Allison Rossett’s book Job Aids and Performance Support
• Dana Gaines Robinson and James Robinson: Performance Consulting: A Practical Guide for HR and Learning Professionals
• Will Thalheimer’s research-to-practice reports
• Ruth Clark’s work, such as Elearning and the Science of Instruction

There are countless more brave warriors helping us rise up from oppression and cry, “Doormats? Never again!” Please let us know about your favorites in the comments.

In the activity, you’ll learn the ports of a laptop and apply your knowledge in a realistic situation. Go try it, and then come back here for some discussion.

A “traditional” course wouldn’t have let us explore the laptop. Instead, we’d have to sit through several slides of presentation that explained each port whether we already knew it or not.

After we’ve explored as much or as little as we want, we’re faced with a realistic situation — and a person who speaks directly to us. It’s not “Help Bob set up his laptop,” it’s the higher-pressure “Help me.” The time limit adds some more pressure and a bit of a game element.

Finally, when we make a choice, we see the realistic result of that choice, not a patronizing “correct!” or “incorrect.”

You can see more examples on this page of the SmartBuilder site. I use this activity and many others as examples in my instructional design workshops.

Do you get resistance to this type of activity from your stakeholders? If so, what arguments have you used to convince them that learners should be free to skip things they already know and draw conclusions from their experiences? Please share any tips you have in the comments.

Hey, Australia! I’m coming your way

I’ll be giving a one-day version of Instructional design for business results in Sydney on Nov. 13 as part of the Learning@Work conference (details to come). I’ll also be available to give workshops at your site in Australia or New Zealand between Nov. 14 and 30, so if you’d like to set something up, please let me know.

• Training is rarely the solution for low motivation
• When training could help, it’s best to let learners become motivated through experience (decision-making scenarios) rather than preaching at them (presentations)

First, you might want to download the revamped flowchart. Here’s how the motivation bit looks now:

I’ve added a new loop that sends you back to the main analysis node because low motivation is usually a side effect, not a core problem. It’s often caused by one of the other three problems in the chart.

• Environment: High pressure, a poorly managed organizational change, user-hostile software, heavy-handed management … these can all lead to low motivation. Training is unlikely to help, unless you can train away the environmental problem, such as by improving managers’ skills.
• Knowledge: If the employees who do the data-entry drudgery for the TPS reports don’t know the painful results of their screwups, they’ll be less motivated to avoid errors. For example, we could show them that a rejected TPS record can mean that a client doesn’t get the check she needs to buy medication. If this is included in the results of a branching scenario that we’re also using to practice entering TPS records, then I’d be willing to call it training. However, if it’s just a finger-wagging exhortation divorced from any application, it’s not training in my book.
• Skills: If I don’t have the skill to quickly and painlessly parametize widgets, I will dislike having to parametize widgets. Give me training!

When low motivation can’t be blamed on anything else

I’ve heard several reports of “lazy” workers. “They just don’t want to do it,” the client says. “They don’t care.”

I’d still be tempted to look for external causes of their “laziness.” If we really can’t find a good reason, then managers or HR might need to step in.

If all of the above are impossible for some reason, then we could make an attempt like the one described under “knowledge” above: Create realistic scenarios that have them practice the skills that they’re doing half-heartedly and have the results show the effects of skipping steps or making errors. This can be tricky to do, since in a training situation the slackers are going to be on better behavior.

The traditional “training” solution to low motivation is to sit “learners” down in front of a presentation that tells them why they need to get on the ball, or to show them a video of a leader pontificating about how important it all is. This isn’t “training” in my increasingly persnickety definition — it’s a one-way presentation that involves zero application. It’s not an “activity” in the sense that I’m using in the flowchart.

Why do I limit motivating activities to “realistic simulations?”

Why not a multiple-choice fact check about the number of people who go without medication as a result of TPS errors? How about a drag-and-drop that ranks the importance of well-parametized widgets compared to other types of widgets?

I suggest avoiding these activities because they’re really just checks of short-term memory: “Can you remember the number 67 from the previous screen?”

What’s more important is whether learners can make the appropriate decisions in realistic situations. And what’s most memorable is when we make the same decision we usually make in real life but this time we see the consequences that are usually out of sight.

What do you think? Am I being too hardcore? Can fact checks be motivating? Or on the other hand, is it useless to try to affect motivation through any kind of training? Please add your thoughts to the comments.

