Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
If you can't affect the environmental problem, identify how high performers are working around it, and help others use those techniques.
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
Your goals for the meeting are to get the client and SME to do the following: Write a goal for the project. The goal identifies how the problem is being measured and how you’ll know it’s solved. List what people need to do on the job to reach that goal. Start to discuss why people aren’t doing those things now.
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
Like a test question, a practice activity asks you to recall bits of information, such as "encrypted USB drive = pretty safe." But it also has you apply that information in a specific context, and that context can help you remember it.
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
At first, it looks like "just" a multiple-choice question, but it's designed to simulate the kind of decision-making that people have to do on the job. It sets a scene, asks the learner to make a realistic decision, and provides options that have been carefully designed to tempt the learner to make a common mistake.
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
Every behavior on your action map is based on a decision. (If instead you've recorded things they should “understand” or “appreciate,” go back and revise your map so it includes only the actions that your learners take on the job.)
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
A multiple-choice question can actually inspire more discussion than an open-ended question if it includes appealing distractors.
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
Write a business goal (chapter 4) Answer, "What do people need to DO to reach the goal?" (chapter 5) Answer, "Why aren't they doing it, and what changes will help?" (chapter 6)
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
Obviously, people have preferences for how they learn. No one denies that. No one is saying that you and I aren't special snowflakes. But research doesn't support the claim that we should tailor our materials to specific "learning styles." Our limited resources would be better used on more effective techniques.
Cathy Moore • Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design
If the activity will be done in a live session, the facilitator will make clear that mistakes are actually encouraged, or, if necessary, the participants' choices can be anonymized by technology, such as by using clickers to vote.