I’m sure you’re all familiar with the story of Alice in wonderland, in which Alice enters the forest and asks the cat which way she needs to go. The cat replies saying it depends a good deal on where Alice wants to arrive at. To that Alice responds by saying she doesn’t care much where to go. The cat, in turn, replies that it doesn’t matter then which way she takes. What do you learn from this story? We learn that you need to begin with the end in mind – you need to know what you want to achieve to be able to make the right beginning. In the context of eLearning too, it is important to set your learning objectives in advance so as to achieve the end results for which you are developing the eLearning.

Here is a typical requirement with which our customers come to us. They want sales training for their telesales representatives. As was the case with the Alice, they have no idea which direction they should be heading. This is because they do not identify the specific objectives of the training program they want us to create.

So where do we begin? The first step of course, is the training needs analysis, followed by identifying objectives for the training. Once you have clarity on training needs and objectives, the content that would go into the training can be clearly mapped.

It is important to remember that objectives are always linked with business goals. For example, in this case the client’s end goal was to improve knowledge of the sales process among their sales people in order to increase their sales. If the learners followed the sales process and provided satisfactory customer assistance, they would naturally contribute towards growth in sales.

Here’s another scenario. Sounds familiar? Usually sales people are sent to training sessions, in which product features are covered in detail. At the end of the session, participants are overwhelmed with the information dump. This is because the objective for the training was not well defined. To maximize the benefits, this kind of product training for sales people ideally should include the following:

• Overall place of the product in the portfolio of existing products
• Product features of their own product versus those of competitors
• Positioning of the product to show how it benefits the customers

It is therefore very important for instructional designers to understand the learning objectives to be able to design effective instructional material. In the event when the client does not seem to express learning objectives clearly, the onus is on the instructional designers to probe and learn what the client wishes to accomplish with the training program and arrive at learning objectives. This ensures better ROI for the client where he gets what he expects to achieve from the training program.

Related posts:

1. Tips for Delivering Results-oriented Product Trainings for your Sales Teams
2. Making Product Trainings for Sales People Relevant
3. Sales Training – How Important Is It?

To evaluate the impact of training, there are two possible ways of measurement – one based upon financial measures (Return on Investment) while the other include qualitative measurement based on Return on Expectation. However, the ultimate objective remains the same – to generate greater benefits at the lowest possible cost. Therefore, it makes good business sense to know about the major ways to increase the impact of training.

In-depth analysis of the possible need of training

This is the first thing that has to be done when evaluating the need for a training solution. You will need to do an in-depth analysis as to what purpose the proposed training will serve. Is training really required? What are the key problems this training will solve? Who are the people who need training? The answers to all these questions will give a vivid picture of the actual training needs.

Choosing the right trainer

Once the purpose of the training is determined, it is important to select the correct delivery channel for training? Who are the people chosen to impart the training? Selecting an expert having an in-depth knowledge and expertise in conducting training sessions is very important. Selecting wrong people for the wrong purpose will prove detrimental to the very purpose of training.

Proper training ambience

The ambience is another important factor to consider. Proper infrastructure and the availability of proper materials to support the training process is required to increase the impact of training.

• a) Peaceful learning environment: Be it classroom training or online training, a peaceful environment – free from disturbance will help the trainees to better concentrate on the subject matter.
• b) Abundance of learning materials: Enables the trainees to gather the maximum possible knowledge and information by studying this material.

Thus, the proper ambience and adequate learning materials help trainees to gather knowledge and practice the same in a controlled environment.

Using an innovative mix

The use of various options such as webinars and videos enhance the learning experience for the trainees. In addition, adopting some interesting elements such as role plays, group discussions and demonstrations makes learning more attractive and easy to remember, thereby leading to a long-lasting impact in the minds of trainees.

Motivation

Another important way of increasing the impact of training, where the trainers motivate the trainees is by supporting them and helping them in solving a particular problem. It is also important for a trainer to give the trainee adequate time to understand the context of training and to clear all their doubts by having a question and answer session.

