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Evaluating Training Effectivenes

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    Andrew Jackson


    Recent posts by Andrew Jackson

    1 min read

    Articulate Storyline Training: Masters and Layouts In Action

    By Andrew Jackson on Wed, Jun 8,2016

    In the previous post on this blog about Articulate Storyline training, I wrote about Storyline masters and layouts, their uses and how they are different from templates.

    There's also a short video to help explain the concept.

    Below you can watch another short video showing masters and layouts in action:

     

     

     

     

    If you'd like to watch more short videos providing training on Articulate's Storyline application, go to our YouTube channel.

     

    This video first appeared as part of an article on the Training Zone  website.

    Topics: e-learning e-learning software
    3 min read

    Articulate Storyline Training: Masters and Layouts Explained

    By Andrew Jackson on Thu, Jun 2,2016

     

    Many people are familiar with the idea of a software template. This is a great way of providing some pre-existing structure for the creation of documents, PowerPoint presentations or pieces of e-learning.

    And like many authoring tools, Storyline has template functionality, allowing you to create a high degree of consistency in how your courses look and function. In short, templates get plenty of attention – for very good reasons. 

    However, software features that get lots of attention aren’t necessarily the only (or the best) way to achieve your goals. Many people using templates might be better off using a Storyline feature which tends to be overshadowed by templates: namely masters and layouts. 

    Spot the difference

    So what’s the difference between the two features and why would you bother with masters and layouts when you’ve already got templates to help you.

    The key thing to remember about a Storyline template? It’s a way to save and share ALL elements of a Storyline project. When you decide to save a project (large or small) as a template, absolutely every element of that project is saved within the template – not only content, but also things like triggers, navigation, variables etc.

    So you would use a template when you want to save the exact structure and functionality of your project. When you want to lock-down design and restrict flexibility. When you want to provide a complete course blueprint that others can work from. In short, templates are an easy and robust way of sharing a complete project and all its elements.

    But what about if you like the idea of being able to create some time-saving consistency, but still need a reasonable degree of flexibility in how you create and populate slides within your project.

    If this sounds like your goal, then masters and layouts may well be a better option for you than a template.

    Masters and layouts explained

    You’ve probably heard of a master slide and may already be clear about it’s function. But its likely you’ll be less clear about layouts and their function. So before we go any further here’s a quick video for you to watch explaining exactly what masters and layouts are all about. 

     

     

     

    As you will have gathered from the video above, a master slide and its associated layouts provide an easy way to consistently set the placement of slide content and then apply it to selected slides within your course.

    Let’s just take a minute to review masters slides first, followed by layouts

    All about master slides

    Master slides are great for any global content that needs to appear on every slide in your course. A master slide can save you going through your course and manually putting the same pieces of content onto every slide. And because the content on a master slide is managed centrally, the placement of that content will be precise and consistent throughout your course.

    So master slides are extremely useful, but a little bit limiting. The reason for this? There is probably not that much identical content that will need to appear on every single slide of your course.

    However, it’s quite likely that you will have quite a bit of identical content that does need to appear on certain individual slides, say, or all the slides in a specific scene. 

    All about layouts

    That’s why you can add layouts below your master slide. The real power of the master slide comes with its associated layouts. Layouts give you targeted control over and flexibility with the content that needs to appear on a given individual slide or slides in a scene.

    It should come as no surprise, then that planning is the key to success with both masters and layouts. To get their real benefit, you need to have your course well planned out in advance, so you are clear from the word go which pieces of content will consistently need to appear where.

    Some extra points to remember

    There are a couple of other important points to make here. The first is that masters and layouts are not just about the consistent placement of content. You can also add triggers to the content on your masters and layouts making this functionality available on selected slides as well.

    The second point is about the flexibility I mentioned earlier. Even when you have applied a master or layout to a slide, you can still add more content, triggers or layers to that individual slide.

