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Spring 2008 |
Synchronism
design for
learning |
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In this issue:
Ask someone who designs learning for a living whether good instructional design is important and (hopefully) they'll say 'of course.' But is there a danger that we take for granted that other people in the organisation will share this commitment? It recently occurred to me that learning specialists may have a role to play in educating decision makers on the value that good instructional design can bring. How do we ensure we have sufficient resources and support to produce an excellent learning experience, rather than an 'okay' one? How does a course developed in line with the best instructional design principles compare to a course put together by a less experienced designer? How can we justify additional time and cost which may be needed for a well designed course?
It seems to me we may need to make a 'business case' for instructional design. A well designed course:
Good design should contribute to a higher likelihood of learning outcomes being achieved. But how to make the business case? Is it fair to say that one key advantage of a well designed course is that learning outcomes will be achieved in less time? If so, this gives us some quantifiable benefits, including:
In addition to this an
experienced instructional designed should be able to maximise the benefit
from time they spend with (usually scarce) Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
A key part of the Instructional Designer's role is to provide the business
with leverage on the SMEs experience, skills and time.
There are some major benefits of well designed learning that are more difficult to quantify, but just as real:
What do you think? Do you agree? Do you think these are understood by all of the decision makers you work with on a daily basis? These are intended to be thought starters - if you can think of additional benefits, please feel free to let me know and I'll share them through the website.
Need more help convincing
people on the importance of instructional design? My favourite elearning blog
recently had a posting entitled What
Everybody Ought to Know About Instructional Design which includes a great
activity to illustrate the points made.
Okay, some of you may be surprised at this heading (especially if you've had me work on your elearning strategy!). So maybe I should be clearer - what you do need is a learning strategy (take the 'e' out). Once you have a clearly articulated learning strategy the 'e' part can simply be the way in which you take advantage of learning technology.
I think there is a risk
that some organisations are developing elearning strategy in the absence of
an overall learning and development strategy. When we look at what they're
doing under the banner of 'elearning strategy' we usually see one or more
of the following:
These are all very important aspects of introducing (or maintaining) elearning in an organisation - there is no doubt we need to spend time on these. But without an overall learning strategy, we could be making some very poor (or expensive) decisions along the way. A true learning and development strategy will help your organisation identify and prioritise learning requirements and provides a context in which elearning decisions can be made. As part of your learning strategy you may want to measure gaps between full competence and current performance for key roles and decide how to address those gaps. Or you may take a view of the organisational capability required to support your company's objectives and strategies and develop your learning strategy accordingly. Your learning and development strategy may be in line with a corporate emphasis on talent management and retention. Or you may be trying to move your organisation from seeing learning as a number of events to seeing learning as an ongoing process.
Once you have a learning
and development strategy, the elearning part should be fairly straight forward.
Yes, you'll have to do the work to get the infrastructure in place (not always
so simple!), but you'll have a framework in which to make key decisions on
how to best utilise elearning. And the latest 'rapid development' style of
authoring tools should mean that anyone in your existing training team (with
instructional design expertise) will soon be able to develop elearning courses
as easily as they develop classroom materials.
Here are some of the websites and resources I've found helpful in recent months:
Note: Links to resources and other sites are offered in the spirit of sharing information. Inclusion of a site in this newsletter should not be regarded as an endorsement by Synchronism of any product, service or opinion offered by the linked site.