Regular Evaluation

Having regular feedback and proper evaluation of training methods enables trainers and instructional designers to bridge knowledge gaps and deliver training in a better way next time. The results of these evaluations help in strengthening the training programs and offer better delivery in future.

I will be interested to learn your views on the subject. Do share your thoughts on the same.

Related posts:

1. Importance of Training Need Analysis in Today’s Organizations
2. The Benefits of ILTs to the Trainer or Organization
3. Training An Adult On Performing A Work Task

Managing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) is both a science and an art, as many battle-scarred project managers, instructional designers, and SMEs themselves will attest to. Here’s a list of dos and don’ts that SMEs wish eLearning teams would remember.

• Do your homework before we meet. Please: In all probability, you already have access to the raw content mailed across earlier. Going through the source content for the first time during the meeting is going to make meetings longer-drawn than necessary. It would be great if you come prepared with a basic outline, broad objectives and a list of questions on the content that you’d like me to answer in our first meeting. If for some reason, inputs from my side are delayed, any background research you could do on the subject will be of great help in giving you some broad context.
• Set clear expectations: Double-check with me on the level of experience and expertise you expect. If there is a mismatch between your expectations and my background, you might want to request for a SME who is closer to your expectation. Also, clarify my role upfront. Is it just to give you content? Or do reviews? Or both? How many rounds of reviews can I expect? And when? What about signoffs? Who else is in the loop?
• Respect my time and commitment: Right at the beginning, be aware of my unavailable time. I may be out of town attending a seminar or may be on my annual vacation. Ask for my schedule in case I forget to share it with you. Also, do add adequate buffer time – this will help both of us avoid sleepless nights.
• Get buy-in for the process: Don’t assume that I will understand your process intuitively. Let me know what are the broad milestones, what is your process for communication and so on. Let me also know how much of communication is through which mode (Weekly meetings? Quick status calldaily? )
• Share the project plan and walk me through it: I know I’m supposed to go through the plan, but please go one extra mile and share it with me. Do highlight points on the schedule where a deliverable is due from me. Also, make me aware of the risk of delayed inputs or the ripple effect of changing content direction mid-way. Theoretically I know all of this, but a reminder will ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
• Send me material for review in one go: At least as far as possible. If you are sending me content for review for a given module, send it all together. I really wouldn’t like to review Parts I to V for a single module, unless of its length and complexity warrants breaking it up into chunks.
• Establish acceptable Turn Around Time (TAT): 24 hours is a reasonable time for an email reply to questions or information. Don’t in the meanwhile leave frantic messages on my voicemail. Give me a chance to respond first.
• Please don’t surprise me – I have enough going on in my work life right now. Though it is my job to be the SME on this project, I need to take time out from my regular responsibilities to be available for reviews and stuff. I would appreciate it if there are no surprises sprung on me. I have enough excitement at work. Trust me on this one.

Related posts:

1. How to get the best out of your Subject Matter Experts?
2. Conducting Successful Kick-off Meetings
3. 11 Tips to Lead an Effective Meeting

On one of their documentary series called Deadliest Catch aired by the Discovery Channel, I had watched Alaskan fishermen braving the elements to go fishing for king crab in some of the world’s most turbulent seas with freezing temperatures. And yet, the primary emotion on the fishing crew’s faces was that of exhilaration for pitting their wits against nature and meeting the challenge and dangers head-on. So what’s this got to do with eLearning? Not much. And yet, a lot.

If we were to take a consensus among learners on the top three things that would make them want to engage with a course, I’m reasonably certain that more than 90% of learners would list ‘challenging activities’ as one of the primary motivators for continuing with any learning program.

Why challenges matter

When I say ‘challenging’, I am referring to that element which captures the learner’s imagination, makes him/her want to interact with the course content to be able to perform some action or to engage in some activity to satisfy his/her curiosity about something or be able to crack some problem mirrored by real life. Agreed, to create learning activities that are suitably stimulating and challenging is no mean feat. And yet, we as instructional designers sometimes give up even before we’ve begun. And unfortunately, too often end up creating trivial, overly-simple activities that turn out to be no-brainers. After experiencing this type of an activity 2 or 3 times, the learners simply tune out.

