Baseline Recommendations & Top Tips
Recommendations
We recommend the following considerations as a starting point for any learning content creation or conversion project.
Platform Selection
Match different types of learning content with appropriate learning platforms.
Content Ownership
A person or group responsible for keeping training content accurate and current.
Begin with the End in Mind
Use of “backward-chaining” to ensure training achieves the desired outcome.
Respect Learners' Time
Broadly adopted learning solutions are usually easy to navigate, targeted, and engaging.
Never Create a Course Without an Evaluation
Measures both effectiveness and adoption of the training.
Strong Instructional Design
Enables best balance of learning needs and development costs.
Top Tips
Creating world class training usually comes down to allowing a handful of key principles to lead the way and inform progress. These include goals such as treating content as an asset, enabling continuous improvement by leveraging learner feedback, and creating a system of learning that users can readily access and understand. The road to any one of these, however, can sometimes be hard to find let alone follow. Below are a few tactical tips that can help:
Plan for peer-reviews at key transitions.
Re-purpose content when possible.
Seek an appropriate balance of instruction, examples, and practice.
Use checklists between major phases of design and development.
Leverage learner feedback during and after production.
Separate “must have” material from “nice to have”.
Let learning objectives define “true north”.
Ensure working versions have a “bend but not break” quality.
Use placeholders early and often to facilitate progress.