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Moving Into Instructional Design - Basics for Technical Writers
- 1. Moving Into Instructional Design Basics for Technical Writers Stephen Van Esch - http://stephenvanesch.com
- 2. What We’ll Cover • Skills you can leverage • Skills you want to learn • An overview of the instructional design process • Taking full advantage of your writing skills
- 3. How many people here have developed training or e-learning?
- 5. Goals
- 8. Not Training
- 11. Instructional Design Technical Writing
- 13. • Communication! • Working with SMEs • Organizing Information • Audience Analysis • Process What You Bring
- 14. • Training Needs Analysis • Training Development Lifecycle • Pedagogical Approaches Best Places to Improve
- 17. Two Areas • Process • Learning Objectives
- 18. Process
- 19. ADDIE
- 21. Analyze
- 22. Design
- 23. Develop
- 24. Implement
- 25. Evaluate
- 29. Components of a Learning Objective
- 30. Stem + Action word + Learning Statement Components of a Learning Objective
- 31. After completing this session, you will be able to… Stem
- 32. After completing this session, you will be able to write… Action Word
- 33. Learning Statement After completing this session, you will be able to write a Learning Objective
- 34. Bloom’s Taxonomy and Action Words
- 36. Let’s Simplify
- 38. The Real World
- 40. Remember
- 41. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to …….… list recite outline define name match recall label recognize Remember
- 42. Apply
- 43. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to …….… calculate predict apply solve show illustrate use demonstrate perform Apply
- 44. Analyze
- 45. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to ……. distinguish examine compare identify explain contrast separate classify categorize Analyze
- 46. Your Turn! Stem + list recite outline define name match recall label recognize calculate predict apply solve show illustrate use demonstrate perform distinguish examine compare identify explain contrast separate classify categorize + LS REMEMBER APPLY ANALYZE
- 47. Stay on Track!
- 48. Learning Objectives After you complete this session, you will be able to: • Explain the difference between documentation and training • List the skills you have as a technical writer that can be used in instructional design • Outline each part of the instructional design process • Write a learning objective
- 49. Recap • Documentation and training have different goals • You have many skills you can apply to your ID projects • Following the ADDIE process can help you develop effective training • Write effective learning objectives to help stay on track • Constantly refer back to your LOs when you write your training material
- 50. References Learning Theories map - http://www.hotel- project.eu/content/learning-theories-map-richard-millwood Bloom’s Taxonomy - http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub- pages/blooms-taxonomy/
- 51. Questions?
- 52. A Request http://stephenvanesch.com Would anyone here be willing to buy a course or ebook geared to technical writers who want to be better instructional designers?
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for coming. I appreciate your time. My name is Stephen Van Esch and I’ve been a technical writer for over 15 years. I developed documentation for 3D modelling software, injection moulding equipment, and high-end medical devices. During these jobs I got a chance to do a lot of training development. My interest in instructional design and training led to my recently earning a Masters degree in Education specializing in distance education. I’m currently an e-learning specialist at the Ontario Clean Water Agency where I develop e-learning for water and wastewater plant operators.
- In this session, we’ll go over The skills you, as a technical writer, bring to the instructional design table. The skills you should look at improving. An overview of the instructional design process, and How you can take full advantage of your expertise in writing to create better training.
- How many people here have developed training or e-learning? Thanks for identifying yourselves. I know who I can rely on to help me with questions later.
- Over the course of my career I’ve been lucky to participate on a number of training and e-learning development projects. I remember having a conversation with a technical writer over a decade ago. We were discussing training and documentation. As the conversation progressed, he said that there was no difference between training and documentation. In his words he didn’t “split that hair.” Does anyone here feel that way? This caught me a little bit by surprise. Because developing training and developing documentation are two entirely different beasts with entirely different goals. Far from splitting a hair, these two fields are solving different problems.
- When it comes to both training and documentation we are often addressing the same thing: A gap in knowledge. As a tech writer, what are you doing to close that gap?
- From my own experience, we’re aiming to get the user over the gap as fast as possible. The gap is an obstacle that’s preventing from doing their job and getting on with their lives. When you’re writing instructions, you’re taking someone by the hand and walking them through the motions they need to complete that task. This is….
- Not training.
- The purpose of training is to build a more or less permanent bridge over the gap. To increase the users performance in the task to the point where the task can be completed without assistance. To change behaviour or increase performance effectively takes a strong knowledge of how adults learn. This knowledge allows instructional designers to create content and activities that lead to positive learning outcomes. But one problem is that adult learning is…
- …complicated
- I think we can agree that there’s a significant difference between these two fields and each require a specific set of skills to get users to their goals efficiently.
- But this doesn’t mean that, as technical writers, we don’t have a strong set of skills that we can use to move effectively into this space. We do. And it’s easy for you to leverage those skills for better training and development project outcomes in your organization.
