“We’d like the training rolled out as soon as possible. It’s quite a simple tool really. So, people shouldn’t have problems learning it. You shouldn’t have a problem developing the training.” Does this sound familiar?
Whenever there’s a new internal application launch, or when an existing application does not have the adoption level it should, the situation often results in a request to the training team to roll out a learning solution. With no more than a vaguely-defined set of outcomes and a roll-out date, the staff assigned to the Course Creation project goes to work. Learning effectiveness can take a knock; project constraints become the scapegoat. However, as you will read in this article, working with project constraints can lead to innovative design and development practices.
Most software application training follows a simple design. The design includes a task-oriented demonstration of the tool and allows the learner to practice using the tool in the safety of a simulated environment. From a development perspective, there are two time-consuming activities that affect the schedule — demonstrations and simulations.
With programs such as Adobe® Captivate™ and TechSmith® Camtasia Studio®, creating demonstrations is no longer a time-consuming activity. However, this does not apply to creating a simulated environment where the learner can practice safely. More often than not, this means using Adobe Flash®. The time required to create such a simulation is substantially more than that for a demonstration
You might think, so what? I have the time and the skill set in my team to develop the simulation and roll it out. But, what if the tool is evolving? Your simulations would be inaccurate, which would therefore negatively affect the shelf life of the course. In addition, internal learning teams are rarely large. As a result, they are hard-pressed for time and resources. Somehow updating a recently-launched course does not seem like an effective use of time.
This calls for an alternative design approach to training people on a new software application!
Challenges
The challenges and
design solution stated in this article are from a real-life project at Sapient™.
To understand the example, it is important to understand the high-level
structure of the company. Sapient has offices across three continents: North
America, Europe, and
In Q3 2006, one of the internal teams at Sapient, the Processes team, had developed a new proprietary application. This application was a virtual workspace that also had an advanced Web-based project planning tool. All teams would use this tool for managing their projects, but each project would have separate set-up within the tool. Therefore, most of our people would use this tool. With participants dispersed over three continents, and working from home being the norm in certain places, an online course was the only feasible and cost effective solution.
We got our marching orders: “I hope you can have this training rolled out in five weeks! It’d be great if learners can be motivated to explore the tool on their own.”
The key challenges were:
- Schedule and resources
- Stakeholder management
- Scope management
- Learner seat time
- Simulation creation
Challenge 1: Schedule and resources
Usually, an online course takes anywhere between seven and twelve weeks to produce, but completing it in five weeks was unheard of. The short project lifecycle was just one of the challenges, although it was still achievable depending on the resources we had available. In this case, as is usually true for most internal Learning teams, we could not get more people allocated to the project. To aggravate matters, no one was 100% allocated. The team consisted of a Graphic Designer, an LMS constructor and an Instructional Designer, who also doubled as a Project Manager.
Best practice note: Though it was not the case for this project, it is a good practice to partner and derive the schedule collaboratively. In addition, avoid committing before you have clarity on project scope.
Challenge 2: Stakeholder management
The Processes team created and owned the tool, and communicated all updates pertaining to the tool. Visibility into the updates was critical to success; therefore having a subject matter expert (SME) from the Processes team was a necessity.
Challenge 3: Scope management
Short timelines are still possible depending on the scope of the training — therefore, controlling the scope is essential. The audience analysis, design, and developed content all play a role in determining the scope of a course.
As the course was also for new hires, the tasks taught in the course were applicable to all, regardless of the role of the learner. The introductory course would give learners the confidence to use the features of the application that they would need every day. After completing the course, the audience also had to be confident enough to explore further and use the online help when necessary. From a design perspective, this translated to creating a course that enabled exploratory learning.
Challenge 4: Learner seat time
We also identified the learner seat
time as a key success factor. It is very common to see people put off by
courses that require more than an hour of their time. This is especially true
for places, such as
Challenge 5: Simulation creation
Typically, simulation-based tool training would follow a conventional design, which involves informing the learner about the tool (Tell) and then following it up with a task-based demonstration. The course would end with a task-based practice session. We intended to follow a similar approach in the course we were creating; it did not make sense to go against a tried-and-tested design approach. However, practice simulations are time-consuming to create.
To address such challenges, it takes effective project management in order to succeed. However, if you are working under tight constraints, project management can only do so much. In this case, given the challenges, we knew we could not meet the date. Convention had to be broken. This required an innovative design.
It’s all in the design
We looked at each challenge and soon realized that there was nothing we could do about the Schedule and Resources. They were not in our ability to change, so we focused on the other challenges.