    So you’ll often end up with individual slides which are a flexible combination of preformatted content and triggers drawn from a master and its layouts and content and triggers which are specific to just that individual slide.

    In summary, if what you need is flexibility and creativity and not the locked-down, restrictive approach that templates are designed to achieve, then masters and layouts are likely to be for you.

     

    This article first appeared on the Training Zone website.

    Topics: e-learning e-learning software
    3 min read

    Custom E-Learning Design: Is Your Authoring Tool Holding You Back?

    By Andrew Jackson on Thu, May 26,2016

    Increasingly, if you are working in a learning and development role associated with designing and developing e-learning, you’ll probably be expected to have some ability in using an authoring tool.

    This should be good a thing. It increases your overall skill set and more important, it enables you to create more effective learning for your learners.

    But what about if this isn’t what is happening. What about if your e-learning authoring tool is actually holding you back?

    This might seem like an odd question to ask. Surely an ability to use an authoring tool will mean you are creating really effective e-learning. Not necessarily.

    First, it’s your instructional design skills that should determine the effectiveness and quality of the e-learning you create.

    But what about if you are not going down the road your instructional design leads you because you find yourself thinking, “No point in doing that because I’ve no idea how to implement it in my authoring tool. Better stick with a less ambitious design because I know how to do that.”

    Hey presto, before you know it, your authoring tool is most definitely holding you back. The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.

    The problem with legacy authoring tools

    Going back 10 or 15 years, most easy-to-use authoring tools were so limited in their functionality, they really restricted truly creative instructional design thinking.

    Only if you were lucky enough to work in an organisation with a massive budget for creating e-learning and unrestricted access to programmers could you really pull off much that was original or really effective.

    This is one of the key reasons we have had years of deathly boring e-learning. Lots of slides with dense text and stock photos. A Back and Next button applied to each slide – and not much else.

    The emerging new breed of tools

    Fortunately, the world of authoring tools is changing. While there are still far too many rubbish ones out there, we are seeing a new breed emerge. Much more powerful. Fantastic functionality. Much fewer limits on what you can achieve with your e-learning.

    So here’s the rub. Lots of people using one of these new style of authoring tools don’t really know about some of the more powerful features available to them. Instead they are still churning out e-learning, barely removed from the deathly dull variety just described above.

    What a pity! This is like owning a Porsche and only ever driving it around your local neighbourhood at about 20 miles an hour.

    Getting the most from your authoring tool

    So what’s the solution? Well, it’s twofold. First, you really need to make sure your instructional design thinking is up-to-date and fit for creating e-learning that is more focused on delivering practice of skills, than delivering screens of knowledge.

    And, by the way, if you need some help with this, you can download a free 12 page guide to creating boredom-busting e-learning here.

    Second, it’s time to up your game and start learning about the more powerful features of your authoring tool.

    To help you with this, I’ll be writing three more articles focused around one of the most popular of this new breed of authoring tool, Articulate’s Storyline.

    Why focus on Storyline?

    Why the focus on Storyline? It may not be absolutely the most sophisticated and capable of all the tools out there, but it does offer a great balance between being relatively easy to learn and achieving well above average functionality and interaction.

    In each of the articles that follow this one, I’ll be focusing on a different Storyline feature. Features that you’ve quite possibly heard of or maybe even used a little.

    But you may not be aware of their real power and how they can help you create much more effective e-learning. Features which can really help liberate your instructional design thinking and save your learners from the boredom of endless knowledge presentation.

    The best bit of all this? Once you feel confident in your ability to get your authoring tool to implement your instructional design ideas, it really will be your instructional design thinking that drives your development and not your authoring tool.

    This will almost certainly make your role as an instructional designer more interesting and satisfying. It will also turn you into an e-learning hero in the eyes of your learners. Don’t underestimate how much they will thank you for NOT making them sit through hours and hours of dull, sleep-inducing e-learning!

     

    This article first appeared on the Training Zone website.