 

First, download the flowchart. Then consider watching the following 8-minute video, which walks you through a short discussion with a client, showing you how some quick questions can save you days of unnecessary training development.

Blurry? Click the little gear and choose HD. Not allowed to watch YouTube? Here’s the video on Vimeo.

What happens after the video?

So far, thanks to our questions, the client has identified ways to:

• Make important reference information always up to date and available at the point of need
• Make the rules for flagging easy to scan and apply at the point of need

These are permanent workflow improvements that avoid the need for training. At this point, the only training we’re going to develop is a very compact activity on identifying last names. It could probably be posted on the intranet with a link sent to everyone through email.

If we hadn’t used the flowchart and had simply obeyed our client’s request for training, we’d spend a lot more time developing something a lot less useful. We’d probably create an online course that starts with “Welcome to the course on completing TPS records.” We’d list objectives like, “At the completion of this course, you will be able to enter the correct XR code…” We’d probably “motivate” the learners by talking about the importance of completing the record properly and describing the costs of having our records rejected.

Then we’d tell people what they already know — that they have to log in to the annoying server to see the XR codes. We’d probably walk them through it “to make sure everyone knows how” and lecture them on the importance of using the updated sheet.

To “teach” the rules for flagging records, we’d probably display a chart of rules, give some examples, and then quiz the learners on whether they can remember the information that they saw five seconds ago and which they will forget by tomorrow if not later today. Finally, we’d include a little activity to help them practice identifying last names.

Within a month, we’d discover that people are still printing out the XR code sheet and failing to flag records properly.

Instead, just by asking some questions, we’ve helped the client identify permanent improvements, and we’ve freed up enough time to do a good job on the little name activity. The time that we don’t spend on creating unnecessary training becomes time we can invest on designing much higher quality activities.

What do you think? What did I miss? When the flowchart is all it can be, I’ll put it in the Elearning Blueprint, which this summer I hope to expand into more of a training blueprint.

As you hand over your money, a disembodied voice suddenly booms from the clouds above. “Incorrect!” it intones. “Unrefrigerated sushi can harbor zygodread, which can cause severe vomiting. You should never assume that a cooler at a county fair contains ice. It’s always safer to buy hot food that’s cooked in your presence, such as the pork skins. Try again.”

You’ve just met The Omniscient One. It’s the personality-free know-it-all that drones through most elearning. When it intrudes into decision-making scenarios, it sucks the life out of our stories and the brains out of our learners.

“I know everything, and you have no brain”

The Omniscient One (the OO to its friends) is a big fan of telling feedback, because it knows everything. It not only tells us whether it approves of our choice, it also explains exactly how we have sinned and what we must do to atone. Like the folks in your legal department, it believes that no adult can be trusted to draw even the simplest conclusion on his or her own.

An alternative: show the result

In the real world, we’d remember the sushi lesson best if we ate the sushi and then spent three very unpleasant days. In elearning, you could call this showing feedback because, well, the elearning shows (or at least describes) the results. The feedback isn’t a pronouncement from on high but is instead something like this:

Six hours after you eat the sushi, you begin vomiting. Three days later, you finally stop. Your doctor explains that the sushi was probably poorly refrigerated and contained zygodread. “You should have bought something hot that was cooked right in front of you,” he says as he hands you the prescription for an expensive antibiotic. “Was there any pork skin? I always buy that if it comes right out of the fryer.”

We’ve described the result in a memorable way. We’ve even snuck in some telling feedback, but it’s coming from a person who actually has a role in the story that gives them the right to lecture us, not a preachy disembodied voice.

With this small change, we’re letting people learn from somewhat realistic experience, and the more realistic and vivid we can make the experience, the more likely they are to remember it.

What about correct choices?

Let’s say that instead of choosing the sushi, you go directly to the pork skins. How will you learn that you made the right choice if the Omniscient One doesn’t tell you? Let’s compare approaches.

Telling feedback: Correct. The pork skins are less likely to give you food poisoning because they’re hot and are cooked in front of you. The sushi might not be properly refrigerated and could harbor zygodread.

Showing feedback: While you enjoy your hot, crispy pork skins, you hear a young woman tell her friend, “There’s no way I’m buying that sushi again! Last year there wasn’t ice in the cooler, and the sushi was full of zygodread! I’ve never been so sick in my life!”

Here’s another example. The learner has just tried to stop a (fictional) speeding forklift by pressing the red button on its steering wheel.

Telling feedback: Incorrect. The red button on the steering wheel sounds the horn.

