Start With the Learning Goals

When conceptualizing a training or L&D intervention, it’s tempting to start by thinking of all the topics and information that belong in it. After all, most of us are passionate about our fields and enjoy sharing our knowledge.

The risk with this approach, though, is that you often end up with more information than is really necessary, including information that is unmoored from any tangible purpose, which can have the effect of:

• Intimidating and overwhelming learners, due to length and information density
• Demotivating learners, who will sense that some of what they're being asked to do is not relevant or applicable
• Obscuring information that is more relevant and worthy of retention
  • It's similar to the principle of, "if everything is highlighted, then nothing is highlighted"
    • If all information is presented in a similar fashion within a product, learners may assume it's all of equal importance, inhibiting their ability to recognize and prioritize more important information
  • Remember, one of our main goals with retention is ensuring that the most important information is that which is retained

Start by assessing and developing your learning goals: that is, what you hope to achieve with what you’re creating. Learning goals are most often learner-centric, capturing what you want learners to know and/or know how to do upon completion.

Note: "know how to do" goals often make for more effective trainings and tend to be highly encouraged with certain topics, as they lend themselves to the sort of active engagement that promotes learning and retention, as demonstrated by the example further below.

Learning goals can also relate to the organization’s goals, such as demonstrating compliance with a mandate to provide information or training to all employees.

Approach planning and early development with this three-tier pyramid in mind:

1. Learning goals serve as the bottom tier
   • They're the foundation
   • Everything you include in the product you're developing should directly relate to your goals for the product
2. Information constitutes the second tier
   • Only information that supports achievement of learning goals should be included or made mandatory
   • Information that doesn't support the learning goals should be left out or relegated to an optional side path
     • Evaluating information in this way will sometimes help you identify and winnow out unnecessary/excessive information, while other times it will help you realize that you need to add to or modify your learning goals to capture needs related to key information
3. Assessments and activities account for the third tier
   • They help assess, demonstrate and hone learners' achievement of the learning goals
   • Learners must be given the appropriate information to complete them successfully
     • Evaluating assessments and activities in this way will sometimes help you identify where you are not providing enough information in order to support achievement of the learning goals

For example

Let's say you're building a training on cyber security.

A learning goal related to that topic might be "know the characteristics of a strong password," which would be a "know" learning goal.

But, an even better version of that learning goal would be "know how to identify/create a strong password," since:

• This turns a "know" learning goal into a "know how to do" learning goal
• It intrinsically includes "know the characteristics of a strong password," because that knowledge is essential to being able to identify/create a strong password
• It captures how that "characteristics of a strong password" knowledge will actually be applied by learners
• It lends itself to much more engaging and impactful learning experiences within the training

Having identified this learning goal, you've identified some of the information that needs to be included in the training: information on the characteristics of a strong password. 

Then, you'll design an activity or assessment that provides an opportunity for learners to demonstrate and practice their ability to identify/create a strong password:

• You wouldn't want a single "select all that apply" question on the characteristics of strong passwords, because that only evaluates and demonstrates knowledge and not how that knowledge is applied
  • Also, in a sense, a question like that evaluates and demonstrates short-term memory much better than it evaluates and demonstrates that learners will still know the characteristics of a strong password three months later when they need to create one
  • And a question like that might not be the most engaging assessment or activity for learners
• You wouldn't want a single question that asks learners to evaluate whether a single password is strong or not, because, while that does speak better to the "know how to identify/create a strong password" learning goal, you can't really evaluate or demonstrate mastery through a single question — learners can easily get a single question right by guessing, luck or trial and error — and you can't provide through a single question the volume of engagement and practice that best allows learners to retain knowledge and the ability to use it
• You would want learners to evaluate the strength of many different passwords, to ensure through repeated evaluation and demonstration that they've mastered the material and know how to apply it in the variety of real-world situations they're likely to encounter, and you want to provide learners with enough practice that they can explore nuances and build up the sort of repeated use and experience that best leads to retention

Lastly, the activity or assessment you design will be informed by the information you provide and vice versa. If you want one of your "is this a strong password?" questions to relate to some characteristic of strong passwords that isn't currently covered by the training's information, but you feel confident the question will teach and benefit learners, you should probably add information on that characteristic to the training. And, if you find there's information on strong passwords currently included in the training that you weren't able to incorporate into one of your "is this a strong password?" questions, you should probably question if that information is really important or essential enough to include in the training, or perhaps should be trimmed out or made optional.