Need to make an impact on a budget? You might find some ideas in this presentation.

It shows five decisions you can make that will help you save money and create more memorable elearning. It’s split into five short videos for easy idea-snacking and to meet the restrictions of YouTube.

Highlights include a matrix that helps you decide if training will solve the problem (part 2) and an example of a storyboard that emphasizes activities, not information (part 5).

Here’s the first part.

These links go to YouTube:

Part 1

• Super-quick overview of action mapping
• “Awareness” and “tracking” aren’t good reasons to create a course

Part 2

• Handy matrix to help you answer, “Why aren’t people doing what we need them to do?”
• Will a course really solve the problem?
• Example of a multiple-choice question and feedback that simulate the real world

(more…)

You’re a US Army sergeant in Afghanistan. Can you help a young lieutenant overcome cultural differences and make a good impression on a Pashtun leader?

That’s the challenge behind “Connect with Haji Kamal,” a decision-making scenario that my cool client Kinection and I developed for the US Army. The online scenario is the homework part of a lesson plan that includes in-class discussion about how to build rapport across cultures. It’s part of a much larger effort in the Army to strengthen soldiers’ cross-cultural and peacekeeping skills.

Turn on your speakers and give it a spin, and then come back here if you’re interested in the design decisions behind the activity.

The goals

The activity is designed to be completed as homework before a culture class, and it includes a facilitator guide with debrief questions. Our goals were to model specific rapport-building behaviors and inspire class discussion.

To follow the “good” paths, you need to see things from Haji Kamal’s point of view, show respect and patience, and otherwise apply cross-cultural skills that will be discussed in class. You end up on less successful branches by making more ethnocentric choices. (more…)

When employees of the US Internal Revenue Service need to find out what taxpayers are doing, they look online. How would you train them to dig deep into the web without violating privacy laws?

David Anderson has linked to the script of an online course that the IRS uses to train its employees. It was released during a Freedom of Information Act case and posted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As David points out, the script uses the common tell-then-test approach.

What could they have done differently?

Here’s the script, thanks to the EFF. You’ll see that it’s clearly written and organized, which is great.

Like most elearning, it presents a lot of information and then quickly tests our understanding of that info. It also uses some interesting examples from real life.

The course is a perfectly capable information presentation. But since my tax dollars helped pay for it, I can’t help wishing they had done it differently. So let’s give the IRS some friendly suggestions.

What would happen if we changed the objectives?

The IRS course has these objectives: (more…)

Are you dreaming of an immersive simulation while your team members plan yet another Jeopardy game? If you want stakeholders to expand their horizons, a working prototype is your best friend.

A working prototype has simple placeholder graphics, but the clicking and dragging work as they will in the final activity. Build a quick-and-dirty version of the activity of your dreams, and use it to convert everyone on your team.

Here’s a two-part video that shows what I mean. Leif Cederblom of SmartBuilder compares two prototypes of the same activity and highlights the goals and benefits of prototyping.

Part 1: The conventional drag-and-drop: busywork that’s easy to forget

Part 2: A more realistic activity that’s more likely to change behavior

Try both prototypes yourself and see how the contrast between the two underscores the power of the more realistic activity. No amount of polish would make the drag-and-drop more than a rote activity, while the “leave the lab” prototype is effective even in its raw, prototype form.

Imagine that you’re in a competition to overhaul an information-heavy course so it creates a real change in the world. What changes would you make? Check out this story-based presentation to see what one fictional company did.

If some type is too small, click the “full” icon in the player and you’ll get the big-screen version.

The presentation is an adaptation of a talk I’ve been giving at the Australian Flexible Learning Framework conferences. It’s designed to help people break free of the traditional information-first approach to instructional design.

One of the challenges with using the approach described in the presentation is that it usually requires more design time. Since many clients don’t actually measure the effectiveness of their materials and just want information put online quickly, it can be hard to argue for immersive scenarios. Have you successfully used scenarios? Did you have to convince stakeholders to let you use them?

For a quick overview of the Action Mapping process described in this interaction, see Be an elearning action hero. For in-depth help with applying this process to your own materials, check out the Elearning Blueprint.

How I designed and built the scenario

Some people avoid creating branching scenarios because they seem too complex. In case it’s helpful, here’s the approach I took. (more…)