Dealing with stakeholder management
The second challenge, Stakeholder Management, was not too much of an obstacle. We selected SMEs from the Processes team. We did not have difficulty ramping up on the tool. In addition, we had visibility into how the tool would evolve. Fortunately, after the Design workshop, we realized that none of the critical tasks screens which learners are expected to perform would evolve within the first year of launch.
Best practice note: In tools training, you should know the evolution plan for the tool as that impacts the shelf life of the course. The stakeholders would be in a good position to provide this information. If they can’t provide it, then your project should involve people who can.
Dealing with scope and learner seat time
There are two ways to look at the scope problem. Either you propose a solution that you know you can deliver, or you deliver a targeted solution that addresses the needs. The former approach will probably not hit the nail on the head. The latter has more to do with creating highly-focused learning objectives with the help of SMEs.
After a few rounds of SME interviews, we defined four objectives:
- Appreciate the need for a virtual workspace
- Access the tool
- Recognize features of the tool that facilitate completion of daily tasks
- Interpret an iteration plan to identify which tasks need to be part of your daily and weekly planning
There is no better way of freezing the scope of a project, learning or otherwise, than closing on the objectives. The trick is to home in on very specific tasks that most learners will be required to perform. A good way to get this is by asking very specific questions on each feature of the tool. After that, look carefully at how difficult the task actually is. For example, in this case one of the tasks people do frequently is upload project artifacts into the tool. You will notice that there is no objective pertaining to that. The reason is that the task is simple, and learners can learn it through exploration — as long as he or she knows where to go within the tool to upload the artifact. Uploading a document in Web-based tools is very similar; be it for a Web-based e-mail system or a Web-based photo-sharing application. Therefore, we just provided an overview about the feature in the demonstration. The simulation did not provide practice for such tasks.
Best practice note: Though SMEs want to put in more and more content, focus only on the frequently performed, critical tasks.
You can implement this best practice by:
- Knowing how to use the tool yourself, and being comfortable with it.
- Asking for a list of tasks that people will perform most often.
- Prioritizing the tasks.
- Looking at the prioritized tasks, and asking very specific questions. For example, while understanding the learning behaviors required for the planning feature of the tool, you could ask questions such as: What exactly do people need to know about the plan? How does the plan impact their day-to-day lives? How does the user know what tasks in the plan are theirs? And so on...
By following this best practice, you will be able to articulate very precise objectives and hence focus the training. This, in turn, will impact the learner seat time.
Dealing with simulation creation
Simulation creation is a time-consuming activity. To understand the significance of a practice simulation in an online course, consider Keller’s ARCS Learner Motivation model.
Keller’s ARCS Learner Motivation model states that for a learner to be motivated the course should gain the learner’s Attention, the content must be Relevant, the course should make the learner Confident in achieving set objectives, and the course should provide some Satisfaction to the learner.
You’ll realize that practice simulations are essential to providing the “C” in ARCS, that is, making the learner confident. This means that practice is a part of the course that we cannot do away with. Because we did not have much time, we needed another approach to providing the necessary confidence. The alternate approach had to provide the learner with access to the tool and with some guidance in using it, without making the learner feel intimidated.
The solution to this challenge lay in first setting up a read-only Dummy project in the tool. Learners could then view this project, which would have all the necessary project artifacts found in a live project. To create such a Dummy project requires a couple of hours. The online course would then reference this Dummy project and get learners to answer questions. Learners would need to access the dummy project to get answers to questions the course asks.
For example, a character within the course asks learners to find out which tasks are due for completion by a certain date, or who owns specific tasks. The learner would then go to the Dummy project and search for the answer. If on the first attempt, the learner selects an incorrect option, the training provides hints to ensure success.
You might be wondering if it is a good idea to send the learner on this “treasure hunt.” Some points of concern are that the learner:
- may get lost and not return to the course, and
- might simply get frustrated and choose to leave the course.
These thoughts are all valid, and hence it is fair to assume this approach can be risky. To avoid such scenarios we needed to sequence the questions from simple to complex, and target them toward training people on the real-life tasks. Any course you create should strike the appropriate degree of challenge. When creating courses for a homogenous audience, striking this balance is not an easy task.
Best practice note: During the Analysis/Design phase, the instructional designer needs to extract these questions from the SMEs. The Design workshop with the SME should produce enough raw content for you to get a good start on content creation. For example, you should have the scenarios and the questions by the end of the Design workshop.
After closing on the strategy, the development can begin.