    Topics: Course Design e-learning
    2 min read

    ELearning Design: Analogue Instructional Design in a Digital World

    By Andrew Jackson on Tue, Aug 27,2013

    Recently, I spent some time working with an e-learning development team, who by their own admission, had spent years producing nice-looking, but very boring, page-turning e-learning.

    I don't want to knock these guys. They knew they were missing a trick and they were keen and eager to do something about it. And there's no question that after working with them for just a couple of days, they are now much better equipped to produce actual learning - that will have the added bonus of looking good.

    But it struck me. Here are people who are totally at home in the digital world, yet their instructional design skills (such as they were) were very definitely of the analogue variety.

    This is an extreme version of a scenario, I come across all too often. People acquiring and enhancing their digital skills exponentially, but leaving their instructional design skills (if any) trailing far behind.

    Several decades into a brave new world of everything becoming digital, we still seem to be remarkably naive (or hopeful) about software's ability to solve all our learning problems. It's almost as if when we're presented with a piece of software for developing or managing learning, the common sense part of our brain disconnects and we go all gaga.

    No need to think. Just follow the steps of the software procedure and all will be well, we seem to think. If only we can get good at using the software, we all delude ourselves, all will be well.

    Nowhere is this disconnect more apparent than in the world of e-learning. Yes, you can become a Storyline or Captivate super hero. Yes, you might have mastered variables, layers and states. Yes, you might have found a work around to an obscure software glitch that the developers haven't yet fixed.

    But all this blue-caped super-hero-ness comes to nothing if all you are doing is producing sophisticated but vacuous pieces of digital output that your learners would rather not be wasting their time ploughing through.

    And I wonder why we are still seduced by the promise of the software. No-one would be daft  enough to believe that being really proficient with a saw, hammer, chisel and screw-driver would be enough to turn you into a master furniture-maker.

    Proficiency in using these tools and nothing else, would probably enable you to cobble together some very rudimentary pieces of furniture.

    But you would only start creating highly functional and attractive furniture after you had mastered some very different (but nevertheless complementary) design skills.

    Creating e-learning is no different. Master your chosen authoring tool all you like. It won't turn you into a designer of truly effective e-learning. It will simply make you a highly-proficient software user.

    Master the software and apply some digital-world instructional design skills? Well, then there's potential genius in the making.

    As long as software development tools are driving the e-learning conversation, there'll be many a page-turner churned out - to the dismay of your learners.

    To finally deliver on the promise of e-learning, means re-aligning and upgrading your instructional design thinking from analogue to the digital.


    Using Storyline for your e-learning development? Find out about aligning your instructional design thinking with your Storyline skills.
    Topics: Instructional Design e-learning
    2 min read

    Scenario-based E Learning Design: Participant or Observer?

    By Andrew Jackson on Tue, Jun 11,2013

    It's mid afternoon on the second day of an in-house instructional design course. We've been focused on e-learning for the whole two days.

    One big problem this client of ours is grappling with: how to make product information effective and memorable. They are from a graphic design background and sort of fell into creating e-learning a few years ago when a major client asked them if they could.

    They are in an industry where glossy, sexy and downright over-the-top and in your face is the order of the day. They would be the first to admit that up until now their e-learning has been shed loads of style over not very much substance.

    To help them move away from glossy, attractive page-turners full of click to reveal and drag and drop, I've asked them to flip their thinking. We've spent the last hour thinking about how their learners might actually use this factual product information, rather than about how to make its presentation "engaging" (their usual focus).

    This has been extremely hard for them. They are several steps removed from the learners. It's never occurred to them to try to get closer. This alone has been a major 'light-bulb moment'.

    We've been slogging away, getting ideas on the flip chart. As they are several steps removed from the learners, some of this is just guess work. So a major post-training activity is to validate these ideas. Find out what the learners actually do with all the product info that currently just gets stuffed into a page-turning course. But overall, they are doing well.

    As we are going through this brainstorming process, I've been slipping in examples from pieces of e-learning that show product information 'in action' rather than as page-turning, factual content.

