Reflecting upon my career thus far as an instructional designer, I realize that I have quite often assumed the role of a makeover artist, so much so that I'm wondering whether I should get my own reality show.
Given that the airwaves are rife with those already, perhaps I'll just stick with blogging.
I was going to tell the story of one of my makeover mandates, but then I thought I'd be even more interesting to intertwine two: One was an e-learning module, and the other was face-to-face training.
Regardless of format, my mind would go about renovating what had been given to me in a similar manner, that manner being accelerated learning, my adopted beacon for instructional design, and a framework consisting of four simple phases I'll get you acquainted with (if you aren't already) as I reminisce about my adventures.
But first, a brief primer about my starting points: The e-Learning project This adventure started with a PowerPoint file about the development of personal skills that I was to jazz up.
While this document wasn't terrible, I still found it lacking.
Ironically, it wasn't lacking content, but rather had too much.
In its attempt to bestow the personal skills it coveted upon the learner, it threw all sorts of models into a disjointed pastiche of buzzwords and corporate-speak.
Going forward, I'll refer to it as Project E for short.
The face-to-face project Adventure 2 emphatically demonstrated the importance of completing the dualistic model we often use in our field to describe proper instructional design, that of the content and the container.
Prior to my makeover, a course on a new piece of software was being given at a manufacturer by a venerable content expert.
He had worked there for decades, had mastery of the software, and...
had garnered the worst course evaluations I had ever seen in my life.
He embarked on his subject at his own whim without being able to relate to his newbie learners, which not only left them lost, but infuriated.
After successfully creating other courses, the company implored me to salvage this one with my "container skills".
Appropriately enough, I'll refer to this one as Project F.
The accelerated learning makeovers The first phase of accelerated learning is called preparation, during which a designer takes the time to devise strategies to generate interest in the course, such that learners actually want to partake in it.
In Project E, I did away with an unrelenting stampede of point form statements and greeted the learner with a warm, conversational discourse that pointed out that unlike other courses that provided technical information for future reference, this course would call upon them to apply new insights immediately.
In Project F, I set out to transfer the qualities of being warm and conversational to the live trainer.
Before the makeover, he would start demonstrating the software right away with no context, losing learners in record time.
Through discussions with him and his colleagues, we eventually created an introductory section to his presentation documenting the evolution of the tools used to perform his function from one decade to the next, and then itemizing why it was time for the preceding software to go.
The second phase of accelerated learning is called presentation,and it is where you not only present your material, but endeavor to do so in an engaging, enjoyable, relatable manner.
For Project E, I thought of taking a page out of marketing and create a snazzy logo to give it the allure of a professional brand.
That being said, I still needed to make it pedagogically sound.
After contemplating the aforementioned pastiche, I took it apart and reordered it into separate modules that gave it a story-like progression that began with identifying personal qualities within one's self and ended with using those qualities to benefit one's entire company.
Finally, reaping the benefits of authoring tools, I replaced many a bland bullet point with colorful interactive diagrams that featured many icons and mnemonics that assisted learners in retaining content.
Without going too far, I also wanted to give Project F a fresh face, and gave the trainer a simple but attractive PowerPoint template and some design guidelines he was unaware of.
I also looked at the totality of the content and started chopping it into more digestible modules for the benefit (and sanity) of the learners.
Conversely however, Project F had a particular twist that I wanted to take advantage of.
The course was about new piece of software that was coming along to replace an old one.
Since both software applications shared the same purpose, I worked with the subject matter expert and his team extensively to compare and contrast them side by side, function by function.
This created the definitive advantage of leveraging what the learners already knew very well from the old software.
All that was left to do was to gently scaffold them one extra rung to an update of familiar concepts.
The third phase of accelerated learning is called practice.
As the name implies, this is the point where learners stop sitting passively and actually do something to integrate the content into their knowledge and skill sets.
This wasn't as obvious in the e-Learning context of Project E, but not impossible either.
After engaging learners at the outset and further captivating them with attractive visuals, I encouraged them, in every module, to turn to an accompanying workbook that I had created, under the premise that the workbook exercises were integral to cultivating the abilities offered in the course.
Meanwhile, Project F's practice phase practically designed itself: people went to learn software.
Naturally then, at the end of each section of the course, we designed practice sessions where learners, all of which had computers in front of them, would immediately take their baby steps into the new software, mimicking what they had just seen their trainer do.
The fourth and final phase of accelerated learning is performance, which serves to continue nurturing learners' new embryonic knowledge and/or abilities from the classroom out into the "real world", or in both cases here, the job.
Admittedly, this is the part where I often lack visibility, as the nature of my job dictates me to collaborate with a client up until course time and leave thereafter.
Truth be told, I have little idea about whether Project E has successfully permeated the workforce of my client and made a difference, although in writing this blog, I realized that I can always contact them to find out.
However, I can safely assume that Project F has had a tremendous impact, if for no other reason than that the company's well-being depended on it! Company X needed its employees to learn Software Y to produce Widget Z, and that's precisely what has been happening.
Serendipitously enough, I returned to Company X earlier this week to give a new course, and realized that in the room I was waiting to enter and teach in was my previous client, still giving the very course I had designed! Not yet being a parent, I think that was the closest thing to fatherly pride I could have felt thus far, not to mention a glowing endorsement of the accelerated learning framework.