Some recent tweets in the series:

• Ask your SME, “What are the 3 most common mistakes people make?” Turn them into branching scenarios.
• Using a story? What challenge is your character facing? Make them suffer!
• Are you solving a performance problem, or are you just turning information into a course?
• What are you creating to support your course? Job aids? Guidance for managers? Follow-up discussion? Additional tips in emails?
• Teaching a complex procedure? Course: How to use the job aids. Job aids: Everything else.
• What compelling scenario can you use to start your course? P.S. “A new employee is wondering…” isn’t compelling.
• Have your learners finish an almost-completed problem, then take away support in stages until they’re flying solo.
• What do you really want? “Describe the Heimlich maneuver” or “Save lives?” Don’t stop at declarative knowledge.
• How can you turn a dos/don’ts list into something more memorable? Try short scenarios that show the results; have learners draw the conclusion.

I use the #IDideas hashtag, and other people sometimes chime in with their own ideas. You can see past ideas here.

Image © iStockPhoto: mattjeacock

The same thing can happen to your course. If you don’t set any boundaries and try to cover everything for everybody, you end up with a stressed-out course that can’t do anything for anybody.

Just say no

It’s fun to say “no.” Try it!

• “I’m sorry, but we can’t teach novices and experts simultaneously. We need to pick one or the other.”
   
• “Let’s focus on people who need to do X in situation Y. If we try to reach ‘everyone who’s interested in X,’ we’ll just create an information dump.”
   
• “Since widget sniffers and widget snarfers have very different jobs, we should create a separate module for each role.”

No one wants a lukewarm experience

An entrepreneur was convinced he had a great idea. “Some people like hot tea, and other people like cold tea,” he said. “Let’s sell lukewarm tea and dominate both markets!”

Is your course lukewarm?

Image © iStockPhoto: BijoyVerghese

We’ll apply action mapping to a compliance training example and discuss how it helps with other types of materials as well. You’ll see how the approach can help you:

• Pinpoint the business improvement that your materials will help create
• Identify what people need to do in the real world to create that improvement
• Brainstorm compelling online activities that help people practice those real-world actions
• Identify what information should go into the course, what should go into job aids, and what should be cut

This workshop covers the same instructional design approach as the Baton Rouge workshop that you can see here, but we’ll use a compliance example and put more emphasis on tying job aids to the course.

In these workshops I ask for lots of ideas, so come prepared to join the chat!

It’s about 45 minutes long and shows how to use action mapping to quickly identify which content and activities will be most useful.

The webinar shows how to:

• Choose a goal that leads to a measurable business improvement
• Brainstorm realistic activities that help learners apply their new knowledge on the job
• Identify what content really needs to be included—and what can be cut
• Decide what should information should go in a course and what should go in a job aid

You can also download a PDF of the slides, but they don’t make a lot of sense on their own.

I’ll publicize future webinars in this blog and through my Twitter account. I didn’t announce this one because it was my first time flying solo as both a presenter and moderator in Elluminate.

It shows five decisions you can make that will help you save money and create more memorable elearning. It’s split into five short videos for easy idea-snacking and to meet the restrictions of YouTube.

Highlights include a matrix that helps you decide if training will solve the problem (part 2) and an example of a storyboard that emphasizes activities, not information (part 5).

Here’s the first part.

These links go to YouTube:

Part 1

• Super-quick overview of action mapping
• “Awareness” and “tracking” aren’t good reasons to create a course

Part 2

• Handy matrix to help you answer, “Why aren’t people doing what we need them to do?”
• Will a course really solve the problem?
• Example of a multiple-choice question and feedback that simulate the real world

Part 3

• Put the information in the real world, not the course
• Example of an activity that points to job aids in the challenge and feedback

Part 4

• Create a series of activities, not info screens
• Example of an activity that points to external info and makes learners think independently
• Start with an activity, not information

Part 5

• Example of a brainstorming storyboard that puts activities first
• Summary of the main points

The five ways to save:

1. Don’t create a course unless it’s really necessary and useful.
2. Write activities in which a character faces a realistic challenge.
3. Put the information outside the course.
4. Use the course to show how to use the job aids.
5. Let the activities, not the content, drive the design.