Showing feedback: The forklift sounds a cheery “toot!” as it continues to speed toward the plate-glass window.

Which are you more likely to remember?

But what if a stakeholder doesn’t trust our learners?

If you try to use “showing” feedback, a stakeholder is likely to worry that people won’t be able to draw conclusions. They’ll insist on telling learners exactly what is right and what is wrong and why. You could try proving to this person that learners can think for themselves by giving some prototyped activities to actual learners and then having them explain to the stakeholder what they’ve concluded from the activities.

Or, you could give up and include the telling feedback, but only for the correct answers. It could work like this:

1. The learner makes a sub-optimal choice and sees the unfortunate result, with no explanation from the Omniscient One. They’re required to try again until they make the correct choice.

2. On their second try, the learner makes the best choice. They see the happy result, and then the Omniscient One chimes in to explain why it was the best choice and what was wrong with all the other choices.

If you use this approach, everyone will first see realistic results and draw their own conclusions, and then they’ll have these conclusions confirmed (or maybe corrected) by the telling feedback. I tend to resist this approach because it seems redundant, but it’s useful because it reassures stakeholders and the legal department.

In Leaving Addie for SAM: An Agile Model for Developing the Best Learning Experiences, Michael Allen and Richard Sites refer to the two types of feedback as consequences and judgments. They suggest that if you use judgments, you should delay them. “Judgments offered too quickly cheat learners of the opportunity to determine for themselves if they are making good choices,” they write. I’m also concerned that instant judgments can be seen by learners as an insult to their intelligence and could turn them into resentful “just-click-it-to-get-it-done” foes of elearning.

Let them think for themselves, if only for a few seconds!

Which of the following should you do next?

      a) Clear your schedule and open your PowerPoint converter software.
      b) Ask the client some questions.

If you want to avoid cranking out yet another information dump, you’ll ask questions. The questions will be designed to:

1. Uncover the client’s business goal — discover how the project will measurably change the organization’s performance.
2. Identify what people need to do on the job with their “awareness” and why they aren’t doing it.

The answers to these questions will help you design realistic, challenging activities that help learners apply the policy and improve the organization’s performance.

1. Uncover the goal

To find out how your project will improve the organization’s performance, try asking questions like these:

• How do you know that people aren’t already aware of the policy?
• How is that lack of awareness affecting the performance or earnings of the organization?
• What are you currently measuring that could be affected by awareness of the policy? (sales, lawsuits, etc.)
• How will that measure improve when everyone is aware of the policy?

For example, a client might say that they want to increase awareness of the information security policy. To the above questions, they might answer:

• “We know people aren’t aware of the policy because we’ve had some leaks of confidential information about clients and employees.”
• “I guess this affects our earnings as a business — it’s expensive when someone sues us, and sales could go down if customers decide they can’t trust us.”
• “I think the information security people can tell us how many leaks they’ve seen in the last year.”
• “When everyone is aware of the policy, we should have fewer leaks.”

Ideally, you and the client will identify a specific change, such as, “Reduce information leaks 30% by 2014.” “Know” or “understand” don’t fit here; we’re looking for observable results.

By identifying a measurable change, you aren’t claiming that your course will single-handedly achieve this change. You’re saying that your materials will be designed to contribute in an observable way to the change, which very likely will have non-training components as well. And, importantly, you’re breaking your client’s likely obsession with information and making them think instead about results.

2A. Uncover what they need to DO

Once you’ve gotten the client to identify a measurable goal, help them identify what people need to do to reach it. Enlist the help of a subject matter expert who’s familiar with how people are currently doing their jobs.

You might try asking questions like these:

• What are people doing wrong now, or failing to do?
• What are the most common mistakes?
• What are the most egregious mistakes?
• What do people need to do instead of what they’re doing now?

When you ask, “What do people need to do?” often the client will say, “They just need to follow the policy!” But to write meaningful activities, you need more specific job tasks, such as, “They need to encrypt every email that contains a client’s name and account number.” Help the client or SME get this specific and prioritize the tasks to identify the most common and serious mistakes.

2B. Figure out why they aren’t doing it

While you’re talking about specific tasks, it’s a good idea to ask why people aren’t doing that task or why they’re doing it wrong. Is the problem really a lack of awareness?

You can ask your client or SME to consider how the four aspects shown in this matrix affect people’s performance of the task.

