Reflecting on Your Instructional Design Practices?

When it comes to instructional design...what really matters?

Taking a minute to reflect on your organization's best instructional design practices, where do you stack up in these two areas:

1. Varied Approaches for Varied Situations: Do you continuously incorporate numerous resources and modalities? Different people and situations require different approaches to drive learning, behavior change, and performance improvement.
2. Pushing for Critical Thinking and Participant Creative Tension: Are you utilizing creative instructional design models that call for and reward learners to think critically?  To learn, participants must be taken out of their comfort zone to try to know and do new things required to succeed.

Food for thought no doubt.

A focus on "Focus" to Cut Training Design Time and Costs

Most corporate training programs are designed to improve 8-12 competencies over a one or two-day period.

This approach to instructional and program design works great for training companies looking for mass customization, increased revenues, and high margins.

It does not work out so well however, for clients seeking to manage costs, make training relevant to the business and drive change critical on-the-job behavior required to make a true business impact.

An intructional design best practice is to laser focus the program in on 2-3 core skill or knowledge gaps to provide the greatest return on your investment. A narrow focus on only the most meaningful areas allows you (and your participants) to spend less time and money on the instructional design phase of the program while at the same time positioning yourself to get better results. It also enables you to more easily support on-the-job adoption and training business impact - the keys to success.