Conversations with the Course Champion 1

A basic first step of any successful learning design/courseware development project – be it for the classroom or for Elearning – involves analysis. Usually it’s a needs analysis determining what the problem is and whether or not training may or may not be able to rectify it. (But, that’s the subject of another blog I wrote on that sometime back.)

More to the point answering a few simple questions before everyone gets started.

Right at the start ask the course champion (or perhaps the Subject Matter Expert) “What does a successful outcome from this learning project being proposed look like?” Another way to ask that is “What do you expect the takers of this course to be able to do after they’ve completed it?”

If about this time they give you a blank stare like you’d get if you’d just asked them to define exactly how high is “Up,” then you can guide the discussion further using questions like “Are we just making the learner familiar with the content? Or are we striving to make them proficiency with it?” (And yes, there IS a difference between those two concepts – a big difference.)

That difference usually gets brought to the forefront with your next question, “How will that be measured exactly?” Now you’re asking evaluation methods which can be anything - a knowledge test, a skills demonstration (practical exam some used to call it) and including the issuance of some kind of credentialing for successfully passing said measurement. It could even involve some minimal measurement at the end of the learning event(s) followed by a “transfer to the job setting” follow-on measurement at some given interval (e.g., 6 months) after having reported for duty after the training.

By the end of this portion of the course champion interview – and quite honestly, that’s what it really is -  your instructional design juices should be flowing pretty well and the courseware developer wheels in your head should beginning to spin with ideas about what direction to go with the training. But, I would encourage you to get the answer to some other questions before you begin laying out your design.

These questions involve your typical learner’s demographics – age, first language, skillsets and abilities and credentials they possess coming into the training. There’s nothing more embarrassing (and hugely wasteful) than to build an entire course outline, timeframe and budget based on certain assumed language proficiency, knowledge level etc only to find out it hugely wrong and your course with a huge gap in it that there’s not time and budget left to develop a fix for.

Moral to the story: Never assume anything at the outset of a learning project. Ask anything and everything about you can . And start with expectations and definitions.