The Total Learner Experience

5 Steps for Rapid Needs Analysis

In today's world it's almost impossible to carve out enough time in a project schedule to perform a comperehensive needs analysis. Many people are forced to perform iterative analysis as they deliver. To help ensure the effectiveness of your learning experience, consider this 5-step rapid needs analysis process when you find time is of the essence:

1. Identify the improvement opportunity.
   • Identify and clearly state the issue or improvement opportunity, and the desired organizational outcome. It's easy to assume that all the key stakeholders know what the issue or opportunity is, but there can be significant variations in people's viewpoints. Many times stakeholders have general expectations in their heads (such as "our managers need to be more professional") that require you to drill down to specific behaviors. Performance issues or opportunities need to be clearly stated in terms of measurable behaviors, and agreed upon by all the stakeholders.
2.     Collect the performance data.
   • There are a variety of methods available for data collection, including interviews, observation, surveys and other source documents. Select the best methods for the particular organization and situation. Whenever possible, conduct interviews because they enable you to ask follow-up questions and provide richer data. The key is to gather just enough needed data. Gather information from a variety of sources, including managers, supervisors, accomplished performers, and typical performers. Relying solely on the performers themselves can lead to major gaps because people can't easily articulate why they do what they do, and they make assumptions about what they know versus what a newcomer to the job would know.
3. Analyze the data.
   • Once you have documented the data, look for consistencies and inconsistencies within the findings and avoid jumping to conclusions. Next, identify the performance gaps by comparing what people are doing to what they should be doing.
4. Conduct a cause analysis.
   • Before you select solutions for closing the performance gap, identify the causes for the gap. Consider whether the cause is due to a lack of skill or knowledge, or if there are motivational or other workplace obstacles to achieving desired performance.
5. Recommend the solution.
   • Based on the causes for the performance gap, identify appropriate solutions. Keep in mind how the performance issue links back to organizational results and needs to ensure you propose solutions that are both realistic and relevant. You should almost always recommend multiple solutions, because there are usually multiple causes for the performance gap.

Going Blended: Questions to Help Define Your Learning Strategy

I often work with clients who have questions and are interested in blended learning solutions. Here, I've outlined what I believe are a few positives and challenges for going blended, and then I leave you with questions you can ask yourself to help determine the best path to follow.

Classroom Training Positives:

• Face to face. The Instructor can see/recognize when a student is understanding the material or not, and offer a personal touch.
• Classroom training is the current comfort zone in many organizations. Students may be more accustomed to it, and may not feel comfortable with online training.
• Classroom training often comes with a manual that students can use to refer to after the class is over.

Classroom Training Challenges:

• Time away from the office.
• Travel expenses when necessary.
• Training is more generalized in order to reach a broader audience. A student may find it necessary to sit through half the class before the Instructor hits upon what they really came to learn.
• The cost involved in creating a classroom course can be absorbent. Time spent on development, cost of materials, etc.
• The cost involved in contracting an outside vendor to teach specific classes can have a large impact on a training budget.
• Deciding what courses to develop and train in-house is often limited due to budget constraints, which means you will need to choose wisely where/when to allocate resources.

Virtual, CBT, or Online Training Positives:

• Typically these courses are offered anytime, anywhere, so scheduling is not a problem.
• The cost involved in contracting with an outside vendor for online courses is often volumetric driven. This means you can often offer hundreds of courses per user for often the same price you pay for one course offered via classroom taught by an outside vendor. 
• Broader selection also means that you can use online courses to supplement classroom training.
• Online courses often allow the student to take an assessment, which enables them to hone in on the specific lessons they really need to learn while by-passing the lessons they already have sufficient knowledge within.

Virtual, CBT, or Online Training Challenges:

• Online learning sometimes means learning a new technology. This can cause some to see it as a stumbling block rather than a building block.
• Students may feel online learning is not personal enough.
• Students may lack the discipline to work through online courses on a regular basis. Sometimes they are challenged to find the time to dedicate.

So here are a few questions I would suggest you ask yourself in order to better understand how you may want to build your training program:

1. What is your current budget?
2. Can you afford classroom training?
3. If yes, how many and which classes would you have resources to create and offer? 
4. For those classes you are not able to offer, what virtual or online courses can help supplement your classroom training?
5. Are there any virtual or online courses that would complement your classroom training? For example, would they make good pre-requisites or post follow-up reference material?
6. How many students do you support? Are they global?
7. What initiatives will you need to consider in this training year/cycle? One-time (like an office upgrade), short-term (like leadership training for managers), or on-going (like those tied to job families). What courses would support those initiatives?
8. What is your organizational culture and how do they currently "like to learn"?
9. What is your vision for your training program?

