The Secret to Make It Easy On Yourself and On Your Learners

How can you streamline your instructional design consulting project while, at the same time, improve the experience for your learners?

The secret is to focus more on the process of the design than on the content. In fact, use your training participants to help you design the content in real time as part of the learning process. This is how it can work.

1. Don’t spend time creating representative scenarios; use real work. If, for example, your learners need to be able to decipher the financial statements of their clients, have them work on interpreting actual client annual reports that that need to understand. You save time and so do they.
2. Chunk the learning into smaller bits. Instruct and model the skill and then let your learners practice it and get feedback on the job. When you all reconvene, you can debrief what worked and what did not.
3. Get content from your program participants. If you want to teach customer service reps how to turn dissatisfied into satisfied customers, ask the reps to come up with their 3 toughest and most consistent client situations. Work together on solutions and then create online job aids that can be accessed in real time.