CHAPTER 1

Traditional Design Models Disappoint

The traditional processes used to create learning too often churn out rather disappointing programs. The regrettable impact has been felt throughout organizations, by the training department to the learners and on to management and shareholders. Training departments take too long and spend too much money creating training programs that are either late, have little impact, or both. Learners waste precious time and energy with low-quality training products, even dropping out when they can. Management allocates constraining budgets that permit little to no return-on-investment. Shareholders find competing organizations have not missed opportunities to outperform theirs and wonder why.

Anyone developing instructional programs faces numerous challenges. To ensure the most success in design and development efforts, developers need a model that recognizes these challenges and provides a clear path to success.

Successful models work within existing constraints. They

• investigate alternatives
• deliver projects on time
• deliver projects within budget
• use available delivery resources
• use labor-saving tools
• keep stakeholders informed (if not involved).

Successful models achieve valued results. They

• develop learner skills
• improve performance (change behavior)
• deliver manageable programs
• provide a sustained return-on-investment.

WE NEED BETTER LEARNING

Instruction provided by companies and organizations today is often overburdened with content and lots of text. And it's much too light on learning experiences and opportunities to practice. Even e-learning technology that stands ready to present interactive video, animation, and graphics, tends to be laden with text-heavy presentations delivered in a page-turning format. This type of learning is tiresome and boring. And sadly, that's not the worst part.

Boring instruction is costly, damaging, ineffective, and wasteful. Consider the following effects that boring instruction has on learners.

Inattention: Gaining learner attention is critical to enabling instruction. No attention means no learning. Boring instruction dampens the learner's desire to learn, ability to focus, and willingness to practice as needed to develop new skills and performance behaviors.

Negative attitudes: Even after spending all the time and money necessary to create an instructional program, if it provides learners a boring experience, it will likely result in both a lack of learning and a dislike of the method of instruction. Many have learned to dislike classroom instruction, while others have learned to dislike e-learning or social learning events, all because of boring experiences with them.

Subject aversion: A bad experience carries an even greater likelihood that learners will come to dislike the material being presented. Deterring learners from acquiring critical skills and knowledge can result in failures that, in turn, seriously hinder possibilities of future learning. Learners can develop a hindering self-image, such as I'm no good at public speaking/math/sales, which may persist through the remainder of their lives.

Learner disrespect: Learners are annoyed and even insulted by the organization that is ready to waste their time, presumably just to save instructional development costs. Learners do make the deduction. They really didn't put anything into this, and yet they require us all to agonize through it. What a waste! I've got work to do. Learners typically look for easy paths, but when the pain is extreme they find means to escape. This course is so bad, I'll have to pay someone to take it for me. This happens—and not infrequently.

With organizations constantly challenged to demonstrate that employees are individually valued and that their time and contributions are important, requiring learners to endure boring programs is a surefire way of fostering antipathy, if not animosity and attrition. These aren't usually the goals of an instructional program.

Since we all know intuitively that boring instruction is bad and that it has minimal value, the fact that there is so much of it is bewildering. Why do schools offer deathly boring courses and companies offer boring training—sometimes with exuberance and fanfare?

CAUSES OF POOR LEARNING PROGRAMS

There are many reasons why organizations settle for boring and ineffective learning programs. A few that come to mind are that organizations:

• fail to manage project risks effectively
• spend too much of a project's resources and energy on upfront analysis
• spend too little time and energy exploring alternative design options
• focus on content presentation, accuracy, and comprehensiveness (instead of the learning experience)
• fail to involve sponsors, stakeholders, and learners throughout the design process
• yield to design by committee and the opinions of organizationally dominant individuals
• employ outdated methods.

Managing Risks

Traditional training design methods are quite linear, segmented processes that require the completion and approval of work done at each phase before moving forward to the next. Managers must review and approve design and specification documents, for example, before development can commence. These methods seek to limit risks the team faces at each subsequent phase of the process. Approval at the conclusion of each phase releases the team, it is hoped, from any liability should the final product not provide the expected results or meet learners' needs.

The requirement within these traditional processes to gain explicit approval drives training departments to create designs that are readily communicated through specification documents or storyboards, both of which are notorious for multiple interpretations, no matter how detailed they may be. Designers often go to extreme lengths to avoid ambiguity, yet both subsequent developers and approvers frequently envision different final products. Consequences of presenting stakeholders with a final product that is not exactly what they thought they approved can include considerable discord and disruption. Therefore, if a learning event is hard to describe, teams will set the idea aside rather than risk disapproval and failure. Learning experiences with the greatest potential are particularly susceptible to being discarded because they can be difficult to describe clearly, require exploration before they can be evaluated, and are likely to result in extended discussion—all costly risks.