Understanding the audience and plugging in the appropriate training for them is key for success.

How Effective is Your Sales Training? Really.

A 2011 Aberdeen survey on the impact of sales training shows that the firms that enjoy the most effective return on performance improvement among their salesforce share these characteristics:

• 91% focus on instructor-led training as the most effective training modality
• 85% have defined competencies and training for each sales role
• 83% use of a formal sales methodology - either homegrown or from an external provider

Salespeople drive the company’s revenue. The last thing a performance-focused learning organization should do is waste a salesperson’s time with training that is redundant, not relevant to the individual’s specific knowledge and skills, and doesn’t help them with a knowledge or skill gap they may have. My suggestion is to stop and reflect on what you’re doing with your sales training and make sure you are performance-focused and prepared to enable the salesforce you support to gain a high-impact return on the training you provide them. Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you currently working on gaining executive-level support for your sales training initiatives?
• Do you share sales performance metrics throughout your organization?
• Do you have a centralized repository for your sales training content?
• Is your sales training available in the audience’s workstream (salesforce.com, etc.)?
• Is your curriculum based on all relevant job roles?
• Does your organization support a formal “train the trainer” environment?

The basis for successful return for the business from training is to effectively partner with the salesforce (both accomplished and not-so accomplished performers, as well as leadership) so you can granularly discover the competencies of the salesforce, and react to those existing competencies so you can build the right capabilities to drive business. Anything else you’re doing is inappropriate. Your learning system needs to have accountability and responsibility built-in.

An ongoing problem with existing sales operations is often broader than what traditional “training” can solve for. Hiring, compensating, motivating and supporting the adaptability to today's highly competitive selling environment are all key to enjoying a high-performing sales culture. Maintaining these skills can be aided by training, however, ensuring the right personalities are hired that can achieve these skills is often not a function of training. Training organizations are classically in a “build” mentality. More attention needs to be spent on who the company is hiring to begin with.

To this end, many companies deploy a wide variety of sales training solutions focused on influencing the behavior of their sales force. Without appropriate competency mapping, how do you know what capabilities you have in the field? How can you afford to keep pretending you’re doing the right thing when it comes to effective support for your sales operation?

On Story

Recently, I tweeted on what I feel are five necessary elements of a disruptive learning experience:

1. Story
2. Journey
3. Failure
4. Redemption
5. Resolution

I’ll expand a bit here on what I mean by Story.

Story unlocks creative consciousness
Many of us that work on the creative side of writing and instructional design (and I argue that proper instructional design requires good writing) toil with what makes story most effective for our audiences. The very idea of story is about discovering the essence of what makes us human: good writing drops the reader directly into the heart of the matter, with tension, romanticism, impracticality, and the power of emotions guiding the journey. Good writing leaves behind a residue of memory upon which all our experiences are built.

In telling stories, we conflate passion, bring about calamity and acts of treachery and expose the tragic power of conflict and memory. Good stories induce the solitude of forgetting -- which is critical to discovering a deeper understanding of the world and our choices, problems, joys. In effect, we transfer our selves to others with effective storytelling. We play an active present-tense role in the composition of who we are and the characteristics we desire in others.

Circumstances often force a consciousness upon us. The more measures we take to understand, the more elusive understanding often becomes. Story allows us to compose our own works of philosophy. The story of you, how you come into sharper focus, comes from a play of reflections on your experiences. Those experiences subconsciously informs the very composition of every story you create.

Story opens doors
What is a story, what is it to be an integral person? What composes our self, and our own identity? There is a distressingly fragile barrier between freedom and self-censorship—it’s a constant conflict based on environment and predicament. How wide the door opens is based on a myriad of personal and professional conditions. The point, realistically, is to learn how to open the door completely.

Story advances humanity
Story delivers social interaction, knowledge and happiness. It’s immoral not to advance story, and not to use it effectively to further our human condition. Educators have a moral imperative to be precocious, brilliant, and bracingly idealistic when advancing how story can bring our audiences a broader knowledge and ability to accelerate their own advancement.

Story was used for thousands of years before it was finally invented -- and using it effectively is key to the creation of a powerful learning experience.

