This is the third in a series of posts about how L&D departments can move forward from their traditional role of creating, delivering and managing formal learning.
In my previous post, I suggested liberating courses from the LMS and making them available on the intranet where they were more likely to be accessed and used. But I also mentioned that the materials would need to be provided in a format that was easily searchable so that relevant content was immediately accessible without having to work through the whole course.
In this posting I want to follow up on these points and look at how L&D can better support performance problems in the organisation. Marc Rosenberg, in a recent article, When training is not the answer, points out
“Too often, there’s more talk about performance than action. Too often, we offer training solutions (including eLearning) for problems that we know are not training related. We know better, but for reasons that are often, but not always, out of our control, we revert to what’s comfortable and what’s expected.“
So when a need for some content to support a perfomance problem has been defined, bear in mind these 5 points:
1 – Consider how people are going to use that content; they are more than likely to want to dip in and out of the materials to get what they need, rather than take a linear path through them.
People no longer want just-in-case learning, but just-in-time learning; when they need it. They don’t want or need to have to memorize information just in case they need it; they only need to know where to find it, when they need it.”
Adult learners are becoming increasingly frustrated at how they are being treated as idiots in how they are expected to use online courses. [Geeta Bose]
2 – Focus on performance outcomes – what they will be able to “do” as a result of using the materials (rather than learning outcomes what they will “know” or “understand”).
3 – Keep the materials short and as simple as possible; people want quick answers to their problems. They may even prefer to print them out and keep them by them, or even copy instructions into online notebooks. What they don’t want is long explanations and discussions of concepts and background information.
Don’t over-engineer a solution, e.g. hard code key instructions in Flash or add other gratuitous multimedia or interactivity. If the content is useful and valuable, people will want to use it; they won’t need to be forced to do so.
4 – Ensure resources are readable in mobile devices
In a recent survey, 75% said workplace trainings would be more valuable if they were available remotely through hand-held mobile devices (Generation gap in workplace training)
5 – Think in terms of job aids rather than courses!
Here are a couple of performance support/help resources that I think demonstrate some of the points mentioned above.
How to use Google Forms
- quickly found in a Google search
- simple web pages – with information available as a list of short text intructions or as avideo to watch
- in the case of the textual instructions, easily printable or copiable
- in the case of the video, performance outcomes shown in terms of what you will be able to do as a result
- easily readable on mobile devices
- other materials also available to back-fill in or add extra skills (in the index and in the list on the left)
Google Guide
Although this Guide is available as a comprehensive interactive tutorial for both novice and experienced users, a key aspect are the two job aids (aka “cheat sheets”), e.g. the 2-page quick reference sheet that provide summaries.
- simple summary of features and commands
- available as a web page or printable PDF
Other examples of job aids in this format can be found at jobaids.info/index.shtm
Producing effective job aids requires good information design skills, so here’s a job aid (in PDF format) on creating Job aids
In summary: a well-designed yet simple “cheat sheet”, job aid, web page of textual instructions or short video is likely to more more useful and usable as a performance support tool than an online course.
UPDATE!!
This series of posts has now become part of a major new resource called NEW Workplace Learning: Meeting the needs of today's Smart Workers and preparing for those of tomorrow. Visit this page to read more.
Nic’s career was with ICI where he began as a Site Training Officer, then as a functional Training Manager for the science research part of the business and ended up as International Training Manager – running training and management development from a performance enhancement basis for 2,000 staff in 76 countries – at which time he won the UK National Training Award. He then worked in Consultancy as Organisation Behaviour D