For example, if people aren’t encrypting documents that they should encrypt, is it because they aren’t aware of the rule? This would put the problem in the “knowledge” quadrant.

Or are they skipping encryption because the process is cumbersome and often results in a bizarre error message, so people in a hurry decide it isn’t important enough? This would make environment and motivation more important and could inspire improvements to the encryption software.

Few performance problems are caused purely by lack of knowledge or skills. Training is rarely a complete solution. A more complete solution often includes process or software improvements, clearer direction from managers, more fulfilling rewards for good performance, or something as simple as a job aid for information that doesn’t need to be memorized.

What’s next?

By taking a couple of hours to ask these questions, you’ve gotten the information you need to design contextual, challenging activities that help learners practice applying what they’re supposed to be “aware” of.

Now, instead of presenting the policy in a bunch of information screens, you’ll be able to “test, then tell”: you can first challenge the learners with a realistic decision like those they make on the job, and then use the consequences to reveal the necessary information.

You’ve also encouraged the client to focus on observable results, and you’ve gotten them thinking in terms of actions, not information. As a result, they’ll be less likely to insist on an information dump. Your client will be eager to see (and needs to see!) quick prototypes of the activities so they understand how unlike a presentation your materials will be.

We’ve just covered the first two steps of action mapping, my streamlined, visual approach to instructional design.

More to come

I’m blowing the dust off this blog, so you’ll be seeing more frequent posts. The next will look at common errors in designing scenarios.

I’ve also reorganized the content to make sure it all relates to the instructional design approach that I teach through my workshops. Check out my visual organizer to see the topics covered in the blog and my seminars.

This post also appears in the Allen Interactions blog, where you’ll find lots of great design ideas and inspiration.

Sometimes the best way to convince a client is to show them through examples. Present one of their quiz questions three ways, so the client can see for themselves the deeper thought required by a scenario-style question.

Here’s an example. What kind of thinking is required by each type of question?

1. Quiz question

Which of the following is the most secure way to carry sensitive data?

    A. On a laptop

    B. On a USB drive chained to your wrist

    C. On a CD titled “The Chipmunks Sing Disco Duck”

Feedback for incorrect answer: Incorrect. Try again.

2. Mini-scenario with correct/incorrect feedback

Bob wants to work on the salary data at home. He has a long commute on a train. How should he carry the data with him?

    A. On his laptop

    B. On a USB drive chained to his wrist

    C. On a CD titled “The Chipmunks Sing Disco Duck”

Feedback for incorrect answer: Incorrect. Try again.

3. Mini-scenario with “showing” feedback

Bob wants to work on the salary data at home. He has a long commute on a train. How should he carry the data with him?

    A. On his laptop

    B. On a USB drive chained to his wrist

    C. On a CD titled “The Chipmunks Sing Disco Duck”

Feedback for A: Bob falls asleep during the commute, and a thief steals his laptop and sells the data. Try again.

Feedback for B: Bob falls asleep during the commute. A thief sits next to him, plugs his USB drive into his laptop while Bob is unconscious, and later sells the data. Try again.

Feedback for C: Bob falls asleep during the commute, and a thief steals all his belongings. The thief breaks the CD into pieces in disgust and no one ever sees the data. This is the best choice.

Version 1, the quiz question, asks learners to regurgitate a fact with no context.

Version 2 puts the facts into a realistic context but directly tells the learner when they’ve made an incorrect choice.

Version 3 includes context and lets learners conclude on their own from the results that they’ve made an incorrect choice. The results also show why that choice wasn’t the best one.

We could include “telling” explanation in the feedback for version 2, such as, “Incorrect. A laptop is appealing to thieves and is likely to be stolen.” But that type of feedback abandons Bob on the train and drags the learner into the bland world of abstraction, plus it directly tells the learner that they screwed up.

Instead, the “showing” feedback of version 3 both keeps the feedback in the context of the question and requires slightly more thinking from the learner. It also emulates the way we learn in the real world — from experience, not from a disembodied voice that immediately tells us “incorrect.”

But quizzy questions take less time to write!

Yes, it’s quicker to crank out a bunch of abstract fact checks. Writing any type of scenario takes a little longer and requires you to work closely with your subject matter experts to make sure everything is accurate and realistic.

However, as I hope you can see from our silly example, a scenario-style question that puts the challenge into context and shows the result of each decision requires learners to think a little more deeply and independently. This at least makes your elearning more engaging and could lead to better transfer on the job.