Instructional Design Rules to Break

The world of instructional design is overrun with endless rules. Many rules are steeped in years of research and driven by appropriate learning theory. However, we think there are some rules that are OK to be bent, twisted, or broken to fit specific needs. There’s an old saying that in order to break the rules, you need to know them. In this series, we are going to take some long-lived rules of Instructional Design and discuss the when and how to break them. Agree or disagree? Let us know!

Rule #1: “Avoid Direct Instruction”

Direct Instruction (DI), is the explicit teaching of a skill-set using lectures or demonstrations of the material, rather than exploratory models such as inquiry-based learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Direct_instruction&oldid=526504905). Think of the last “training class” you sat thru while a droning facilitator dumped data from a seemingly endless PowerPoint deck. Many Instructional Designers try to avoid DI at all costs because it’s seen as old-fashioned, ineffective and didactic. Exploratory learning came along in reaction to the DI “sage on the stage” model, and has been overused to such an extent that many see it as the only way to design effective instruction. However, by rejecting DI because of an assumption that it leads to a poor design, you lose out on its distinct advantages.

Research tells us that learners must construct their own understanding in order to truly learn. In the real world, learners working through exploratory models often go down rabbit holes, learning valuable information and skills, but ones that may not be relevant to the task at hand. Exploratory learning is critically important when you want learners to be invested in the topic and when skills are more important than fact. But for learning data and facts, DI cannot be beat.

DI can save time and effectively transmit data, facts and procedures. We’re not arguing that DI should be used exclusively. Many learning organizations use DI exclusively (and, in our opinion, ineffectively) in the form of PowerPoint-style data dumps with little interactivity. A better model is to create an exercise that encourages the learner to explore a relevant case study, view targeted direct instruction related to the case, conduct problem-solving and reflective group work, and then finally prepare a presentation or teach-back to their peers. Don’t think you have to avoid DI at all costs, just be sure to integrate it effectively with interactive activities and exercises.

This series is co-written with Wiggle. Check back for the next rule to break: Get Buy-in From All Your Stakeholders.

The Mobile Landscape for Instructional Design

The last few years have been quite revolutionary for the field of instructional design. Since the release of the iPhone in 2007, the “mobile revolution” has spawned an entire new design and delivery mechanism for training. Additionally, the focus on developing “courses” has evolved to developing “learning applications” and more "chunkified" content experiences. With this rapid pace of change occurring, it can be somewhat overwhelming to pause long enough to figure out how to leverage emerging technology in a meaningful way that appropriately supports the mobile workforce.

As we continue the transformation away from tethered to mobile computing, there are a few "new normals" for those of us that design learning experiences:

• Over the next 5-10 years more people will be typing on glass than keyboards.
• This year, over one billion Internet users will connect only through mobile devices. That’s half of all Internet users in the world. In Indonesia and Southeast Asia the majority of Internet access already occurs via mobile devices.
• The way you conceptualize content experiences now should be mobile-first, rather than PC first. The PC era is behind us.
• Most of the content that’s going to be developed over the next decade is going to be built for connected, mobile devices.
• You should be less concerned with the actual devices people are using, and more concerned with the operating systems on those devices.
• When people are using mobile devices, they are usually on the go or multitasking with limited attention spans. I recommend you focus on two strategies as it applies to mobile learning:
  • Spatial data, which more than location-awareness, allows learners to access data around them, and
  • Smarter search and social integration with search. You don't want to create data optimized for specific devices -- you want learners to easily access content relevant for them regardless of the screen they're on, wherever they are.
• The two primary elements of mobile socialization are the user’s social graph and their feed. Mobile devices need to integrate these elements seamlessly to create cross-device social experiences. The blending of people's digital life and who they really are, the things they do, and what they need is the real mobile revolution. It’s a new form of communication, adopted en masse because of its naturalness. Although there’s no common technology language yet, the ideal of social communities is anything but new.
• Connected, mobile devices is the primary way consumers will connect to your content in the future.
• There are now more searches conducted on mobile devices than on PCs.
• Mobile devices are basically appliances. A lot of the processing that’s happening on the devices is happening in the cloud.
• Hundreds of millions of users still use features phones, and feature phones will continue to be a major source of new-to-net users in the coming years.
• People want their achievements to be transportable and under their control.

Why Change Is Hard

The Internet has transformed almost every aspect of our lives, from how we work and play, to how we connect with each other professionally and personally. This change is transformational on a scale rarely seen in human history and compares to the invention of movable type, the printing press and the ability to transmit recorded sound and images.

