Breakthrough Briefing - 07/16/08
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Focus on
Action in eLearning Design
By Rick Nigol
My job involves coaching and mentoring a great many instructional
designers - both within our own eLearning development projects and
as a service for many of our clients. One of the biggest challenges
I face in this regard is getting designers to get to the essence of
a training challenge and cut out all extraneous content that
detracts from the main learning objectives. Less is indeed more when
we can get from A to B in a short, straight line.
I recently came across an excellent technique called "action
mapping" that I will start using to help focus eLearning on intended
outcomes based on desired actions. Cathy Moore, in her very
informative blog (Ideas for Lively eLearning), lays out succinctly
how action mapping can work in this slideshow:
Moore advocates an approach to eLearning design that works
backward from the intended business goal (expressed as an action).
This avoids the trap of a linear information content dump and piling
up irrelevant information that does not really help learners get to
the desired goal. Action mapping is a four-step process as follows:
- Identify the business goal.
- Identify what people need to do to reach that goal.
- Design activities that help people practice each behaviour (the "to do's" noted
in #2).
- Identify the minimum information people need to complete
each activity.
By starting with a clear goal and focusing on required actions
to reach that goal, we can provide a great deal more focus to our
learning design and avoid the information dump that unfortunately
characterizes much of eLearning today.
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Feedback or questions? Email
jon@elearncampus.com or
call us at (877) 238-3297.
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