What should a challenge do?

So what is it that our learners want us to do before we can get them to do what we want them to do? In other words, how do we craft challenging tasks for the learners so that they can apply their mind to come up with suitable solutions or answers and hence make that transition from reading about something and internalizing it for use in the real world? One thing is for certain – this won’t happen with questions where learners can make random guesses and move forward in the course. What we really need are activities that grab learners by the collar and throw down the gauntlet – “hey, so you think you are ready for a challenge? Try this!” In a non-offensive way of course.

Decisions, decisions…

One of the popular benefits of eLearning is that it enables learners to make mistakes in a risk-free environment. And yet, sometimes, it is precisely this total absence of risk that lulls our learners into a state of complacency. In a classroom session, sometimes an element of risk is added by extrinsic motivators – a lot of times learners are motivated to perform well in order to look good in front of their peers. Or at least to avoid making careless mistakes so that they don’t lose face in front of the class. Now these aspects of social learning motivators are missing when it comes to asynchronous self-paced courses that learners take in isolation. So how do we motivate the isolated learner to do well? To plunge into learning activities and make them their own personal challenge?

I think we could take a leaf out of the online games industry which thrives on creating games with excitement and challenge and where the consequences of taking the wrong actions can result in users being thrown out of the game. In our eLearning courses, we obviously wouldn’t want to resort to such extreme measures, but we do need to add some element of risk, so that learners feel motivated to apply their mind to the problem in an active engaged way and come up with solutions. The biggest challenge for us as instructional designers is to add meaningful challenges in our courses.

But How?

One way to do this is through allowing learners to go along a certain learning path based on the decision made in a previous step. This clearly shows the implications of a certain decisions. Teaching the negative consequences of a particular action can be a powerful motivator for learners to avoid making a mistake. I am not recommending fear tactics here, but rather increasing the awareness that learners’ choices would have negative implications in real life. In the following scenario-based assessment we’d used recently, the learner’s choice locks him/her into a certain decision path, with all implications pointed out towards the end. This adds more challenge to an otherwise drab Yes/No question minus a scenario and minus implications of an action.

Finally, we do really want learners who are actively engaged in taking action to meet meaningful challenges in the eLearning course. They must know that they can do well only if they apply their minds to the challenge at hand. And that they have to be willing to make mistakes even though it might have certain negative implications. This will help them avoid these mistakes in real-life events and help them have successful outcomes.

The ball is in the instructional designer’s court- how do we create meaningful challenges? By increasing the level of difficulty of questions? By penalizing learners’ wrong choices and blocking progress till they get it right? Thoughts anyone on ways to add a degree of challenge in online courses?

Related posts:

1. The eLearning Challenge!

‘As if we didn’t!’, is what a few of you might be thinking on reading this title. Think of your last design project. And how much thought you gave to your learners. If truth be told, sometimes the learner is the last person on our mind. The moment we get a design task on our hands, we roll up our sleeves and jump into the mechanics of it all. We are thinking of content flows, interactivities, assessments, and everything else that goes into making an instructionally sound course. And what about the learner? He/she lurks somewhere in our consciousness, but more as a wispy, distant entity rather than a flesh and blood character who will probably laugh or cry looking at some of the things we as instructional designers sometimes unleash on them. Here are a few tips to putting the focus back on your learners:

Speak their Language

Rather than getting your learners to gradually get used to your language, use their terms. For instance, if you developing a highly technical course for engineers, don’t try and dumb it down when it is not required. View content from the perspective of your learners, not from that of your instructional design team. This makes both comprehension and recall easy for your target audience.

Understand their Concerns

Your learner has a problem; he/she needs to know how he/she can solve it. Everything else is just incidental. Keep this mind when you are building your learning activities. Imagine if someone came to you with a problem and you said you’d give them the answer only if they touched their toes 50 times. And yet, some of our ‘interactive’ e-learning courses force learners to do similar things. Give them what they want. Don’t tease them with pointless exercises or interactivities. Your learners are as hard pressed for time as you are.

