First attempts at designing self-paced e-Learning courses are fraught with failure. As a former training and development manager, I’ve watched countless instructional designers — both novice and experienced — struggle with designing effective and engaging e-Learning courses. Now as a full-time professor and part-time consultant, I see many of my graduate students, particularly those who are switching careers, experiencing the same difficulties.
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No matter how many examples of e-Learning courses my students review and critique, and no matter which text we use in class, many of the students’ initial attempts are sorely lacking when compared to the courses of more experienced designers. To put it simply, there is little or no instruction in the students’ e-Learning, and the “voice of the instructor” (all the little things we say and do when standing in front of a class) is missing. The graduate students’ learning products are not just mere “page turners,” they are lacking both in interactivity to hold the learner’s interest and to ensure that learning occurs, and in sufficient information to guide the learner through the lesson or course. I spend a great deal of time asking students, “How would the learner know that?” My consulting practice assures me that the same conversation also continues in the workplace.
Recently, I drew upon my background in elementary education and in special education to devise a way to help novice instructional designers (IDs) progress quickly in their e-Learning design competencies. In this article, I will describe this technique, lesson planning, for helping IDs transition into e-Learning course designers without slowing down the design process. The term “lesson plan” may sound “school mar mish” and academic, but I ask that you reserve judgment until you finish reading this article. Lesson plans are merely templates that can guide the development of good e-Instruction, saving much time and effort by minimizing revisions and misunderstandings.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating lesson planning into the e-Learning design flow, I will work through an example of the documentation for a project. The result will be one lesson for a self-paced WBT course on using basic features of Microsoft Word. The lesson focuses on using the Word Count feature.
NOTE: This article assumes completion of a proper analysis, and that the performance solution includes instruction. This article does not address performance support or knowledge management.
Instructional designers typically start the design process by creating one or more deliverables that document the proposed course. For an excellent discussion of e-Learning design documents, see Monique Donahue’s article “The Design Document: Your Blueprint for e-Learning Standards and Consistency” in the December 5, 2005 issue of Learning Solutions e-Magazine. I assume there is a single design document, which I will refer to as an Instructional Design Plan, or IDP. The IDP contains a variety of information, such as the purpose of the course, its proposed length, a description of the audience(s), the instructional strategies to be used, and an outline of the content. An IDP may also include information about the technical requirements — both software and hardware — for taking the course. No matter how rapid the instructional design process, there must be agreement and signoff on what needs to be developed and how the ID will develop it for the target audience(s).
Once the appropriate stakeholders approve the IDP, instructional designers start the storyboarding process. Designers (or their managers) often expect to move effortlessly between creating an IDP and developing storyboards from it. (See Figure 1)
Figure 1 Standard e-Learning design flow
Experienced e-Learning designers clearly see the connections between these two very important documents. They recognize and adhere to the instructional implications of the IDP, allowing them to develop storyboards that reflect engaging and instructionally sound lessons. In addition, they include on their storyboards all of the details — technical and administrative — required to actually program or develop the course.
The “e-Instruction” gap
I call the area between the IDP and the storyboard the “e-Instruction gap,” for it is here that things often begin to go awry. There are things that happen in between developing the IDP and storyboarding that designers often do not explicitly discuss, and even more often do not document. This is part of the tacit knowledge of instructional design and e-Learning course design.
To the instructional designer with little or no e-Learning course design experience, the transition from approved IDP to storyboard drafts may appear daunting. At this point, we ask much of the instructional designer. We are asking him or her to translate sections of the IDP into detailed storyboards and, most likely, to do it quickly. Figure 2 shows this translation process for the lesson on using the Word Count feature.
Figure 2 Moving from IDP to storyboard
Looking at Figure 2, you can see that the ID has carefully copied the learning objectives from the IDP directly into the storyboard; in most cases, this would be a standard or convention for all e-Learning in that ID’s workplace. Another convention in the example requires informing the learner of the approximate time it takes it complete the instruction.
Of course, the more detailed the IDP is, the easier the transition to storyboarding will be. The IDP might require the designer to use a “scenario-based learning” strategy or method. However, the IDP does not document the details of the scenario in which the designer will embed the instruction in order to get the learner involved immediately. Instead, the experienced ID works out those details as he or she begins storyboarding.
Clearly, moving from the IDP to storyboards requires intermediate steps. What can we do to help close the “e-Instruction gap”? Lesson planning is the answer. Figure 3 shows a proposed flow, including the lesson planning step.
Figure 3 Proposed e-Learning design flow