Based on this change, corporate learning and development (L&D) organizations need to recognize the three forces fueling the learning transformation that is happening now:

• Globalization
  • Global access to markets and talent is reshaping the fundamentals of business operations
• Demographics
  • Multiple generations (up to five by 2020) will be working side-by-side in organizations, creating a unique talent development challenge
• Social Media
  • Connecting employees, customers, and partners for immediate communication

To attract, develop and retain a productive workforce in the face of transformational change such as this, your HR strategy should align itself to these three forces. Developing people in today’s work world means adapting rapidly to support the business’s imperatives. To do this, the L&D organization must adapt its business model. This affects everything, including:

• How learning is designed and delivered
• Developing on-demand learning requirements
• Reconsidering the shelf life of learning products
• Creating personalized learning

This means L&D will need to redefine, and in many instances, reallocate budgets to invest more in informal learning structures and new learning design models, including re-thinking the “traditional” definition of eLearning to consider:

• Social and collaborative learning
• Serious gaming
• Immediate learning
• Short content bursts rather than courses
• Availability on multiple devices
• User generated content

Professional learning roles are changing as well. Sample new skill sets for L&D include:

• Being adept at using the tools of learners
• Focusing on end results and less on event management
• More crowdsourcing

Sample new job roles for L&D include:

• Community gardeners
• Chief technologists
• App developers

The audiences L&D organizations support are now:

• Comfortable with weightless technologies such as mobile devices, tablets and laptops
• Expecting those technologies to be available to them at work and in their learning opportunities
• Valuing training and development, particularly coaching and mentoring
• Members of social networking sites
• Full of digital expectations, not necessarily digital skills

To support the global aspect of these changes, L&D needs to:

• Provide practice to proficiency by using interactive learning experiences
• Minimize the need to travel to training
• Use instructors to teach context and application, not knowledge or procedural transfer
• Use selection and on-boarding to increase employee speed-to-competency
• Help balance work:life integration

As we know, change can be difficult at any time for individuals, but also for organizations, because patterns are set and some are afraid of the unknown. However, change can be managed appropriately and aligned to the imperatives of the business as long as the team chartered with supporting learning are proactive and prepared for what’s coming.

Don't Be Half-Assessed

Assessment is used to measure learning outcomes, but if you see it only as a testing tool you’re missing half its value. Assessment should not be punitive; it should uncover the learner’s strengths and help identify areas for improvement. Well planned and integrated assessment creates opportunities for learners to reflect on their learning, apply new skills and knowledge, and also enables the business to recognize ROI on the learning intervention. Adapting existing models can take you much further than re-creating the wheel. In this post, we examine some guiding principles for effective assessment.

An excellent example of assessment as a way to support learning goals is Adobe’s Certified Associate practice tests. Learners can take a certification exam without any structured practice, but there is also an unlimited certification prep test package. The practice test closely mimics the structure of the final exam. Both combine multiple choice questions and simulations of the Adobe environment. The multiple choice questions require the learner to demonstrate knowledge of design concepts and the production process. The simulations require the learner to complete a task within the simulated software application interface. Keyboard shortcuts are disabled, but otherwise, learners can use any correct method they choose to complete the task, using menus or panels as appropriate.

Another good example is the Sun (now Oracle) Java certification paths. Each path contains a test prep “kit” that includes preparation recommendations, additional resources, a practice test, and a re-take policy. Each path is designed to prepare the learner to achieve a specific level of certification, and used as a benchmark against industry standards. These certifications are recognized by employers and can advance a person in their career.

Accreditation or certification can be used to validate mastery of a topic, but this is not the only way that assessment can be useful. By seeing assessment an integral part of instruction, we can support the learner’s career development while measuring true performance for the business.  

Factors that make an ASSESSMENT tool also a useful INSTRUCTIONAL tool are:

• Authenticity
  • The learner performs the task in context, not recalling theory, but actually demonstrating competency.
• Open ended
  • Because the end product is assessed, not the method used to get there, learners are able to use whatever menus or panels they choose.
• Learning while doing
  • Learners use contextual clues and critical thinking to complete tasks. They may not know how to adjust alpha levels in Photoshop, but they may know to investigate the color panel to find them.
• Self-reporting
  • Learners can mark questions that they’d like to return to if they have time or opportunity.
• Cumulative time
  • The test is timed with one master clock, not with individual times for certain sections or items.
• Feedback
  • Learners receive feedback on each item, with notes about the correct answer.
• Tracking
  • Performance from one practice test to another is tracked.