The presentation was my part of the “Value for Money” event organized by the UK eLearning Network on May 14. It’s actually a backup recording made before the event, to be used if internet trouble prevented me from speaking live.

Since the presentation was intended for people at an elearning event, it assumes that viewers want (or are required!) to create elearning. Of course, there are many other ways to solve a performance problem, and elearning is just one of them.

• The one powerful change that will make our elearning a lot more effective
• A quick demo of action mapping
• A fun example of the type of information that should go in job aids
• How to get people to stop telling you, “Turn this information into a course”

To see a bigger version on YouTube, click the movie when it’s playing. Can’t access YouTube? Here’s a Flash version.

To practice steering your client away from an information dump, you might try this challenge.

I gave this presentation a couple of weeks ago at the “Fresh Look at Instructional Design” session with Patrick Dunn and Clive Shepherd, sponsored by the Elearning Network and ALT. You can see Patrick’s presentation in his blog, and you can see the whole Elluminate recording, including a lively chat and lots of questions, here.

P.S. to email readers: If you’ve subscribed to this blog through email, you’ve probably noticed that the service that delivers it to your mailbox has delivered a bundle of posts the last two times. I’m sorry about that, and if it happens with this post, I’ll switch you over to a better system. You won’t need to do anything. If your In box is getting too cluttered with blogs, consider subscribing to them through a feed reader instead of email. To find out how, see this fun video.

That’s the challenge behind “Connect with Haji Kamal,” a decision-making scenario that my cool client Kinection and I developed for the US Army. The online scenario is the homework part of a lesson plan that includes in-class discussion about how to build rapport across cultures. It’s part of a much larger effort in the Army to strengthen soldiers’ cross-cultural and peacekeeping skills.

Turn on your speakers and give it a spin, and then come back here if you’re interested in the design decisions behind the activity.

The goals

The activity is designed to be completed as homework before a culture class, and it includes a facilitator guide with debrief questions. Our goals were to model specific rapport-building behaviors and inspire class discussion.

To follow the “good” paths, you need to see things from Haji Kamal’s point of view, show respect and patience, and otherwise apply cross-cultural skills that will be discussed in class. You end up on less successful branches by making more ethnocentric choices.

Complex branching

Our original content was a short description of a real-life discussion between a soldier and Pashtun leader. We added enough twists to end up with 12 paths through the material, using a flowchart to keep track of everything.

The paths cross at several points, so usually one bad choice doesn’t doom you to a bad ending.

The debating squad leaders

The debate between two characters has its roots in classroom scenarios that we developed. During tests of those scenarios, we found that requiring participants to defend each option got them more deeply involved. The debate also simulates the kind of thinking that soldiers need to do in the field to challenge their cultural assumptions.

For this scenario, the debate also replicates real life — often a sergeant asks squad leaders for their ideas and then advises the lieutenant. To make the player think independently, we also included an undebated option.

To make sure the story and arguments were believable, we ran a classroom debate version of the scenario with a group from our target audience. We collected their arguments for each option and then wrote the script for the online version.

Minimal media

In focus groups about their training preferences, soldiers made clear that they prefer video. However, that wasn’t in our budget or timeline, so we went with the soldiers’ second best, graphic novel illustration. The images are comic-ified photos.

We used audio for the debating squad leaders because their arguments were core to the game. The lieutenant and Haji Kamal are limited to silent dialog bubbles mainly to avoid the challenge of providing audio for Haji Kamal, who in real life wouldn’t speak English. Our audience members are sticklers for authenticity, so the best solution would have been to have the Haji speak in Pashto and display his dialog bubble in English, but that would add a distracting layer of complexity.

We kept animation to a minimum for the same reason — we wanted players to focus on the ideas and story.

Experimental surprises

At two decision points, we tried different twists:

• Rogue lieutenant: At one point on a mediocre path, the LT ignores what you recommend (no matter what it is) and says his own line. Unfortunately, it’s not a good line. You have to do damage control to get back on a decent path — just like in real life.
• Defend your choice: At another point, the LT asks you why he should say what you’ve recommended. Pick a good defense, and you go down a good path. A weak defense sends you down a mediocre path. This adds a layer of complexity to the branching that could get seriously challenging for the designers and developers, but it could also be used to make players think more deeply about their choices and defend them in ways that are most persuasive to someone from the lieutenant’s background.