- In some larger organizations you’ll have an instructional designer that focusses solely on design. They choose the learning methodologies, learning activities, evaluation criteria and other aspects of the course but don’t actually create the content. But that’s rare. In most places, the instructional designer is actually writing the content. And I can say that most instructional designers do not have the writing skills you do. You know how to communicate clearly and concisely using a variety of tools including text, graphics, and animations. Similar to technical writers, instructional designers are not usually content experts. You have already developed good interviewing skills and have a knack for working with software developers, engineers, and scientists. Similar to writing documentation, proper training and e-learning has a logical flow to it. You already know how to properly present a vast amount of complex information in an accessible format. Any writers here that do this? I know it’s not always the easiest thing to make time for but things like creating personas and effectively writing for specific users will help you decide on which activities to user and how to write your course. As you’ll see, there are some process similarities when developing documentation and developing training. Review cycles in particular are something that you already know how to manage that will be helpful when developing training.
- So we now know we are pretty much god-like when it comes to instructional design. Why are we training? Do we need to train? What skills gap are we trying to close? What performance improvement are we looking for? How best can we deliver training? Online? In-class? Both? The generally accepted process to follow when creating training. More on this later. You can do yourself an enormous service if you learned about how people learn. I don’t have time to talk about pedagogical approaches here but let’s just say…
- There are a lot of options.
- Now we can’t cover everything in the short time we have but there are two places you can quickly improve that will give your training projects an edge.
- One of those is process. A robust process can help you turn out more than a bunch of slides with some content. The other is writing effective learning objectives. Effective learning objectives will make learning goals much clearer and keep you on track when you create a course.
- So let’s talk a little about process. Would anyone like to share their process for creating technical documentation?
- ADDIE is the most common conceptual framework used by instructional designers. It IS NOT something that needs to be followed to the letter. It is a framework. You should adjust it to suit your training requirements. It does, however, cover off the main stages of training development and is an extremely useful guide for training projects.
- ADDIE stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate.
- Assess business goals - What performance improvement is required by the business and why? Tech writing focusses more on how do I help the user (not the business) get past this point. Conduct a needs analysis - What’s needed to get the user past the gap? Identify the knowledge gap - What do they need to know to perform their jobs that they don’t know now? Audience analysis - Similar to tech writing. Used to appropriately target the content of the course.
- Strategy - What learning principles and theories can we apply? Delivery - How best can we deliver the training? E-learning? Webinars? In-class? Structure - How should we structure the training? Evaluation - How should we evaluate success? Note that success is measured by performance improvements in the workplace. Develop - Create storyboard, videos, graphics, etc.
- Prototype - Create the training prototype Create - Create the materials based on the storyboard Review - Review the prototype with stakeholders
- Get it out there! Scheduling, printing, training trainers, enrolling learners, etc.
- Is the training effective? Is the training improving the performance it said it would?
- As I mentioned, this is just a framework. As I primarily work on e-learning these days, I find that a few adjustments are required. A testing phase is one such adjustment that I insert between Development and Implementation. There’s no way I’m going to release an e-learning course without testing it first! My point here is that this is just a framework and you should adjust it according to your needs.
- I think a properly designed process can help you move through the required stages to create a successful training project. But how to stay on track? Even a process won’t work well if you are focussing on the wrong thing. Which brings us to…
- We can leverage our exceptional writing skills to write better learning objectives. These learning objectives will help keep you focussed on what you should be teaching and how you should be teaching it.
- Generally, a stem gives the learner something of a timeline for when they will have learned the task as well as what could be expected.
- Action words or just verbs to us expert writers are exactly that. A measurable action of what they will be able to do.
- The actual outcome of the task. We’ll need to be specific here.
- Bloom’s taxonomy helps us classify learning objectives. You use different words depending on what skill you’re trying to teach. Unfortunately, like much of instructional design…
- It’s complicated.
- So let’s simplify this.
- Bloom’s taxonomy has six levels. Many educators consider these levels hierarchal (starting with remembering). The user should progress through the levels when they are learning something. Each level requires different learning objectives. One thing to note: If you research Bloom’s Taxonomy, you may realize that some of the terms are different. This is the revised list of terms.
- But we live in the real world. The corporate world in fact. Our users are not in the classroom to learn theory. They are in the classroom to master skills they can use on the job.
- The levels you’ll use most frequently are Remember, Apply, and Analyze. Of course, you may use all or any levels but generally, we’re looking at performance improvement.
- Remembering is all about recognizing and recalling facts. Your users may need to remember which box to fill in, which tool to use, which button to select? You’ll write your learning objectives accordingly.
- Applying is all about, well, applying knowledge they have learned. Your users may need to calculate something, perform a task, or make a prediction.
- Analyzing is about looking at a situation and deciding the best path forward. Your users may need to choose the appropriate tool, investigate the root cause of a problem, or explain how they came to a solution.
- A correctly written learning objective will help you stay on track. Does this activity help them remember? Does it help them analyze? Does it help them Apply? Does this technology meet the learning objectives? In many situations, applying is better suited to in-class training. But not necessarily! You could create an interactive game that helps them apply! Are the quiz questions appropriate? Do they reflect the knowledge they actually have to know?