Which course should you start with?
After answering the first two questions, you should have a list of the courses that really belong in your e-Learning curriculum. If you are like most of my clients, your list includes many courses that are mission critical, and for which the current training is unsatisfactory or missing. You can’t develop all these courses at the same time. How do you prioritize them?
First, go through your list and mark the courses that address your (or your company’s) pain. Which topics are the most difficult, expensive, or cumbersome to teach by the current method? Which topics generate the most calls for help or the most complaints? By addressing pain, you solve a problem.
Next, highlight the courses that will have the biggest impact. Which courses, once you have developed them, will save you the most time, freeing you to develop more? Which ones will result in increased sales, happier customers, improved working conditions? When you create a high-impact course, your stakeholders take notice and you generate publicity and goodwill within the company for your e-Learning program.
Finally, consider the courses that are “low-hanging fruit,” those for which resources are already gathered, research done, and outlines created. These are the courses you can create quickly, which is especially important if you are learning a new authoring tool or breaking in a new courseware development vendor.
The point of convergence of these three factors — pain, impact, and low-hanging fruit — is where you begin.
First course
Once you determine the topic for your first e-Learning course, the instructional design process is very similar to designing a classroom course: gather the materials, write your course objectives, and flesh out your main points. Pay particular attention to scope and audience.
In a classroom, you can respond to questions and add or remove content as you present, changing the scope of the course to fit the needs of your group. With an e-Learning course, this is not possible. You need to decide beforehand what material to include and what to exclude. In the end, this results in more consistent training, because all audiences have access to the same material. The downside, of course, is that you can’t be as responsive to your audience.
Audience(s)
The challenge of designing a course that cannot be adapted on the fly requires you to prepare for your audiences in a more deliberate way. As you write your course objectives and gather materials, make notes about your audience. Who will take this course, and what are the specific needs of each group? Job roles and titles may be important differentiators, as well as experience levels with the topic and the company. Consider also generational differences, levels of computer literacy, and learning styles.
Which concepts in your course would benefit from different treatment for different audiences? In a course announcing a new release of a software product, members of the sales team need different information than do the employees who respond to customer calls in the Help Center. Required content for safety training might be different for an initial course than for renewal certifications, or it might vary from state to state.
Consider how you would make the course different for each audience. Learners with less experience might need more details and examples, and those who prefer a bottom-line approach would benefit from less explanation. In a course designed for new-employee orientation, you might want to present specific information for each employee’s location, such as emergency evacuation routes, building details, and parking regulations. What could you accomplish if you had the luxury of designing the course for each individual learner?
Learning paths
One way to target the course for different audiences is through the use of learning paths. Learning paths allow you to present information to different learners based on some choice that the learner makes. For example, a learning path might present remedial information to the learner who answers a question incorrectly, but present the next question or topic to learners who choose the correct answer.
There are many ways to present the learning paths. You can use a pre-test to determine the learner’s path. Learners who achieve a specified score “test out” of the course and are not required to take the course at all. Or you can hide information in the course that corresponds to the pre-test questions the learner answered correctly, assuming that those correct answers indicate mastery of the material.
Another method for presenting learning paths is to ask the learner questions within the context of the course itself. Ask one question, or a series of questions, at the beginning of a module or section, then direct more experienced users (as indicated by correct answers) through an abbreviated version of the material. Learners who answer fewer questions correctly see a more thorough treatment of the material. Another form of this method is to present the abbreviated material prior to the questions, and allow learners who correctly answer the questions to move on, while learners who answer incorrectly are directed to the rest of the content.
Provide a way for learners who qualify for the “fast path” to see the in-depth material if they prefer. This allows detail-oriented learners, or those who are less confident of their skills, to have full access to the course content.
Learning paths can also be useful when something other than knowledge of the topic differentiates multiple audiences. Accommodate learners who want details and extra examples by providing a “More information” button for complex topics. When course content varies slightly based on job role, location, or some other factor, ask learners to select their circumstance from a list, then present the appropriate information based on their choice. Note that in self-selected learning paths, you have no control over whether the learner selects the path truthfully. Some learners will select different options (or each option in turn) to see what is different.
Learning paths are powerful tools, but they can add significant complexity to the design and development process. Done well, learning paths increase the relevance of a course for all learners, and a relevant course is much more engaging than a one-size-fits-all approach.
How can you engage learners?
Learning paths are not the only way to engage learners. Make appropriate use of multiple forms of media. Audio narration with text, bullet points, and images communicates messages succinctly and in a straightforward manner. Well-chosen and closely edited video can also be effective, but shorter is better. Remember that long stretches of audio, video, or animation allow learners to be distracted by other things going on around them. The key to keeping learners engaged is interactivity.
Authoring tools provide many options for creating learner interaction, each of which is well suited to different learner tasks. To engage learners with concepts, such as rules and regulations, processes, and factual information about products, ask questions and have learners respond by clicking text, buttons, or images. Provide specific feedback based on the learner’s answer. Another option for learner response to questions is to include edit boxes for learners to write freeform answers. For feedback, provide the correct answer or suggested responses in audio or text form.
Learners can apply concepts to situations through scenarios. Present a situation to which the learner will respond by answering questions. Scenarios require learners to apply what they are learning to a realistic situation, which provides a deeper level of understanding and practice with actual job tasks. Scenarios are a particularly effective way to teach sales and other interpersonal skills.
Features like drag and drop, hot spots, and photos with edit boxes are excellent methods for having learners identify parts or objects, define terms, and label parts of a product. Be creative when designing interactivity into courses, and focus on which forms advance your learning objectives.