New forum and resources

I’ve added a forum to the blog, to give everyone a space to talk about corporate instructional design without being tied to specific blog posts. It includes a section for critiques and kicks off with a discussion about a strong scenario for families of veterans. Please join the first critique discussion or post any questions or ideas you have in the general forum.

If you’ve been to one of my longer workshops, you’ve seen that I work from an HTML menu that links to lots of illustrations and examples. Now you can play with the menu from a two-day workshop in the resources section of the blog. It poses questions to get you thinking and links to many examples of elearning.

Image © iStockPhoto: Menno van Dijk

Action mapping makes stakeholders work together to analyze the performance problem, commit to the same measurable goal, and agree to focus on activities rather than information. This can be a big change to the typical course development workflow.

Without action mapping:

1. The client says, “I need a course.”
2. You say, “Okay.”
3. The client gives you a pile of content, the phone number of a subject matter expert (SME), and a deadline.
4. You create a detailed storyboard or script, getting information as necessary from the SME. The structure of the information determines the structure of the course.
5. The client and SME approve the script and you go into production.
6. The course is made available and your job is done.

Using action mapping:

1. The client says, “I need a course.”
2. You say, “Great. Let’s get together to make sure we all understand what you want the course to accomplish.”
3. You schedule a two-hour meeting in a space with a whiteboard or in a virtual meeting room where you can share a mind-mapping screen. You include the client, at least one subject matter expert, and possibly others from the table below.
4. In that meeting, you identify your business goal and how you’ll measure success. You also identify the behaviors needed to reach that goal.
5. As a group, you analyze why the behaviors aren’t happening, confirm that training will actually solve the problem, and identify how the training will be supported by managers, workplace changes, and other improvements.
6. After the meeting, you work with the SME and possibly others to brainstorm and prototype practice activities for each behavior needed to reach the goal. Ideally, you test the prototypes on learners.
7. You get approval for the prototypes from the client.
8. You work with the SME and possibly others to identify the minimum information necessary to complete each activity and decide how it should be provided.
9. You create a storyboard or script. The content has already been identified in the action map; you’re just filling in the details and arranging the material. The activities determine the organization of the course.
10. The client and SME approve the script and you go into production.
11. Once the material is being used by learners, you or the client begins measuring its impact, and you revise it as necessary.

The above list makes it look like action mapping takes longer, and it will take longer if you’re not doing much analysis now. However, the rest of the process can actually go more quickly than conventional course design. You save time by:

• Not creating a course when it isn’t necessary or won’t help
• Addressing only the specific behaviors that need to change
• Excluding unnecessary information
• Taking advantage of easily updated job aids
• Designing activities that test multiple areas of knowledge at once
• Creating tightly focused materials that don’t waste learners’ time

Who should be included?

The table below lists the four steps of action mapping and identifies who you might consider including at each step. The first two steps can often be covered in one two-hour meeting, if the client and SME are familiar with the learners and the performance problem.

One of the goals in action mapping is to identify what information needs to be memorized (put in the course) and what can be referenced on the job (put in job aids). Often, existing job aids are created and “owned” by someone in a different department. That person might be your SME, or they might be someone else. They need to be included in some of your planning to make sure the job aid can be used as you want, to approve any changes to it, and to offer their ideas about incorporating it into practice activities.

Step	Client	SME	Job aid owner	Learner	Graphics/Flash person
1: Set goal	Yes	Yes	Maybe	No	No
2: Identify behaviors & why they’re not happening	Yes	Yes	Maybe	No	No
3: Brainstorm practice activities	Approve prototypes	Help brainstorm or at least approve prototypes	Help brainstorm or at least approve use of job aid	Provide ideas, feedback on prototypes	Help create prototypes
4: Identify necessary info	No	Yes	Approve use of job aid or changes to it	Maybe, as tester	No

What works for you?

I’ve added the above information to the Elearning Blueprint, where it’s easy to update. So please tell me: What did I forget? What processes have worked best for you?

Also, a reminder: I’ll be leading a two-day certificate program in instructional design for elearning on Feb. 11-12 at the Training conference in Atlanta. Use code CATMN to get a $150 discount on your registration. I hope to see you there!

Now read the next paragraph.

“Assume intelligence,” Jerry Weissman tells us in Presentations in Action. “Your audience has been there, done that, and they get it.”

Contrast Weissman’s advice with what your stakeholders might be telling you, or what a small voice might be saying in your head.