Analysis Paralysis

Design documentation typically begins with the justification of why instruction is being developed. Early in traditional processes, the focus is on complete and accurate analysis of the need and alternative solutions. Regardless of the time and money spent, however, this analysis is often incomplete and inaccurate—almost by necessity, because so much “nonproductive” time can be spent on it, relevant data are hard to acquire, available information is often misleading, and situations change while the analysis is underway. For example, the analysis may be based on ineffective learning programs currently in place. Erroneous and misleading conclusions such as “e-learning doesn't work for soft skills” can easily be reached when the real problem was with course design rather than delivery medium. Deep analysis is difficult, expensive, and time consuming. When analysis takes a big chunk out of available resources, the resulting learning program may have to be reduced to something very basic and perhaps quite unengaging.

Nothing but the Facts

Many people have grown up with and succeeded in spite of “tell-and-test” instruction—the typical approach of exposing learners to a body of information and then testing for retention. They have listened to years of instructor presentations, read shelves of books and articles, watched hours of videos (or filmstrips), done countless hours of homework, and taken who knows how many quizzes and tests. The pattern is simple. Information is supplied over a period of time preceding a quiz or test constructed of multiple-choice questions. Repeat.

The process is nicely manageable. Everyone starts on the same day, finishes on the same day. Grades indicate varying outcomes. And there will be varying outcomes, of course, because not everyone can learn the same amount in the same time. Instructors present an amount of content that can be learned by most. For some learners, it's not enough; for others, it's too much.

This is probably not the time or place to assail this “tried-and-true” method, but the obvious variance in results it achieves should raise questions. Does it matter whether a portion of learners fail? Does it matter whether learners can actually do anything better or differently? Does it matter whether learners were productive with their time and are eager to perform? Does it matter that some learners wasted their time because they only needed a small part of the content, if any?

Although it can be harder than one might think to agree on what content to present or even what the “facts” are, a basic pattern of presenting information followed by testing for comprehension or retention is an easy design for approvers to understand. Preparation of the content is as straightforward as it can be. Agreement and approvals can be won in short order. Off we go. Yet you may find learners and instructors thinking, I wish our courses weren't so boring.

Too Many Facts

To reach consensus with a tell-and-test paradigm as described above, we just have to add in all the facts that everyone feels are relevant. Focus becomes on being thorough and complete. Exhaustive is a better word. Get it all in there. Legal needs to add more. Sure. Can't fight legal.

Training designers the world over know that their two biggest problems are likely to be 1) having to deal with too much content—each and every piece of which has a staunch advocate, and 2) getting timely approvals throughout the process. Nobody wants to sign off on the work until it's done. When it's done, people want to make changes. The most likely change: Add more content.

What Learners Want and Need

I've come to expect it now, but most organizations are certain they know what interests and doesn't interest their learners. They “know” what their learners know and don't know. They “know” what learners can and can't do. They “know” what their learners like and dislike, how they'll respond, and what they'll do. They know. We don't need to waste time involving learners. Besides, they don't know what they don't know. We know.

They are so certain they know learner needs and preferences that they adamantly refuse to involve learners in the process of designing learning solutions. The problem is that they are rarely—very rarely—correct.

It's a huge mistake not to involve learners in the design of learning programs. Huge.

Anyone Can Do This

Instructional design is a profession. Not everyone gets the important fact that designing good instruction requires considerable knowledge, skill, and practice. A frequent cause of poor learning programs is that individuals are involved who, recalling their many experiences as a student, have strong opinions about what makes good instruction. Simply having been a student makes them no more of an instructional designer than having had their teeth cared for makes them a dentist.

For project leaders to be advocates of professional design, it helps very much to have examples of both poor and excellent instructional programs. Contrasts between the two can convince project leaders more readily than simply showing excellence. Demonstrating these programs can quell dominant personalities who think that anyone can design training—that putting together a presentation and a document filled with content will cause learners to change their performance—and encourage others to speak up in favor of competent approaches.

It also helps to be something of a psychologist—to be able to draw out opinions from those who just agree to avoid tension and quiet those who insist on voicing their every opinion. Regardless of the leader's talents and team composition, it helps to have a process that can make alternatives evident and equalize opinions so the goal of just coming to an agreement doesn't substitute for the goal of creating effective learning experiences.

We Have Our Process

While every project has risks to manage, information to gather, a tendency to present information—too much information—with minimal context, opinionated persons to manage, and a readiness to assume what learners know, need, and want, organizations also tend to believe in and hold tightly to the process they are using. Departures from a familiar process can intimidate and frighten even the most adventurous and those who seem ready to try something different. But many organizations are using outdated methods that, on close inspection, may actually exacerbate common project problems rather than resolve them.

Threatening and disorienting as change can be, it seems there are many reasons to aspire to something better.