Be Aware of their ‘Personality’

Do you have a mental picture of your learners to know if they are likely to get inspired by a game-based learning? Or do you think they would prefer a more formal approach? Or are they millennial who would far rather learn from Twitter than through a classroom session? Are you aware of the demography of your target audience? We used this audience ‘awareness’ powerfully in our own courses where the audience was linesmen who were out on the field doing dangerous work involving electrical safety on electric lines and poles. When one of the instructional designers designed a theme around adventure sports and reality shows, it went down very well with the learners. Now imagine using the same theme for a target audience comprised of your organizations’ finance team. Get the picture?

Don’t insult their Intelligence or Patronize them

We’ve all come across no-brainer assessments in course at some point on the other. It’s sometimes amusing, but annoying for the most part. When your team is hard pressed for time, the simplest way out is to slap together some questions that actually could end up testing at too basic a level. Craft those test items carefully, keeping your learner in mind.

Take their Feedback Seriously

Seriously. We are sometimes so paranoid about our customer satisfaction scores that we try and not read too much between the lines, where a lot of feedback is actually being given. Try and look beyond the typical surveys where everyone displays happy smiley faces.

Related posts:

1. Ways to Make an E-learning Course Meaningful
2. Getting your Instructional Design Team out of the Rut
3. Elements of Storyboards

A few days back I posted a blog on “The Decision of Whether to Develop or Outsource eLearning”. Now, if you have decided to go with the outsourcing, I’d like to touch upon 5 key criteria you should consider when selecting an eLearning outsourcing vendor partner.

The 5 key criterion are:

1. Pedigree

2. Clientele

3. Track Record

4. PM and Processes

5. Cost

Pedigree: Make sure that your vendor-partner is training and learning company with proven expertise in Learning Design and in-house Instructional Designers. Also ensure that while being able to provide learner-centric solutions, the vendor also can keep the overall business goals of your organization in mind. You need a vendor who has teams that can align their skill sets despite being from widely diverse functions. The more knowledgeable / specialized the team is, the more productive the project. Ask for the profiles and experience of the team that will be working on your project.

Clientele: When selecting an outsourcing vendor-partner, ensure that the vendor has considerable experience working with Fortune clients and is comfortable working with global audiences. You need someone who has a proven track record in handling projects successfully within your cultural context. Check how comfortable the vendor is working across time-zones and languages. This will help address your concerns around cultural differences and cross-cultural communication.

Track Record: Look for a provider with a proven track record of success. Conduct a reference check and ask for samples before you take any decisions. For those of you who have concerns around confidentiality – I think the fact that sensitive industries such as banking, the US army etc. have been outsourcing critical operations involving highly confidential data speaks for itself. Check out your potential vendors’ references and ensure you select a vendor-partner that you can trust.

Project Management and Processes: Get a thorough understanding of the vendor’s project management expertise and production processes before you make any commitment. Use those service providers with streamlined production processes and strong project management. This will also address your concern of managing a remote vendor. You need to be more than satisfied that the outsourcing partner has a robust project management methodology and process in place. This helps in avoiding unnecessary delays and rework, which in turns affects implementation costs, and time-to-market. Having vendors with dedicated project managers also helps you get what you want and on time. It is also important to make sure that the vendor has formal review and quality control processes in place.

Cost: The biggest consideration, cost! Other things being equal such as skills, quality, and turnaround time, I’m sure you’d agree that cost is the bottom-line deciding factor for developing eLearning in-house or outsourcing it. Outsource to reliable and competent vendor-partners to cut down on development costs.

Thus, for successful e-learning development and deliver, these are a few of the essential factors you need to focus.

Related posts:

1. eLearning Content Development Outsourcing – Typical Concerns
2. Common Objections to Outsourcing eLearning
3. The Decision of Whether To Develop or Outsource eLearning

Your team created a great course that is interactive and engaging, has well-formulated learning objectives, the optimal use of media and so on. You’d have expected such a course to be a hand down winner – except for one tiny but significant detail – the content kind of seemed ‘all over the place’. Sometimes precious learning time was devoted to covering content that was not really linked to learning outcomes. Ever had it happen with a course you worked on or reviewed? With pressing timelines and pressure to get things done, your storyboarding could easily go off track and you could end up with the situation I’ve described above.