Learner feedback

The game and its accompanying facilitator guide were tested by soldiers in a culture class at Fort Huachuca NCOA. It looks like the activity met our goal of inspiring discussion: 70% of the players said that they were looking forward to discussing the game in class the next day, and instructors reported that the activity “prompted the majority of the discussion” and encouraged soldiers to share their own experiences.

The activity will be part of a larger toolkit for military educators. The toolkit includes more decision-making scenarios in several formats, all of them designed to help soldiers practice specific cross-cultural capabilities.

Design time required

A scenario of this length and complexity takes me about 20-40 hours to plot and write. That’s the time I need after the goals have been identified, we know what the learners need to do in the real world, we understand the mistakes they commonly make, and the SME has provided at least the germ of a realistic story. It doesn’t include project management time, audience testing, audio and graphics sourcing, Flash development, QA, etc., and it assumes that reviewers don’t make major changes.

That’s a lot more time than it would take to throw together a slideshow on “Key Concepts in Rapport Building: Afghanistan,” but we like to think the resulting activity is more memorable and more likely to change behavior.

In an ideal world, instructional designers could spend our limited time on immersive activities that have a big potential impact, and all those Flashified information dumps could instead be cheap PDFs or intranet pages.

What do you think? Have your say in the comments section.

April 19: Patrick Dunn and I will take a fresh look at instructional design with Clive Shepherd at 12 noon UK time (convert to your time). “Both Cathy and Patrick are outspoken critics of mainstream e-learning content design and are leading champions in the movement for more creative and engaging solutions.” Join the revolution! Sponsored by the UK eLearning Network and ALT.

On site

London, May 14: Value for money elearning solutions, Holborn Bars. My message: It’s the design, not the technology. Appropriately, I’ll be participating online. Organized by the UK eLearning Network.

More to come

In the next few months, I’ll be giving Action Mapping virtual workshops for some ASTD chapters. I’ll post details as they’re available. And if you want a hands-on workshop of your own, consider setting up a custom seminar.

Everyone knows that in any relationship, it’s the other person who needs to change. So let’s change your SME.

1. Read what they gave you.

Before you do anything else, read all 217 slides. Respect the effort that the SME has put into their work and try to understand what they wrote. And make a note for future projects: Don’t let SMEs create PowerPoints. Ask them for an informal brain dump instead, or an interview, or any other format that they won’t put so much work into.

2. Involve them from the beginning

If you use Action Mapping, include the SME in the very first discussions with your client, when you identify the goal. Ask the SME to help answer these questions:

• Why does this course (or project) need to exist?
• What would happen if we didn’t create the course? How much could that cost the company?
• What is the one clear change we want to see happen as a result of our course?
• How can we tell if the change has occurred? How can we measure it?

3. Ask them to help identify what people need to do
and why they aren’t doing it

Once the SME agrees with the business goal of the course, ask them to help you identify what people need to do on their jobs to reach that goal.

Often, the SME is too close to the process to see it from the bird’s-eye view that you need. Some questions that might help:

• Which people are involved in the process or action?
• How would you describe each person’s role to a 10-year-old?
• Could you walk me through the basic process from beginning to end?
• What would happen if Person X didn’t do their part?
• Is this step optional, or is it required to reach our goal?
• What’s a common mistake at this point?
• What information or support do people have? Do they use it? If not, why not?
• What pressures are people under?
• Are people rewarded if they achieve the performance we need? How?

4. Ask them to help brainstorm activities and limit information

For each on-the-job action that you want your materials to teach, ask the SME to help you think of an online activity that gives learners a chance to practice the action (not recognize facts).

Often, it’s easier for SMEs to respond to your ideas first, before coming up with their own. So sketch a sacrificial prototype activity that you know won’t be quite right, and show it to the SME. They’ll be happy to correct you, and that might be all the momentum they need to begin offering their own ideas.