    After seeing several of these examples, Geoff, one of the course participants, came up with an interesting question. If you're creating scenarios that reflect how the learners actually use the product information, do you make the learner one of the active participants in the scenario or do you 'show' them a scenario and get them to evaluate it.

    We stop to consider this for several minutes. Putting the learner fair and square in the middle of the scenario makes the learning highly relevant and authentic. Unlikely your learner would fail to see its relevance. Great, also, for learners who can't wait to roll up their sleeves and have a go.

    On the other hand, some learners might be all too well aware of the hands-on from their day-to-day experience. They might actually value the opportunity to take a step back to consider what they do.  From this more reflective perspective, they would probably prefer to watch the scenario unfold and evaluate what's going on, as it happens.

    The only way you'll truly get to a decent answer to this question is with a good sense of how the majority of your target learners are likely to respond. If you work inside an organisation, you have a fair chance of really getting to know your learners.

    If you are a supplier, you may simply be blocked from doing this every step of the way. In which case you'll have to make some intelligent, educated guesses or build both approaches into your course.

    Knowing your learners can end up sounding like such an old cliche. But as this story shows, it's always a key element in creating authentic, effective e-learning.


    If you are grappling with making dry, factual information authentic and relevant for your learners, take a look at our free Effective E-Learning Toolkit:

    Topics: Instructional Design e-learning
    2 min read

    Beyond Simple Likes and Dislikes: How to Really Evaluate E-Learning

    By Andrew Jackson on Wed, Mar 6,2013

    I don't know about you, but the word evaluation can send a shiver down my spine. For many of us in learning and development it's a word that can have so many negative connotations, we sometimes fudge or avoid thinking about it completely.

    I think these negative associations are because, typically, we take too narrow a view of the word.  For most people evaluation is about whether or not the learners liked the course or the trainer - or the chocolate biscuits served up at break time.

    This kind of evaluation really gives us little more than broad, hard to quantify opinions about something. What we really need to do is start  thinking  about evaluation as a means to really identify what's effective about a piece of learning. And what's not.

    If we adopt this broader view of evaluation, then it has a place through the entire design and development process, not just at the end. This is true for any kind of learning, but is especially true for e-learning.

    I say that because unlike classroom training, e-learning is more time-consuming and more expensive to refine once it's been created. If you are evaluating its potential effectiveness at every stage in the design process, it's much more likely to hit its target first time, avoiding the need for costly revisions.

    We can take a leaf out  of the usability designers book here.  They do something very close to what I'm about to describe with website design. It's a simple, practical exercise which frequently gets overlooked or skipped over in a typical e-learning design process.

    Work 1-to-1 with some typical learners
    This is something you should do while you are still in the prototype or storyboard stage of development. The only difficult parts are getting access to a learner or two and co-ordinating diaries. I say 'only'. I know those can be two major difficulties. But it's worth persisting, because the dividends this exercise  pays are tremendous.

    Sit with the learner. Have them evaluate the prototype or storyboard and give you their feedback. There are various things you can look at. How clear or understandable is the content?  Are the proposed interactions or activities relevant and meaningful? Can they make sense of the overall interface and the specific navigation?

    Do this with a handful of learners and you'll very quickly get a sense of what is problematic or confusing for everyone and what is just a subjective opinion held by a single individual.

    You'll need to be a good note taker. Because you'll usually get plenty of valuable comments which you won't want to forget. Better still, (with the learner's permission) you might consider recording what they have to say.

    Jakob Nielsen tells a funny story about how website designers react the first time they do an activity like this. The first user is wheeled in and starts to look at the design. Some things just don't make sense. 'They must be a particularly stupid user, not to get that" thinks the designer.  Then the second user is wheeled in. Same problem with the design. Then the third. Same problem again. And so on. Until the designer 'gets it' and the penny drops: their design is the problem. Not the intelligence of the users.