Here is a 3 step approach to make sure you stay on track with your online course content:

• Write your learning outcomes: Learning outcomes to put it simply, should map to what the learners need to be able to do in the real world once they have taken the training or eLearning course. This simple step ensures that your courses stay on target throughout.
• Write your assessments: Many times, instructional designers prefer to cross the assessments bridge when they come to it. As a result, content gets written in detail and finally assessments are forced to fit within that framework. I’d like to recommend that maybe a top down approach would be more effective in helping you stay on track with your learning content. Write down your assessments once you have your content outline in place. This serves two important goals – Firstly, it helps you to know exactly what you should be testing. Without a lot of time spent on writing content in between the formulation of learning objectives and the testing of learning objectives, it is easier to come up with questions that are directly linked to learning outcomes. Anyone who has come across a fancy assessment question (such as a crossword) that had little to do with learning outcomes knows what I am talking about. The second most important thing is that as the instructional designers write their content, they are less likely to get derailed with ‘nice-to-know’ content and focus exclusively on ‘must-know’ content.
• Write your content: NOW write your content and the rest of your storyboard. You have 2 check points to ensure you don’t go off on a tangent – 1) Your learning objectives and 2) Your practice and scored questions linked to those learning objectives. With such a clear focus, you have every opportunity of making every piece of content in your course count. And that is what effective learning strategy is really about. A simple trick, but which works every time.

To sum up – write your learning outcomes, write your assessments linked to these outcomes, and THEN write your content using suitable learning activities. The result will be effective courses that are likely to hit their target and help learners learn what they really need to learn.

Related posts:

1. How to get the best out of your Subject Matter Experts?
2. How to Make Online Assessments Effective?
3. The Process for Implementing Instructional Design

While creating a storyboard for online courses, I usually turn to templates to make my task simple. If you’ve more than a few members of your team working on the same project and you need the look and feel of the course to be consistent when done, it is ideal to use templates. 

Templates include various different elements such as buttons, icons, color schemes, images, games and much more. Tools such as PowerPoint master slide layouts allow you to have a range of pages ready to insert content. The whole idea of a template is that you can use the elements an infinite number of times for different projects. Let me tell how I benefit from using templates while developing online training course: 

• First, it saves time and effort. Re-creating buttons, icons, colors, etc, each time when I create a storyboard is time-consuming. It is nice to have a few sets of interface, layouts, icons, buttons, colors and frequently used components handy. I enjoy dragging and dropping the elements into the place and voila, I’m ready to roll out a course!
• A library of templates elements is valuable to whose (like me) do not have web or multimedia designer at their disposal. An amateur takes a long time to create a Flash movie or design a button than an expert. Besides, the quality of work may not be up to the mark. I prefer to focus on creating good learning materials for the course rather than drawing a pretty button.
• Many of the clients I have worked with prefer their courses to have a consistent look and feel – same colors, quality and more. They provide me with their readymade set of templates to use for developing of course materials.
• If a company is using LMS, there are certain requirements for proper functioning. By having custom-designed templates compatible with the LMS, life is easy for all of us. Templates mean less troubleshooting time and faster turnaround of course development.
• Not all IDs (yours truly!) have web designing or multimedia skills. It is best to have various elements of templates created by experts as it gives a touch of professionalism to the courses. I just need to edit the template and its elements to add the course content.
• As I mentioned earlier, an ID has to create good learning material and not design templates and elements. By using templates while developing courses, IDs can think of creative ways to make a course interesting and churn out more courses in a short span of time. 

These are the few benefits that I see from using templates while creating an e-learning module. 

Do share your thoughts with me on the same.

Related posts:

1. Elements of Storyboards
2. Articulate Engage a Good Substitute for Flash Interactivities
3. The Humble Storyboard is almost 80 years old. Is it time for its retirement?

As an instructional designer, I have worked with many Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). I came across several SMEs who lack the experience of working with an instructional designer, hence making them aware about the process of creating an e-learning course. It goes without saying that SMEs play an instrumental part in developing an effective e-learning course.