Assessment is not something that should only occur in a testing situation, indicating pass/fail rates, but it should be integrated throughout instruction to allow the learner to know how they are doing, so they can learn more effectively. Don’t leave your learner half-assessed!

This post is also available on Wiggle Learning.

 

Create Losing Designs

We spend a great deal of time planning for learner success. Do we ever create the ability for learners to lose? Should we?

Our society puts a premium on “winning” -- nowadays it seems like every team gets a trophy -- not just the winner. Americans are culturally bound to the ideal of winning. However, in the real world people lose all of the time: athletes lose games and tournaments, politicians lose elections. In high stakes situations like these, losing has a real consequence. How does this affect learning?

Low stakes losing occurs every day. When we lose, we tend to either give up, or continue to practice to overcome the failure. Any casual gamer is familiar with losing and attempting to overcome the loss by quickly replaying the game. Losing, in this context, can be a big motivator, driving the will to practice, which can lead to increased skill. Learning to lose effectively is actually a skill in itself. Resiliency in the face of losing and using strategies to improve is an important life lesson and professional skill. If losing always equates to complete failure, then learners stop striving, stop attempting creative solutions, and see themselves as incapable.

In learning design, a primary goal should be to create an atmosphere where losing is acceptable and intrinsically motivates the learner to try again. The potential learning value from this type of experience is measured not by how often the player loses, but by how much they improve through repeated practice.

In your training design include opportunities for low stakes losing before learners are thrust into their high stakes, real-world situations -- be it a qualifying exam or on the job performance.

Recommendations for a “losing” design:

• Make content available on demand so that learners can review material as needed
  • A common mistake is being overly controlling with content. If the goal is for learners to gain knowledge and skills, shouldn’t they have free access to the tools that can make that happen?
• Communicate how the learner is performing relative to passing scores or via peer-to-peer review as appropriate
  • By communicating how comparatively well they are doing, learners can better sense where they can improve. This also gets their competitive juices flowing.
• Allow plenty of practice opportunities before the final assessment occurs
  • If the only time that learners can demonstrate knowledge is a final graded test, their opportunities to “lose” are reduced to one high stakes moment. Build in low stakes assessment opportunities that prepare learners for the one that counts.
  This post also appears on Wiggle Learning.

On Winning

“Training” and “competition” are not usually words that are associated with each other. However, competition is an innate motivator and humans by nature enjoy winning.

Certain aspects of winning are universal to all competitive activities, including learning. A recent Newsweek article about winning provides insight into how instructional designers can create more engaging training. The author notes that winning by itself is not the most compelling impetus, but that winning while a competitor loses is more satisfying (this would seem obvious to anyone with siblings).

Rather than using  a “task completion” metaphor, instructional designers should use a gaming and winning metaphor when designing training. Rote tasks can be made more engaging if instead of simply reading and reacting in a safe environment, the learner triumphs over a tension-filled activity. Similarly, you can provide competitive opportunities with other learners virtually.

In many K-12 situations “safe” learning environments take out so much of the excitement of competition and rating. You have an obligation to make sure every beginner learner succeeds, but you also have an obligation to groom the special talents that individuals have as well.

How do you turn cognitive tasks into challenge?

Learning objectives can remain the same, but it’s the way that it is presented that changes. You don't have to completely redesign your training to make it more challenging. Consider these simple ideas:

Allow learners to be wrong

• Allow and penalize for incorrect answers. If learners can complete a course by merely clicking through content, they have little reason to engage with the content. Activities that allow for “failure” can create “good tension”.

Add variable scoring

• Reward learners for learning more difficult material by acknowledging that all content is not equal.

Add timed components for some activities

• While not appropriate for all activities, it does create a feeling of tension.

Allow for replay opportunities

• This reduces some of the negative aspects of the capability for “failure” allowed by other competitive components.

Create opportunities to share leaderboard scores outside of the learning environment

• Rather than learning taking place within a silo, authentic learning events can bleed into the larger community.

A simple multiple choice game can be either boring or competitive with a simple design tweak:

Boring

• The learner answers a question and then views the answers tagged with "correct" and "incorrect" feedback.

Competitive

• The learner answers a question. They receive variable points based upon the correctness of the answer, difficulty of the challenge and the speed with which they answered. They are then shown their score relative to other learners. The feedback is also contextual and continues the gameplay.

Take some lessons from this short quiz. How many times did you feel compelled to play?

This post also appears on Wiggle Learning.