    And that's the beauty of carrying out an exercise like this, during your e-learning development. It strips out any ego that might've found its way into the design. It forces you as the designer to really see how the learners react to it. In the end, this helps you make changes that your learners will only thank you for.
     

     

    Topics: Instructional Design Measurement and evaluation e-learning
    3 min read

    An Olympics confession, Improving Performance and the Power of Kaizen

    By Andrew Jackson on Tue, Aug 21,2012

     It's time to confess. July 2005,  when we learned we would be the hosts of the 2012 Olympic Games, I wasn't that fussed. I wasn't anti. But not being much of a sports fan, the excitement mostly passed me by.

    Little did I think, 7 years later,  I would be cheering Team GB along and delighting in the fantastic achievements of the winners and empathising so much with the losers.

    In case you're wondering, I haven't suddenly become a devoted sports fan, but I couldn't help being swept up by the interest we all have in seeing truly remarkable individuals succeed. And the L&D bit of my brain couldn't help be fascinated by how this group of people had achieved so much stunning success.

    Actually, my interest started a couple of weeks before the Olympics with Bradley Wiggins winning the Tour de France. (Another confession - I'd never heard of the bloke until about a week before the Tour de France started).

    In the deluge of press coverage following the competition, we started to get some insights into how that fantastic win came about.

    Several things grabbed my attention. First, when Wiggo and team announced their ambition, most people thought they were bonkers. Second, not only have they proved those doubters wrong, they have done so far sooner than even they had imagined they could. Finally, 2011 had been a truly abysmal year for them and anybody looking on from the outside would probably have laughed even louder at the possibility of them achieving their stated ambition.

    So what changed? What turned things around so rapidly and so decisively?

    I can't claim to have the absolute scoop on all this, but here's what I gleaned from watching interviews on TV and reading articles in the press.

    That truly abysmal year I just mentioned was the catalyst for change and, ultimately, success. It was reaching a terrible, crushing low in their performance that forced the team to step back, re-asses and re-think their entire approach.

    They went against conventional wisdom. From what I can understand, the conventional wisdom in the cycling world is that you get better by being in lots of competitions. That seems intuitive doesn't it?  Practice makes perfect, after all.

    They decided to go for the counter-intuitive. Cut back on the number of competitions and focus instead on training and preparation for competitions they were going to enter.

    They completely re-engineered their approach to training and preparation. This involved breaking the entire process down, examining every aspect in detail and squeezing performance improvements out of every last bit of it.

    This, it turns out, is the secret of Team GB's success, too.  They refer to it as 'the science of marginal gains'. Dave Brailsford sums it up nicely in a recent BBC interview:

    "The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together. There's fitness and conditioning, of course, but there are other things that might seem on the periphery, like sleeping in the right position, having the same pillow when you are away and training in different places. They're tiny things but if you clump them together it makes a big difference."

    The Japanese were the pioneers of something very similar in the world of business  - you may have heard of  kaizen. It's the 'continuous improvement of working practices'.

    Two things strike me about all this. First, most employees in most organisation are taught to fear failure in their day-to-day work almost as much as they fear receiving a redundancy notice. In fact, for many, the two are inextricably linked. If the first happens, the second will almost certainly follow.

    Yet, as the example of team Wiggo shows, failure is sometimes the most powerful motivator for subsequent success. Nobody wants or sets out to fail. It feels awful when it happens and it can be soul destroying. And I'm certainly not suggesting organisations should go around encouraging their employees to fail.

    But, I'd bet a fairly large sum of money that organisations which take a grown-up view of failure are better places to work and, overall, end up being more successful.

    Second, because employees fear failure so profoundly, most follow conventional solutions. So in many organisations, everyone just chugs along in quiet desperation. Everyone knows it could be so much better, but who's going to rock the boat and suggest outrageously unconventional change? Only a brave soul, but oh boy, the ones who do are likely to reap the benefits.
    Topics: Instructional Design Learning Psychology Measurement and evaluation
    3 min read

    The Trouble with the Virtual Classroom - Logged in and Gabbing Away

    By Andrew Jackson on Mon, Mar 12,2012

    It's 10.30 at night. I'm sat in front of my computer logged in as a participant on a webinar being run in the US.

