This week my charge is to meet with employees and discover what they need from a class that I am creating. Now I already know what we think the objectives are, and what senior management thinks the objectives are, but this week is dedicated to interviewing key employees and picking their brain. It is amazing when you spend the time to research, what information you gain, and can bring real world applications to the course design. Something as small as the default print setup was a key piece of information that I was not aware of. Field office printers print all documents in a two sided format, our training packet needs to have blank pages built in so that it prints correctly in that format and does not require that they make copies of the backs of certain pages to save for future use. Who knew? One of the challenges when making the rounds in this fashion is getting employees to open up. When you go asking questions, they are hesitant at first to share, in case you will "burn" them by uncovering some unique style they have found works for them. Knowing how to put the employees at ease, and develop a series of open ended questions to engage conversation is the key to gaining trust and information. After the rapport is built, employees begin to share loads of information on procedures, policies and the short cuts they have had to create to "make do" with systems that are not meeting their needs. The lack of resources and tools to access to support their training needs in the field is a big deal. Yes, they have computer based training, but they want "hands on" short worksheets and small tests that they can give to a new hire to keep them busy. Interesting how almost everyone I met with felt that reading a computer based learning was required, but not a way to keep someone busy. As I design curriculum it has become extremely important that the gathering of information, needs and the objectives is the most important piece of the process. Without having all the key facts, you can design a great program, but it will miss the mark for one of the groups in the organization. Then you have "another class that is a time waster" versus having a dynamic learning tool that gives them real world application. Designing for me is a new skill, and I love it. The research, the planning, the integration of facts and objectives, coupled with the creativity of building a program is a combination of skill sets that I enjoy.
William Horton's book E-learning by Design has been a great resource.
Have you designed education programs? What has worked? What hasn't?
Brooke
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