5 things IDs can think differently about!

I often come across instructional designers who are pretty much stuck with things that they had started out doing early in their careers. While over time, their exposure to tools, kinds of courses, and abilities to handle content and clients have increased, what I see unchanged is their approach to instructional design. Unfortunately, most organizations, training companies, trainers and instructional designers are still hesitant about adopting newer methodologies. Bloom, Gagne, and ADDIE continue to be the cornerstone of instructional design even today. While these are good as foundation stones, the fun is to evolve and explore newer techniques and methods.

To begin with, let's check out 5 things IDs can think differently about!

1. Overcome the itch to design: Every ID must overcome the itch to design. This is almost always responsible for training that is content-centric and not learner-centric. As soon as you receive the content and the project specs, do not jump into design. Spend substantial time on the analysis phase, understanding your learners. Ask these questions about your learner:

- What is the profile of my learner?

- Why do my learners need training?

- What relevance can I show my learners through this training?

- What will they achieve at the end of the training that will significantly change the way they work?

- What is my learners motivation to attend this training?

Answers to these questions will help you design training that maps to your learners' needs. You may be itching to design a game-based learning, a scenario-based or a comic strip-based learning, but if the learner analysis indicates a video cast, then so it be! Remember, course design is not a designer's fancy imagination, it is a blue print of your training module and should directly map to your learner's needs, wants, and motivations.

2. Do not restrict yourself to the available tool or the content dump: The content dump is just a dump of information. Often, IDs start story boarding using the content dump, and are trapped in a content-centric course. At the most, the content dump is a convenient warehouse for all your content needs for the project. You must get out of your mindset of only eLearning or only ILT. When you think of training, ask questions like what is the best mode of delivery such that my learners learn. For example, if I'm going to train the on-the-road salesmen, how should I deliver my training? Will an eLearning work just because we specialize in it? Or, will an ILT be most effective just because the organization has trainers to deliver them? Or, can you use mobile learning since most salesmen are glued to their mobile phones 24X7? Bottom line is - think beyond content - think about your learner and what will benefit them.

3. Define the goal of your training: The goal of your training is the outcome of your training; not just the objective defined in your statement of work! It is good to design learning objectives - these are your grid lines in PPT. For example, your learning objectives may be: 1. Explain the selling process to village entrepreneurs. 2. Recruit village entrepreneurs as per the specified process. 3. Explain the steps to maintain sales records. These are your learning objectives that your learners will achieve by the end of the training. While it is important to address the learning objectives, keep in mind the overall goal of the program as you design the modules - which is to make the salespeople more productive.

4. Do not handle your learners with kid gloves: Your learners are adults so treat them like adults.

- Offer genuine choices - not forced choices or invalid choices. For example, do not offer learners the choice of an unstructured path knowing very well that the course design is linear.

- Don't have no-brainers as practice exercises - just for the sake of practice.

- Focus on "Do" rather than on "See" - Adult learners prefer learning through metacognition

- Do not provide examples that look good in a grade school workbook. Give them real life problems and expect them to come up with real life solutions.

5. Explore and experiment: Experiment using music, videos, audio, visuals that map to your learners' expectations. Do not be afraid of bold design. In fact, one of the key outcomes of learner analysis is the visual strategy of the course. Once we decided to do away with the conventional "Back" and "Next" buttons on the interface of an online training program; instead learners navigated based on the scent of information on each screen. Similarly, for a classroom training, we supplemented the classroom mode with some outdoor activities where the learners had to sell real-life products in real time! Explore various methods of testing the course. Your very stringent QA round can only help detect bugs and errors, they cannot spot hurdles to learning that your learners encounter while going through the course. Go ahead and let your learners test the course. You'll be surprised at what you observe - it can be a humbling and enlightening experience!

Design Thinking!

I am a great fan of Ideo. I love the way they have institutionalized design. What can be more charming than the ability to summon creativity at will! I learned early in life at my art Fine Arts academy that creativity is not an art, it is a craft. Although I was always fascinated at how our Aquilla Sir could transform his thoughts on paper ever so effortlessly, I grew up to realize that it's the thinking behind the creation that really makes a difference.

This was further reinforced in my journalism school. Our prof Mr Adarsh Varma (one of the founding journos at Pioneer and stone drunk even at 12 noon) reiterated for the umpteenth time that "editors are not born, they are made!" You only need to cultivate an eye for detail to make the cut. This stayed with me as I ran around as a reporter trying to cover stories and then trying to have them published without being hacked into a quarter of the original. That's when one veteran shared with me his pearls of wisdom - it's not how good you write or what facts you present, it's about the structure you follow to make the story relevant for your reader.

When I joined a corporate in 98 as a tentative editor in an unexciting domain of computer-based training, I did not think I would survive the mundane system. More so as editing meant thumbing through 1000 pages of MSTP and then trying to convince a bunch of computer-crazy youngsters that uncheck and deselect are grammatically incorrect! Slowly, this turned out to be my biggest challenge ever - trying to convince a group of young GNIITians (hired as instructional designers but aspiring to become programmers) that they too could write. And, break their beliefs that writers are either born or are English majors! The next challenge was to teach them to design courses. I could see them flinch when asked to design the experience of baking a cake. They would invariably begin with throwing in flour, butter, eggs and sugar together. Slowly, they started "thinking" design.