    No idea how many other people are taking part in this 'training' - but after two and half hours of non-stop lecture and 30 minutes to go before we reach the finishing line, my attention levels are at a low point. I've already snuck off to the loo a couple of times and made several cups of tea.

    While the overall quality of the content is very good, the presentation is terrible and the interaction with the presenters zero. They  spend so much time labouring each topic, it's easy to slip away for a couple of minutes and not to have missed much by the time you come back.

    If you've had an online 'training' experience like this one, you'll understand why there is frequently such a gulf between an organisation's enthusiasm for the virtual classroom and the learners' lack of willingness to engage with it.

    And organisations seem to be very enthusiastic. In 2009 an ASTD survey revealed that 23% of companies surveyed were using online learning compared with only 10% in 2003. An IITT survey here in the UK last year showed that 44% of companies surveyed anticipated making greater use of live online learning.

    You can understand why. The cost and time savings are compelling and the technology is relatively cheap and easy to deploy. "What's not to like?" would be the question on the lips of many advocates.

    In theory it should be attractive to learners, too. The opportunity to get more focused, bite-sized training with minimum convenience would seem like a no-brainer.

    In practice, as my experience as a participant shows, for many learners online training is little more than a live, scheduled version of a deathly boring e-learning module - with minimal interaction.

    But, as always, it doesn't have to be this way. There are three key factors involved in making live online training successful:

    1. Is it a meeting, a webinar or a training session?
    Seems obvious when written down in black and white, but many people planning and running live online sessions are not particularly clear on what type of session it  is they are running.

    An online meeting is a virtual equivalent of a face-to-face session where issues are discussed, information is shared and decisions are made.

    A webinar is much closer to a live seminar or lecture - largely presenter focused with potentially large numbers of attendees and  limited interactivity between presenter and audience.

    A live online training session should aim to replicate what happens in a classroom. Trainer led, but with plenty of opportunity for activities and interactions between trainer and learners and between learners working in pairs or small groups.

    2. Is your trainer ready for the challenge?
    Understandably, many trainers feel that they can never replicate the real classroom  experience online. You can't see the participants, you can't read their body language. They can't see you. How can it possibly work?

    The reality is different. Taking exactly the kind of care you would over preparing and running a classroom event, it's perfectly possible to run a throughly engaging, effective and successful online event. It does take time, however, to adjust to a very different medium and understand how to do things somewhat differently in the virtual classroom.

    3. Do you understand how to fully operate your virtual classroom?
    One critical success factor is familiarity with the software you are using to deliver your virtual classroom event.

    Unless you understand all the features and functions available to you, you'll never be able to design and deliver the best event you could. And this is no different, by the way, from taking into account all the different facilities,  equipment and aids you have available when designing and delivering a classroom course.

    One final point - not all software is created equal. Some systems have more sophisticated ways of enabling interaction than others - something to be very aware of when making a buying decision.

    If your organisation is one of the 44% thinking about making use of (or perhaps wanting to make better use of) the virtual classroom, and you'd like to get best practice principles and hands-on experience of running a virtual event, this is one of the modules available in our instructional design programme.
    Topics: Instructional Design Course Design Train the Trainer
    2 min read

    How Instructional Designers Can Manage Out of Control SMEs

    By Andrew Jackson on Fri, Feb 24,2012

    We can all feel our pulse quicken, our emotions rise when we get chance to talk or write about a topic that engages us totally.

    And we usually know lots about this topic. We can frequently talk about it for hours without getting bored. We can tell anyone willing to listen about its every last detail. In that sense, we are all subject matter experts (SMEs) in something.

