You might not be 10,000 miles away in the jungle. But maybe you feel like you've just been landed with your very own training version of a bush tucker trial.
The one where they call you into their office and tell you the 'good' news. The news that starting next month, they're going to begin moving some of your training courses to e-learning.
And the 'even better' news? They won't be making you redundant, but they will be expecting you to systematically turn your classroom courses into e-learning ones.
And probably after that, you didn't hear much else. All the corporate L&D speak about the benefits, the technology and the systems. All just background noise, as your heart pounded and your head throbbed and you broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about the prospect of suddenly becoming an e-learning designer.
When you are faced with a 360 shift in your world like that one, what do you do? Where do you begin?
Without question, you have to think differently. A new start. A new paradigm. Trying to take the classroom skills you've honed for years and graft them onto a computer screen simply won't work. And in your heart of hearts you know this.
You've sat in front of those deathly dull e-learning courses that page turn their way like a user manual. The ones where they sometimes have you dragging things pointlessly across the screen. And set you insultingly stupid quizzes and tests every 10th screen.
So where do you start? To begin with forget about content. Sounds crazy, but it's not. You must shift from thinking about content first to thinking about context first. This is your new starting point. Where your learners are at. Their reality. Their environment.
This is the key shift in your thinking that will grab their attention. This is the key shift in your approach that will draw them in. This is the key shift in your learning design that will help them practice and retain new knowledge and skills.
This is the shift that will break you free of the boring e-learning so many of us have been subjected to, for far too long.
Need some help with the transition to designing for e-learning or remote learning? Take a look at our instructional design training options.
