Strategy #3: Clarify and calibrate success in terms of the learner
Qualifying the quality of learning solutions is highly integral to any production team or department, not to mention clients. Clients want and need to know what you will create and what the included features are that will specifically help learners learn and perform. It’s a fair expectation. One that always leads down the road to: “How much will it cost and why?” and “How well will this solution meet our business goal?” In a tight-budget, results-focused environment, these questions are magnified. When cost, time, and quality go head-to-head, it seems that quality is always given the short end of the stick. I believe it is because quality is not clearly defined in terms clients can directly equate with their business goals. Defining quality in terms of impact to the learner is essential.
Nothing lengthens the scoping and creative process, and ultimately production, more than determining a solution that is not tethered to an impact goal. The premise: If you can focus the conversation on criteria that are directly related to learner retention, reaction (not likeability), and targeted behavior, then the solution identification phase can be significantly streamlined. Leadership will have tangible, measurable criteria that make sense out of highly conceptual conversations. Design elements can be quickly determined and aligned to meet chosen targets. Focused conversation enables everyone to speak about success using the same terms. Moreover, such focus quickly enables everyone to check progress and outputs against simple agreements throughout the project cycle.
How to implement this strategy
Use the Learner Impact Rater™ in scoping meetings or meetings determining success or solution. Simply ask: “What level of impact would you like to see this solution meet?” (See Figure 4.)
Figure 4: The Learner Impact Rater™
The Learner Impact Rater works for any type of solution. It solidly sets the design conversation upon a results-focused foundation. It eliminates the dizzying feature-focused conversations that so often stall solution identification, or worse, that result in misdirected, misguided, or mediocre outcomes. This strategy and tool has three critical values:
- It saves significant time in solution identification because criteria are tangible, structured, and easily understood.
- It significantly shortens scoping tasks.
- It quickly sets high-level design direction that saves production costs.
Strategy #3 in play: “Could This Be You? Final Episode”
The scene: Jennifer has been asked to quickly produce a cutting-edge, highly engaging learning solution designed to explain an upcoming organizational change that is so significant that it will impact all employee roles in some way. Due to its criticality and high visibility, many leaders are invited to the initial solution identification meetings. The solution must hit the mark. Pressures are extremely high to ensure the solution is successful. After brief initial discussions, it is clear that the leaders are not in close agreement. Conversations are spinning and at times digressing. Much of the conversation is about needed tools and technologies to make this solution happen. We enter the situation, as Jennifer is sharing the problem with her boss…
Jennifer: Ugh! Everyone seems to be talking about everything about the outcomes of this project except for what really matters.
Manager: What really matters?
Jennifer: What the learner will learn! What they will do after they take this training.
Manager: How can you tell them that?
Jennifer: Well, maybe I can make a list of the learning objectives and explain what the learner will be able to do after they complete the training.
Pause. Let’s rewrite this scene. Imagine Jennifer used the Learner Impact Rater to help align success expectations.
We re-enter the conversation with her boss …
Jennifer: In 15 minutes, we gained agreement that we’d align all design components to meet a Level 4. George, who had been so focused on discussing how social media elements would be used, was quickly able to turn his attention to how he preferred the learner to respond. I’m very pleased. The conversation was brief but focused.
Manager: How did everyone else in the meeting respond?
Jennifer: Very actively. It seemed they could quickly see the impact. It helped everyone feel that progress had been made and design could continue quickly.
Summary
Defining and aligning success and quality are the important learning design consulting skills a designer needs in the early stages of creating e-Learning solutions. These strategies, useful for many roles found within e-Learning projects (not just for designers), have been highly successful and are extremely easy to implement. Ultimately, they speak to the importance of learner-centered outcomes and the value of clear, timely, and targeted consulting communications.
References
Gallo, Carmine. 2010. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience. Chicago: McGrawHill.
Heath, Chip, and Heath, Dan. 2007. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York: Random House.
Prochaska, James, and DiClemente, Carlo. 1982. Trans-theoretical therapy — toward a more integrative model of change. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice 19(3):276-288.
