Learning Ideas

Once you have a good idea of the issues that need to be solved with your training (and assuming that training is the “answer”) and you have an idea of what challenges might prevent your training from being successful, then you have some analysis to do.

Take the data you have, and determine the objectives for your training. I would suggest one over-riding objective, and then, if the training will be more complex, then create an objective for each task or topic that needs to be covered.

The key to an objective is that it describes what you want the learner to DO once they have completed your training. One thing that will help you in creating good objectives is to use “observable verbs”. The reason you want observable verbs, is that it enables you to verify that learning has taken place. You can “see” the learners doing what you expect them to be able to do.

When I was in school, my class had a discussion on the benefits of objectives. Several people commented that as a learner, they wanted to know what the objectives were for the class, so they would understand their roadmap for learning. I said nothing, because as a learner, I could care less. I usually skipped over the objectives (though it made it a bit challenging at evaluation time when I was asked if the objectives of the class were met). There are a lot of learning gurus, especially in the eLearning field, who seem to agree that the learner does not need to be bored with objectives.

But, let me say this: As an instructional designer, objectives are absolutely critical! You will use your objectives to design your training and you will also use them to design your evaluation. Because you have created your objectives with observable verbs, these objectives can then be turned into questions for a test, topics for a paper, or steps in a lab exercise to demonstrate that learning has occurred.

While your objectives are the major deliverable from your analysis, there are two other things you need (and possibly a few others that you all can share with me).

• You need to design your overall evaluation.Your objectives will help you determine learning, but you will also want to know if you have accomplished your business goals for the training.  What metrics will you use to determine if you are successful?  You should think of that up front!

• You will also want to consider both your objectives and your barriers to determine what kind of training you will do.  Will this be a traditional face-to-face classroom training?  Will it be an Action Learning session?  Will you create an online class?  If so, will it be synchronous (like a webinar) or asynchronous (like eLearning)?  Will you do something blended?  Do you need performance support?  You have so many options these days – but you need to determine what will work best at this stage, because the design and delivery phases will vary depending on your medium.