Training Industry Magazine - Leadership 2015 Special Edition - (Page 23)

i ence? noun [ik-speer-ee-uh ns] the process or fact of personally observing, encountering or undergoing something. how measurement data will be captured and used in reporting. Due consideration needs to be given to why and how people learn, not just what they'll learn. And if you're planning a multinational project, you'll need to reflect on the subtleties of whether your solution will work as effectively in all countries. UTILIZING AGILE DESIGN FOR LEARNING SOLUTIONS Creating a learning architecture isn't the end of the story; it's simply the beginning of a process that will involve a more refined and detailed design and perhaps a piloting stage. However, if you've produced an architecture that's understandable, you'll have a tool that will not only facilitate the rest of the design process, it will help to head-off any potential problems before they arise. As simple training courses, where knowledge is imparted from an expert, have evolved into broader and bigger learning programs, where learners are enthused to develop and improve their skills, the physical process of design has become more timeconsuming and sequential. You meet with a client, discuss their requirements and then develop something to meet their needs. You bring back your recommendation, which possibly needs tweaking either because the requirements have changed or there's been some misunderstanding along the way. With luck, the required tweaking will be minimal, but it's always possible that there could be a major flaw in your proposal that would require significant reworking. So, again, you go away to make revisions and this would continue until an agreement is reached. This traditional, to-and-fro approach, where each phase is built on the results of the prior phase, is now being challenged by a new methodology called agile learning design. Borrowed from the IT community, where it has been used to enhance software development, agile is a project management approach that meets the needs of a business in a changing world. It allows dedicated teams to collaborate simultaneously to quickly create a viable and valuable solution - and it is proven just as effective for designing learning as it is for designing software. Like the traditional, to-and-fro approach, agile design starts by understanding the client's requirements and objectives. It then splits the learning goals into component parts and identifies various stakeholders in different functions who should be involved in collaborative teams. The teams are usually comprised of learning and development instructional designers, internal subject matter experts, as well as learners and their managers. This provides multiple perspectives. The team then collaborates, working side-by-side to develop their own specific component of the whole. All the various parts can then be brought together to form a program that is ready for release because it has already been pre-approved at every level. TRAINING INDUSTRY MAGAZINE - LEADERSHIP2015 I SPECIAL EDITION I WWW.TRAININGINDUSTRY.COM/MAGAZINE 23 http://www.trainingindustry.com

Training Industry Magazine - Leadership 2015 Special Edition

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