Crafting the Total Learner Experience: Preventing Data Corruption in Instructional Messaging

"Of the many tasks an instructional designer performs, the most important is to ensure the credibility of the instructional message. ... You can be sure that you are displaying a relevant, cohesive, and accurate message to your learners. Preventing data corruption in instructional messaging is a key component in the larger goal of closing the productivity gap and improving workplace performance."

Think back to a recent learning intervention you helped create. As you think about the project, ask yourself these questions:

• Did the program promote the idea of good?
• Was it a responsible and necessary production?
• Did it evoke a sense of fun?
• Was it useful?
• Did you streamline when you had the chance?

Although at first glance, you may think those are silly questions, I am being completely serious. When I think back over some of the projects I have worked on, I can’t honestly answer yes to every question. In many circumstances when the harsh light of workday reality shines down on us, the simple fact is that we have budgets, schedules, and multiple projects to produce. So although we’d like to put our heart and soul into everything we do, sometimes we have to compromise.

Make it work — get it done.

As you read this article, I’d like you to think about the learners. Put the brakes on just a bit, slow down and ponder what you’re doing to them. You may be causing more harm than good. Recently I had a moment of epiphany. You know what I mean — I’m sure you’ve had one as well. For me it led to what you’re reading now.

I was in line at Starbucks, dangerously close to being late to a meeting, trying to beat the clock and get a jolt of caffeine before having to commence with my standard dog and pony show (trying to convince someone to hire me), when it hit me. Too often during my busy day, while I grind out deliverables, get content uploaded, and check off to-dos, somewhere along the busy road of work life that I travel every day, I have lost my purpose. What purpose is that, you ask?

As I left Starbucks with my venti, non-fat, triple shot, it became so clear to me what was missing: Where was the learner? Did he or she even matter anymore? I had lost the sole purpose of what I was doing: making sure I create the type of learning intervention that would not only transfer knowledge to improve performance, but also engage and motivate to action. It really should be all about the learner!

The Total Learner Experience (TLE)

Recent advances in technology have enabled instructional designers to build more interactive training quicker, and with smaller budgets. Software tools allow more flexibility in creating custom technologybased training specific to the needs of the organization; however, we can’t rely on information technology alone to transform learning. Without organizational alignment between business executives, training, and IT departments, organizations will continue to suffer from inflexibility, rigidity, and slow responsiveness to critical business needs — hindering the capability for rapid knowledge transfer to affect strategic functions.

The bottom line: until organizations synchronize their business goals with practical, usable employee training focused on engaging and motivating learners, business will continue to suffer compromised performance.

After my insightful Starbucks moment, I began to ponder what a learning experience should mean for the learner. Many instructional designers focus only on the course content, and not on what I now refer to as the Total Learner Experience, or TLE. The learners’ experience with a course begins the moment they start to access the course. I formulated this definition for the TLE:

A successful Total Learner Experience should promote the cohesive integration of informational resources into the overall structure of a course delivery system. A course delivery system contains every component designed to facilitate a learning intervention, including the interface access point for the course, which could be a learning management system, corporate intranet, or a simple Web page.

Successful consideration and application of the Total Learner Experience enables the learner to:

• Easily find, access, and consume the appropriate learning intervention.
• Be engaged, motivated, and enthusiastic throughout the learning intervention.
• Transfer understanding into action after the learning intervention is completed.

For the rest of this article, I will offer tips and tricks on how you can design for the TLE, and at the same time build courseware that engages and motivates your audience to action. The critical part of implementing a successful TLE involves crafting a non-corrupt, pure instructional message that meets the objectives for both the organization and the learner.

Design for your learners

Many conventional courses comprise a logical hierarchy of modules and topics that may also include a menu with navigation options. This places the content in a structure that makes sense to an instructional designer. When constructing a course around a navigation menu containing links to content, the instructional designer may be thinking in terms of: where will the learner want to go, where will I let them go, how should I name the modules and topics, and does this all support the instructional goal? The basic thrust is to push the learner off the navigation menu into the content. This model places the focus on structure instead of content.

More than likely, learners are not interested in the structure of the course. They may be more interested in learning the content that will enable them to achieve their learning goals. What are their goals? If I am taking a course on how to set up an email account in Outlook, do I care about an “Overview of Outlook” module, when what I really want to know are the steps I must perform to set up an email account? If I’m on the navigation menu, I will probably look for a topic titled “How to set up an email account in Outlook” — I hope to find it by scanning the menu structure and clicking the link. If the navigation menu consists of a list of modules with clever names, such as “Overview” or “Getting Started,” it makes it more difficult to scan for the trigger words of “Set up an email account.” The learner has no interest at this point in anything other than achieving the goal of setting up an email account, which is based on content, not structure.

Designing content should come first, with the module names, topics, navigation menu hierarchy, etc., coming last. In many courses subject matter experts and instructional designers have told me what the module and topic names are before writing any content. If content rules, then you start with content, and determine the most important trigger words. Place the trigger words in the appropriate spots so learners will identify them when they scan the page. Instead of creating your own structure based on your agenda, think of the learner and ask these questions:

• Why is the learner here?
• What areas will be most important to the learner?
• How will learners get to the important areas?
• What are the associated trigger words for these areas?

By focusing on the content first, the structure of the course will come next, and will more than likely reflect the actual needs of your learner. Attend to the content, and then let the structure take care of itself.

Create course confidence

When learners can’t find something they want to know, they will often turn to the navigation options to help hunt down the missing content. The ability for the learners to achieve their learning goals within the structure of your content gives them a sense of confidence in the course. The critical times of course confidence are right before and right after the learner clicks. Is the link name understandable as to where it will lead? Did the link lead to the right content? Confidence and trigger words go hand in hand.

Lure your learners to the content they need:

• Communicate effective content through module, topic, and link names. Don’t worry about keeping these names short and concise. Name them appropriately to be informative. If the module name needs to wrap to multiple lines, let it wrap.
• Remember the trigger words that the learners will associate with the course, module, topic, and link names, and their expectations and assumptions about the content underneath the link.
• Learners do not mind clicking through pages as long as they feel confident that the content is “evolving” with the link. If they are seeing the trigger words associated with the content, they will feel like the linking is getting them closer to the desired information.
• Learners don’t mind scrolling. They only fail when they encounter “scroll killers.” Common scroll killers include horizontal rules and large margins. A horizontal rule acts as a barrier to continue scrolling. Learners see it as a border. Large margins or large areas of white space suggest there is nothing else to see (see my recommendations about reading Tufte, in the Sidebar at right).
• Learners expect text links to be blue and underlined.
• A link should accurately describe what would appear on the linked page.

Apply the six rules of design simplicity

Your instructional messages should show comparison, contrasts, and or differences in a meaningful, structured context. Be prepared for the fact that learners with prior knowledge may ask the fundamental question, “Compared to what?” when evaluating your message.

The first application of effective instructional messaging appears at the course’s ecological level: the foundational environment where learning occurs. In this environment, the learner must be able to pursue optimally the goals and objectives of the course while engaged and happy. Instructional components required to keep learners happy include but are not limited to:

• Good design
• Evidence
• Credibility
• Encouragement
• Ability to relate the information to their real world selves

Sharp content, or content that remains focused on the learning objectives should pass the six rules of design simplicity shown in Table 1 below.

 

 

 

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