Today, many years later I sense deja vu when a client asks me to cut down research and analysis and get down to design. "Why don't you cut the crap and get a creative chap to just design the solution?" Strangely, this does not frustrate me any longer. I jump at this opportunity to share my belief about design thinking. This philosophy holds true as we groom future IDs and designers at Kern.

This reinforces what David Kelly has to say - move away from thinking of yourself as designers to design thinkers. Design is a systematic scientific process. You can follow a methodology or a defined process and rest assured that you can arrive at a design solution. And, if you look at the creative success of Ideo and their huge portfolio of award winning work, you certainly want to believe that a solid methodology can yield the most creative of ideas. At Kern, we too have seen the success of our structured approach towards solving many complex design problems.

Designing Training Delivered Using Web 2.0 Tools

This is the first in the series on learning, training, and designing instructions in the Web 2.0 environment.

I remember having a discussion with Vaishnavi about how instructional design for Web 2.0-based learning should be different from that of traditional learning (classroom training and eLearning).

The fact remains that learning is about learners and not about tools or technology. Also, web 2.0 is not about a tool or technology, it is about the philosophy where technology empowers learners to do much more than just view and read off the web. While I believe that the basic premise for designing instructions will remain the same, the instructional strategies used will depend a lot on the learning environment, the changing profile of learners, and the new age Internet tools that also act as learning tools.

Understanding learners will always be (and has always been) the most critical aspect of designing training. This involves identifying their learning needs and providing solutions that address their needs. In web 2.0 scenario, the scope for instructional designers has vastly increased because the learner behavior is changing. Today, learners are in the “rip, mix, and publish” era; they are more empowered than before. They are not content with passive viewing of information; they want to contribute actively to their learning process. So, how does this change the way they learn?

The biggest change is the shift from uni-directional, top-down, centralized and structured learning to “informal learning”. Informal learning is learner-driven. It is an on-going process, it may or may not follow a structured path, it may or may not have a beginning and an ending, it may or may not be monitored and guided, and it may be conscious or unconscious. How do these dynamics impact the role of an instructional designer?*

1) Instructional designer has to keep in mind the changing behavior and profile of the learner. The learner wants more control over his learning today. Therefore, learning design has to facilitate learner control, cater for the learner 2.0.

2) ID has a lot of freedom to explore the various delivery methods while designing a learning solution. Therefore, ID needs to be aware of the potential of the tools and technology available in web 2.0.

3) While the basic principles of ID hold good as a guiding principle, IDs need to explore and innovate other development methodologies to design and deliver learning. The design process needs to be more dynamic and innovative to be able to exploit the advantages that each of these tools offer.

* Will update this post with more research and examples soon.

Designing Learning for N-Gen Learners

One of the recent posts on Work Literacy titled Presentation Literacies for the 21st Century (don’t be misled by the title :)) has an interesting article Why Professor Johnny Can't Read. This article focuses on the gap between our generation of “read and write” traditional learners and the new age “scan and share” digital learners. This article set me thinking about how to design and deliver learning differently for the N-Gen learners.

1. Capturing learner’s needs: Currently, understanding learner’s needs through contextual inquiry is a key step in our development process. This step is equally relevant to understand the behavior and learning pattern of N-Gen learners. The outcome of this step will effectively determine the design and mode of delivery of learning. What is critical here is to ensure that the researchers conducting contextual inquiry are well-versed with the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the digital world. Else, chances are that they would fail to observer key behavior patterns.

2. Mode of delivery: Any delivery mode that is non-inclusive may not be an effective way of delivering learning for this segment. We need a mode that ensures limitless access to outside information, collaboration, or facilitates social interaction. However, these modes should be integrated in the learning modules and not plugged in as special features. For example, an eLearning module deployed on an LMS with built-in chat and discussion board does not qualify as a collaborative learning environment. However, an online game that has the option of inviting others to join in or a web-based module that motivates learners to have online discussion or an informal learning environment that challenges learners to work in groups are good candidates for collaborative modes of learning. What is critical here is to integrate collaboration and sharing well within the design and delivery. (There is an interesting research on Informal Learning in Digital Era (Lence Miloseva and Miika Lehtonen)

3. Instructional Designers: Just as researchers need to have a fair knowledge of the digital world, instructional designers too must belong to this era to appreciate learners’ needs better. Since there is a huge shift in the way traditional instructions are designed, instructional designers need to be well-equipped to handle and appreciate the current needs of learners. It is one thing to be aware of the new age learning environment and another to belong to this environment. Therefore, IDs should make an effort to belong to this environment to relate to learners’ needs and behavior better.

4. Learning Design: Since N-Gen learners are highly active in the virtual world than in the real world, self-paced, unidirectional learning may no longer be effective for this breed of information foragers. IDs need to remember that N-Gen learners enjoy the challenge of finding information, linking them, sharing them, analyzing them and flaunting them. They have very little patience with linear unidirectional learning. What is critical is to ensure that the learning environment facilitates all this yet meet its objective of effective learning.