SMEs are connoisseurs in their field of work. They possess immense knowledge of the subject, contribute content, source materials, reference links, prioritize topics and concepts, check the content for technical accuracy, etc. Failure on an ID’s part to incorporate constructive information in the course can result in an ineffective e-learning product.

A good SME respects project timelines, understands learning objectives, the learner’s motivation and does not force every bit of content in a course. Before the start of any project, it is good to spend some time to get to know the SME. This ice-breaker forms the basis of a relationship of trust between both parties. Usually, SMEs are very willing to help and share their knowledge if you build a good relationship with them. The following are my observations on my interactions with SMEs.

Introduce e-learning to the SME. Explain what good e-learning is, its capabilities and limitations. Discuss timelines and the process of creating an e-learning product from concept to finish. To provide a better understanding, create a special project plan discussing each step of the project and timeline. Be specific about time commitments, such as an estimate of each task and the final deliverable dates. This will help both parties to stay on track and meet deadlines.

Discuss the SME’s role in the creating the product. Ask SME to schedule his time for your project and prepare him for the task on hand. Help him identify your training needs, audience and their motivation and learning objectives. Make sure that the SME is accessible for clarifications on the content during the development process. Communicate what you want, how much you want at each step of the project. Also, invite the SME to attend the kick-off meeting. He will be able to know and understand the target audience and the client’s needs.

Before your information-gathering meetings, do your homework on the subject. Read all you can on the topic before approaching the SME with a question or two, when in doubt because this wastes his time. Instead, create a question bank which the SME can answer in an organized manner.

While some e-learning companies have internal SMEs, often, the client too provides the vendor with internal experts. Respect the SME’s time. Plan deliverables, schedule meetings or phone calls according to his convenience.

It is possible that SME loses focus on the learning objectives. As an ID, you should help him stay on track. He may want to include unrelated content. Allow him to step into the learner’s shoes and ask,”How will the learner use this piece of information on the job?” Keep the extra content aside and find innovative ways to make it useful to the learner.

Update the SME during the development stage. If possible, share any available content. Ask the SME to proofread the course on completion of the first draft. Create a checklist with detailed instructions on proofreading the course. Your checklist can include details relating to consistency and clarity of the content, accuracy of review and assessments questions, technical accuracy of the content and flow of the course, etc..

By incorporating the above-mentioned points, I continue to enjoy a good working relationship with SMEs. Keeping them informed and involved during each step of the course creation process will lead to an effective alliance for your e-learning project.

What are your thoughts on the same? Do comment and share your knowledge on what it takes to be an instructional designer and what was your experience working with SMEs.

Thank you for reading my blog.

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1. ADDIE Model and its Utility in Instructional Designing
2. The Real E-Learning Standards
3. The Process for Implementing Instructional Design

Usually, training needs are identified during an annual performance appraisal done by HRD. These needs are handed over to corporate training to initiate involvement to address them. The needs are classified and collated; training calendars drawn; training budgets projected and so on.

That’s fine but when the demand arise from the line managers for training other than those that fall in the above category, how do we react? Do we go by the book and start from the beginning? Sounds logical, especially knowing the fact that a majority of performance gaps do not fall under the purview of training.

Most line managers want the training to be delivered yesterday! There is always a dearth of time, resources and money, which makes us think twice before we jump into a full-fledged analysis.

So, the question is when can we skip and when can we not?

We tend to skip a formal analysis process when we use rapid prototyping where Instructional Designers (IDs) and Subject matter Experts (SMEs) work in a continual loop to produce a prototype. The prototype becomes the first step in the cycle and front-end analysis gets integrated into an ongoing, iterative process between subject matter, objectives and courseware.

According to Mager & Pipe, we should explore fast fixes before spending time and resources on further analysis. All that is required is a quick-and-easy remedy such as:

• Uncovering invisible expectations
• Providing proper resources
• Supplying feedback

Related posts:

1. A summary of 90 responses to “Training Needs Analysis: To Skip or Not to Skip?”