Seldom do e‑learning development projects, or any instructional development projects for that matter, include all the time and budget we’d like. Compromises are the name of the game, so it’s important to make compromises in the right places: where doing less than we’d like won’t make much difference.

The Typical Approach

We typically design and build projects beginning with foundational content, such as basic facts and concepts. We design the most elementary material first to address all members of the target learner group, and we select content with the expectation that all learners will be able to understand the content at that level if they don’t already have a full grasp of it. Design then marches forward in the path that learners will follow, from the simplest content and required skills to the most advanced.

This intuitive design approach makes sense, but it actually has serious disadvantages. First, in the creative excitement at the beginning of a project, it’s common to spend too much of the project’s resources on the simplest content. What’s left for dealing with the most challenging and important content will be insufficient. It’s important not to compromise where critical learning requires our best efforts.

Since facts and concepts make the most sense when learners apply them, it can be both easier and more effective to provide initial content in the form of help and guidance within active learning events. If we start at the elementary level, we may underestimate what we can teach better in the context of targeted performance skills.

Finally, it’s easy to bore learners with meticulous presentations of content they already know. It’s also easy to underestimate what learners already know and can do. We might discover that some of the groundwork that we were anxious to lay isn’t necessary at all and would have consumed precious learning time while boring some of our learners.

Jump Ahead

In every project, the first question should be, “What do we want our learners to do after their training that they’re not doing now?” Of course, we also need to determine why they’re not doing it to be sure that the reason is that they don’t know how or lack necessary skills. If there are roadblocks such as inadequate tools, insufficient time or incentives to do something else, then training won’t make much, if any, difference on its own.

If the cause of poor performance is determined to be lack of knowledge and skills, then you need a clear description of the behaviors learners need to perform after their training. Then, make sure they can demonstrate the required behavior and practice it to perfection before their training is complete.

The Last Lesson

The targeted performance is where you should start designing your course. How can you get learners to demonstrate their proficiency? If desired performance means handling a variety of situations, put learners in a variety of representative situations as they practice. If speed is important, learners should perform at or better than the speed needed on the job. If learners will be expected to detect and correct their errors without help, they should demonstrate doing so in their final exercises.

The final lesson should offer the best representation of the situations or contexts in which learners are expected to perform successfully. Learners should have plenty of opportunities to make mistakes, especially the mistakes employees often make on the job. They should have the same support, options and recovery methods that they’ll actually have on the job. In short, their last lesson should be the most authentic performance environment you can offer on your chosen delivery platform. Since building an authentic performance environment may tax your energy, creativity and resources, this activity is where you should start.

Don’t compromise in this area. It’s better to be restricted to fewer interactive learning activities for the basics than to be unable to provide authentic practice activities at the conclusion of training.

Step Back

Last Lesson Minus 1

Once you’ve created an authentic performance environment that allows learners to perform as targeted, you can also use this structure to help them develop the skills they need for the last lesson. In the second-to-last lesson in the course, make sure help will appear in response to either learner errors or the learner’s request for help. At this point, you’ve brought all of the course content together to prepare learners for the last lesson. You’re expecting that, after this lesson, learners will be able to complete the final lesson without difficulty.

Last Lesson Minus 2, 3, 4…

Continuing to work backward, you can now define component behaviors that work either sequentially or in combination in the targeted performance. You can use each cluster of behaviors, and eventually each component behavior, as the basis for lessons prerequisite to “Last Lesson Minus 2” and/or for each other.

Keep Going

The process continues until time and money are running out, or, hopefully, you have covered sufficient content. Using this approach, it’s likely that you have covered more content in fewer lessons than you initially thought were necessary. Providing learners with help as you ask them to perform components of the final tasks can ensure that the course covers all the content they need. Instead of the context-free, “Trust me, you’ll eventually see why all of this is important,” when learners receive content as help, they easily understand why it’s important and internalize it more readily.

Check It Out

As we continue to back up, the goal is to provide an entry point that works well for all learners. The only way to stop at the most opportune time – no more elementary than necessary but far enough that all learners will engage comfortably – is to test the course with real learners. You’ll need a group of employees with varying backgrounds and then more, if initial testing reveals the need to add a lesson or two.

It’s wise to test early. By designing a great final learning and practice activity and then providing a few learning exercises to prepare learners for it, you may find that you don’t need to do much more. If you do, by testing the course with learners, you’ll know exactly what you need to address. You might be surprised by what you do and don’t need to include.