• “We should tell them how to navigate the course.”
• “We should define ‘safety’ to make sure everyone knows what we mean.”
• “We should explain that they’re about to be shown a story in which a character will have to make a decision, and they’re going to make the decision for that character.”

We’re all adults here

If you’re designing for the corporate world, which is what I focus on in this blog, your learners have decades of experience figuring out what buttons do, reading text on a screen, and interpreting what’s happening to them as it happens.

Unfortunately, stakeholders might focus on the possible exception, the one person who can’t figure out that a button pointing to the right will move them forward and who will sit staring at the first screen until the lights get turned off.

A common solution is to provide optional help: a tab called “How to navigate this course,” links to definitions, and optional popup explanations like, “This is a fictional activity. You will pretend to be a person who is facing a challenge…”

A sign of a deeper problem

Unfortunately, stakeholders or small voices saying that you need to guide learners by the nose are symptoms of a deeper issue that can poison your materials, regardless of your optional help tabs.

Thanks to our experience in school, when we’re put in a “teaching” role, we make these assumptions:

Learners know nothing. Our job is to insert knowledge into their brains without considering any knowledge that might already be there.

Learners can’t be trusted. They can’t be allowed to skip what they already know, and they must be told explicitly what’s right and wrong because they can’t draw conclusions from experience or stories.

These assumptions deny the adulthood of our learners. When these assumptions shape instruction, we create boring materials that sound like a patronizing parent.

Under the weight of such disrespect, any motivation the learners might have had squirms briefly and dies.

What to do

Remind stakeholders that learners are adults: Send them to the excellent rebuttals that Geeta Bose provides in IDiot: “I’m not an idiot!”

Get everyone on your team to agree that you’re designing an experience, not information. Visit the linked page to find posts that will help you design so your learners learn from experience.

Let learners place out. Start with simulations or scenarios that require learners to make the kinds of decisions they need to make in real life. If a learner proves that they can consistently make the right decisions, let them go.

Show, don’t tell. When a learner makes a poor decision, use the feedback to show them the results of their decision so they can conclude on their own that what they did was sub-optimal. Then, if necessary, show them what they need to know — or, better, put them in an easier scenario with more help and ratchet up the difficulty more slowly.

What has worked for you? Let us know in the comments!

February elearning design certificate

I’ll be presenting a two-day workshop on elearning design at the Training conference in Atlanta on February 11-12. Use discount code CATMN to save $150 on your registration.

This approach not only keeps boring blather out of our elearning, it can also make our activities more memorable. Here’s how it could work.

Example

Let’s say we’re designing a course on needle safety for a hospital. A common approach would be to display some slides of information about dos and don’ts, and then to present a generic fact check, like, “What’s the best way to dispose of a used needle?”

Instead, we’ll plunge our learners directly into an activity that somewhat simulates real life and that includes real-life job aids. So here’s the first thing learners see in this module.

We’re tempting the learner to respond without thinking, but we’ve also given them access to more information. For example, the learner could click the first thumbnail to see the safety poster that appears in every examining room and that explains what to do with a needlestick injury.

But our sample learner thinks, “Everyone knows you pour Betadine on that kind of wound,” and they choose that without looking at any other information.

Here’s the feedback we give them.

The feedback describes the results of the learner’s choice, letting the learner conclude that they were wrong. It also includes a snippet of the safety poster, pointing out where the learner should have looked. The learner sees for themselves that they not only skipped a step, they also used the wrong washing method.

Why did we do this?

Even though the safety poster appears in every room, we suspect that people aren’t looking at it, because they’re making basic mistakes with needles. So our course not only corrects the common mistakes but repeatedly reminds learners of the job aids they should be using.

And, importantly, this approach lets us surprise learners with their own mistakes. If we first listed a bunch of rules, including “Wash needlestick injuries with soap and water,” the learner might be mildly surprised, thinking, “What, not Betadine?” But by letting the learner give Magda Hepatitis C, we’ve surprised them more vividly and, ideally, will help them remember their mistake the next time they accidentally jab themselves.

This is a very simple demonstration of how we can have learners practice using job aids. For more complex procedures, we could have learners refer to the job aid as they carry out each step, showing the results of each decision in a realistic way.

Upcoming webinar for Australasia

I’ll talk more about scenarios in a one-hour online presentation for the Elearning Network of Australasia. The event happens Tuesday, Oct. 18, at 10 AM Sydney time (convert to your local time). Join us in this Blackboard Collaborate room.