Make learning stick by designing for learners

When learning doesn’t stick, it often lacks alignment. It doesn’t lead to observable change. It doesn’t show up in the way learners approach life and work after the course. It won’t — until we align with the most important part of all work: those who carry it out.

Align the business case with learners’ experience

The first part is easy. Gain clarity around mission, vision, and business objectives. Let that clarity produce tightly aligned performance objectives. What comes next is often neglected.

• Who carries out the work by which we measure success? Employees. They’re the business. They’re the agency. We must align with them if we want them to manifest the mission.
• Do you place learners at the center of your course design and delivery? Or does content take center stage?
• Do you design around what learners want and need to do with developing knowledge and skill? Or does course design focus mainly on expressing what you want learners to know?
• Did performance objectives lead to choices around what users must know? Or was it the other way around?
• How much do you know about problems learners want and need to solve? Not people in general — the people who will attend your training to develop real skill and use it in specific environments. What do you know about them and their environments?

We need a filter to inform how we design and deliver information — that filter is the user experience. Before we map a learning journey, create a wireframe, or drop content onto the first slide, we need to know as much as we can about the humans it’s all for.

Enter user personas: composites of users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. Personas represent real people, real needs, real wants, interests, and the environments learners live and work in.

A word of caution: user personas only have value when you base them on real data and stories from users themselves. Without that, we design for and perpetuate stereotypes.

Ask questions to align with learners

If you create or deliver learning experiences for people you’ve never met, how can you “meet” them?

Working in public service, I quickly learned that “the public” doesn’t exist. Humans living within communities, families, groups, and workplaces exist. We make connections to understand their learning needs and meet those needs in meaningful ways.

If we understand and align with our users, we can apply useful problem-solving tools to challenges together. We can guide teams that draw on a wide range of professional backgrounds and diverse experiences. We can come up with creative ways of working and turn fixed mindsets into flexible thinking.

To align with learners, we ask:

• What problems can this knowledge and these skills solve for learners
• Do learners care about business goals?
• What do they want for themselves, their colleagues, the agency?
• What do learners want to get better at?
• How do they want to use new or stronger skills?
• Where and when will they use these skills? What’s the environment like?
• Do they express any fears? Pain points? Strong interests? Joys?

Where can we get this kind of information? In our work, we create custom deliveries of course content at no cost. We don’t do this to make training more affordable — we do it to encourage sponsors to help us answer those questions. Discovering good answers to those questions requires an investment of time and energy — precious resources that we appreciate. We don’t want this interaction to cost sponsors or learners anything more than time. We ask for work samples, surveys, interviews. We seek ways to observe how each group experiences and produces work.

Use course content to connect

A persona is context-specific, it focuses on behaviors and goals relative to a specific domain. What domains relate to the training you design or deliver?

For example, we train information design and writing skills. In training, we use an interactive, live survey tool to have every learner rank information by its value when making decisions. We ask them how they like to receive information in general and give several ways of organizing information as options. We then pose a few questions related to a specific situation we’ll soon write about.

As they answer questions, answers appear on the screen. We set up the results display to visualize an inverted pyramid, a model we want them to start using in written communication. We also create a quick persona together based on the results and use the persona as a filter for our writing activity around information design.

Everything relates to technical skills that learners must develop. It also gives us real information about learners. It gives the group insight into the types of information their colleagues want and need to carry out their work. It tells them how they process and prefer to receive information. It does three things at once in a fast, personal, and high-touch way.

As you consider tools and methods, ensure they work for everyone. Whatever you choose, accommodate a wide range of individual preferences and diverse abilities. The simpler and more intuitive, the better. Build in equitable, flexible means of use.

Use agency data to connect

Agencies collect demographic information that might relate to your work. You can read employee engagement survey results. Agencies share useful information about the work they do and challenges they face on social media. You might follow agencies, workgroups, and subgroups on LinkedIn or Medium.

When invited, we connect with learners and follow their professional progress. We know the topics and causes that interest them and the wins they celebrate. What other resources might you use?

We use what we observe to create empathy, identify with learners, gain diverse perspectives, and protect against designing for ourselves. We continue to define, brainstorm, draft, test, and launch course elements based on feedback. User groups change over time, sometimes rapidly. Remain curious, connected, and aligned.

When we get this right, we see change. Learning sticks. Learners find work meaningful, carry out the mission, and manifest the vision.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carriann Lane is director of Write Words Inc. She trains public sector writers to convey complex information in plain language. She leads teams that use design thinking to create clear content for all. She also trains dialogue skills that help gain unity and insights that lead to the best possible outcomes.