    As instructional designers, when we have a talkative SME in front of us and limited time to get the information we want, it's worth remembering how our own passion for a particular subject matter can allow us to get carried away.

    So aside from being more empathetic to a talkative SME, is there anything else we can do to make our time with them more productive? I think there are four areas to consider when gathering content from SMEs. By the way, the greater the quantity of content you need to gather, the more you are likely to want to formalise the approaches below.

    Ownership
    Before any information gathering even happens, you need to take ownership of the process. This may involve becoming more assertive than normal: be quite specific about how you want the process to unfold, including the number of meetings you'll need, how long each meeting should be and how much time you'll need between meetings for reviewing and feedback.

    Planning
    Tempting as it might be to go into your early meetings knowing nothing, better to do research to familiarise yourself with the subject matter area. Spend time creating a basic project plan. Clearly define your and their roles in the whole process. Formally identify the risks of not getting the required information in a timely fashion and communicate this to the project sponsor.

    Connecting
    Your initial research can pay dividends once you start interacting with your SME. Exhibiting some knowledge of his/her topic can help build rapport and, more important, establish your credibility. Earn trust by emphasising the confidentiality of your information gathering sessions and the promise of a review of content before making it more widely available.

    As the content gathering progresses, aim to establish points of shared interest both within the subject matter area and outside. Most people appreciate a little interest in their life outside work.

    Focusing
    Set an agenda in advance of the meeting clearly stating goals and expectations.
    During your content gathering sessions, regularly paraphrase, clarify and summarise what you have covered; use closed questioning techniques if your SME has a tendency to go off on tangents. After the session, collate the content into a structured document you can share with your SME for review and feedback.


    It's easy to dismiss some of the subject matter experts we deal with in our professional capacity as out of control windbags who want to bore us and our learners with every last detail of their knowledge.

    That may be true. But let's not forget, given the right topic and the opportunity, many of us can happily do the same.

    So with a bit empathy and some detailed preparation and work before, during and after your content gathering, the analysis phase of your project need not be an out of control nightmare.

    If out of control SMEs are your current nightmare, check out our the Analysis and Planning modules in our instructional design programme for help on dealing with this problem.
    Topics: Instructional Design Course Design e-learning
    1 min read

    Does Compliance E-Learning Have to Be Boring?

    By Andrew Jackson on Tue, Feb 14,2012

     At a conference a year or so ago, I noticed a seminar that drew a good crowd was entitled, "Who says e-learning compliance training has to be boring?". Well not me for sure.

    Perhaps, I'm a bit naive, but even now (after many years in the world of learning) it shocks me that some people can shrug their shoulders and say., "well this material is pretty dry and boring, so we'll just have to accept that the way we deliver it is dry and boring". To me that's a bit like the designers at a car company saying, "well it's a bit difficult to design a really comfortable car seat, so we'll just fit the car with uncomfortable wooden benches and the passengers will have to lump it."

    Perhaps the acceptance of poor quality compliance training is linked to the box ticking mentality that often accompanies the dreaded 'c' word. We have to do the training  -  even though nobody wants to, so let's just collectively hold our noses and all be bored together - designers, trainers and delegates. Oh yes, and let's make it even worse, by delivering it as the most boring, sleep-inducing piece of e-learning you have ever seen.

    From this point of view, you'd think that compliance in a particular job role or organisation wasn't something anybody really needed to know or do. Yet it most definitely is.

    So rather than treating it as a dry abstract topic, why not relate it back to the context or contexts in which learners need to be compliant? Why not provide the learners with challenging, life-like scenarios and activities that require them to think about what they actually need to do to be compliant. How about some intrinsic, contextual feedback that vividly demonstrates the consequences of not being compliant or trying to cut corners.

    If you find yourself nodding your head and you are about to embark on creating some compliance e-learning (or any kind of e-learning for that matter) and you would like to read more about the four-pronged approach to e-learning development just described (context, challenge, activity and feedback) take a look at our free  'Effective E-Learning Toolkit'.
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