If your SME keeps suggesting fact checks instead of more realistic decision-making activities, you might try the following questions:

• If a person doesn’t know that fact, what do they do wrong on the job? How would that affect our goal?
• How could you tell by watching me do my job that I know that bit of information?
• What mistakes do new people make?
• What mistakes do people make when they get over-confident?

This helps remind the SME that the only information that should go into the material is the info that’s required to perform the activities. If the SME wants to add more information, ask them to identify the activity for which it’s vital.

This last phase can be challenging for the SME, because you’ll be chopping information that they cherish. If the chopping gets too painful for them, consider creating an optional place for the “nice to know” information and linking to it in the course.

For more ideas on working with SMEs, check these out:

• Julie Dirksen’s first ID Webcomic: the SME just wants to help!
• Tips on handling SMEs by Jon Aleckson
• Working with subject matter experts. Great point: “Your challenge is to honor their passion without compromising the instructional effectiveness of your program.”
• Normal Lamont’s fun slide show, The SME Test (brace yourself for some brain surgery)

What did I miss?

How have you created good partnerships with SMEs? What questions do you ask to get the kind of information and activity ideas that you need?

David Anderson has linked to the script of an online course that the IRS uses to train its employees. It was released during a Freedom of Information Act case and posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As David points out, the script uses the common tell-then-test approach.

What could they have done differently?

Here’s the script, thanks to the EFF. You’ll see that it’s clearly written and organized, which is great.

Like most elearning, it presents a lot of information and then quickly tests our understanding of that info. It also uses some interesting examples from real life.

The course is a perfectly capable information presentation. But since my tax dollars helped pay for it, I can’t help wishing they had done it differently. So let’s give the IRS some friendly suggestions.

What would happen if we changed the objectives?

The IRS course has these objectives:

• Identify internet research do’s and don’ts
• Identify how to locate relevant taxpayer information with internet searches
• Identify additional internet research tools

If you’ve spent more than 5 seconds with Action Mapping or the Elearning Blueprint, you’ll easily predict what I’m about to say. The objectives need describe action, not knowledge. Do we really want employees to passively “identify” what they should do, or do we want them to actually do it?

When we start out with “identify” objectives, our activities tend to become “identify” activities — typically, multiple-choice questions that ask learners to recognize something they just read. They test learners’ short-term memory, not their ability to use the new information on the job.

Imagine how the course might have turned out if all stakeholders had agreed to an objective like “Find accurate online information about a taxpayer without violating privacy laws.” The activities that would naturally flow from that objective would be realistic simulations of what the employees need to do each day on the job.

How could scenarios help?

The course hints at some interesting examples — a taxpayer reposted a web site he was supposed to have shut down, officers of a corporation were dodging responsibility for taxes, and a restaurant owner tried to hide online businesses. However, these are presented as isolated examples, usually after a presentation of more abstract information.

What if the IRS had elevated those examples to decision-making scenarios, and used them to replace the “knowledge check” mini-quizzes?

For example, instead of asking, “What is the best way to save multiple pages of a web site?” the designers could present a scenario in which an IRS employee has found a taxpayer’s illegal web site and wants to save it before the taxpayer can pull it offline. What should the employee do?

Ideally, the IRS would have a fake website to practice on, and the learner would actually go to that site and save its pages. But even a decision-making scenario in which the learner chooses actions for a fictional employee would be more effective than a basic knowledge check because it would more closely simulate what the learner does on the job.

What info should go in the course, and where?

The course includes lots of how-to information that would benefit from screen shots and explicit steps (“On the advanced search screen, enter the taxpayer’s name…”). There’s so much how-to info that learners might want to look it up again — which means that the procedures are probably better off in a job aid than the course.

I’d suggest offloading a lot of the how-to information to a few easily found pages on the intranet, and using the course to teach employees how to use those job aids.

Then, once they’ve put together the job aids, the designers could make the course seem more like a stream of interesting activities.

Instead of this:

They could do this:

Each activity could be a decision-making scenario based on a realistic case. The learners would use the job aids to complete the activities, which simulates what they’ll be doing on the job. Because this approach is more realistic and “applied,” it’s more likely to change real-world behavior.

What do you think?

Tell the IRS what to do! How do you think they should change their course to make it more memorable and more likely to affect behavior on the job?