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Understand who the learner is:
I teach an instructional design course at the start of training development on all my projects. I do this because I believe that even when working with experienced designers, it is a good way to level-set expectations, especially when you have a team with varied levels of experience.
The things about this course is…I develop it from scratch every single time. Now don’t get me wrong – I do reuse some of my material, but I always start with a blank slate. I focus on who my audience is, and what I believe is most important for them to know based on the specific characteristics of the company and/or the project I am working on.
Why do I do this? Because we process information through the lens of our experiences.
I admit, on technology implementations I don’t do much of a training needs analysis. That’s because typically, the need is clear. There is a new technology that learners need to do their jobs and they need to learn how to use it. What I do like to do is an audience analysis. I use an audience analysis to determine who the end users are, what kind of work they do, and how they learn.
So when I teach a safety course to business analysts for instance, I might include a lot of conceptual information, and have them read and analyze business scenarios to determine where there are safety violations.
If I taught the same course to engineers, I would be sure to include data linking certain behaviours to increases in safety incidents.
And if I taught it in the field, I might have the workers actually walk around the office complex and identify safety issues.
I teach my Subject Matter Experts to start with a blank slate. That way, they can customize the course content to the needs of the audience, versus forcing the audience into a preconceived learning mold.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.