IT’S TIME TO
CHANGE HOW YOU DESIGN TRAINING
INTRODUCTION
The main challenge that is slowing down learning and development leaders in being able to scale training is being able to get information out
of the heads of subject matter experts (SMEs) and structure it in the form of training. While this doesn’t sound like an overly complex problem,
it is a product of multiple contributing factors including:
That’s why best in class learning and development departments are taking a different approach to developing training. In this
ebook we’ll take a deeper look at the underlying issues and reveal how you can overcome some of these obstacles and scale training across
your organization.
1. Lack of a knowledge sharing culture
2. SMEs are hard to identify and often aren’t equipped to design training programs
3. Creating properly designed, effective training programs is incredibly time-consuming
4. Lack of a process to capture training requirements
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An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage
-Jack Welch -“ “
Building a great learning culture depends on capturing and sharing
knowledge from company experts, managers, leaders and top
performers so it can be used to train others. This approach not only
improves performance across the enterprise due to improved
knowledge transfer, it builds a more engaged workforce.
The good news about fostering a knowledge sharing culture is that
systems exist to support this approach in a way that they never did
before. Employees can easily connect with others leveraging messaging and
conferencing tools like #Slack, Skype, WhatsApp and Google
Hangouts among others.
But while tools can support a knowledge sharing culture they can’t build it. That
needs to be built into the fabric of the organization.
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CREATE A KNOWLEDGE SHARING CULTUREDo You Have A Knowledge
Sharing Culture?
1. Does knowledge sharing exist as a component of your existing company values?
2. Are employees encouraged to share acquired knowledge or expertise on particular topics? How?
3. When employees lack knowledge or require training, does a mechanism exist for them to ask for training?
4. Do employees know who within your organization possesses existing knowledge on various topics?
5. Are departmental leaders measured on their ability to encourage collaboration and capture learnings?
6. Do processes exist to reward knowledge acquisition and sharing?
7. Are systems in place to make sharing and accessing knowledge easy?
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CROWDSOURCE CONTENT
One of the most important components of a sharing culture
is having mechanisms in place for employees to create
content. These 5 tips can get you started.
Leverage rewards and recognition
Designing training content is time-consuming
so if you want buy-in, you may want to offer
employees’ incentives to help motivate them
to build content.
Curate Corporate Training
If you want to scale corporate training development
efforts, you need to enable subject matter experts
to use tools that are familiar to them.
Specialized e-Learning authoring tools won’t cut it.
You need subject matter experts to repurpose as
much existing content as they can find, whether is it
a YouTube video, PDF, blog post or other.
Streamline Instructional Design
While there are still many debates about whether
or not you need instructional design, the evidence is
clear that good instructional design results in
training that impacts performance.
Seed Content
If you want your subject matter experts to align to
business needs, a great way to get started is for
your corporate training and development
department to first build or curate some of the
content.
This should include great examples of what is
expected and make recommendations on handy
tools that people can use.
Collaborate with SMEs
With crowdsourcing, any SME can participate, but
you need great collaboration tools to support them
and set clear standards of what is acceptable
quality.
Streamlining instructional design so that SMEs are
not expected to become instructional designers is
critical.
SMEs are dispersed throughout your company and hold incredible value to the
organization if you can extract their knowledge and leverage it to train others.
Easier said than done though.
The Problem with SMEs
But with the right tools and technology, SMEs can help design and
develop training like never before. The trick is you need to adapt to their world,
rather than asking them to adapt to yours. Treating SMEs like
instructional designers is notoriously dangerous and so asking them to fit into
your current instructional design process or ask them for
multiple in-person meetings that compete with their regular day-to-day activi-
ties will make the process difficult for everyone.
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WORKING EFFECTIVELY WITH SMEs
• They can be difficult to identify
• They are hard to schedule because they have full-time jobs doing something else
• They don’t know how to write in the voice of learning
• They haven’t been trained in course design
“The trick is you need to adapt to their world, rather than asking them
to adapt to yours.”
“
A massive gap exists between the current elearning authoring tools and training delivery that is making it impossible for learning
and development professionals to create training at scale.
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CHANGING THE STATUS QUO IN TRAINING DESIGN
For the last fifteen years, the training world has tried to push
specialized eLearning authoring tools to subject matter experts.
Although there are some good tools in the market like Storyline,
Captivate and others, there’s no way an SME can devote the kind
of time necessary to learn these tools. Not only that but in order to
produce training that works the SMEs would need to have a
background in adult learning theory.
No matter how many times you hear “anyone can create
highly interactive training”, the majority of solutions are too
basic - allowing only for uploads of assets like slides or
videos - or the learning curve for the advanced tools is
significant so SMEs simply won’t use them.
While the specialized tools are extensively used by
Instructional Designers to create content, the process of design
and planning is still done in Word or other document processing
programs. This is where the problem of scale starts to arise. As
these documents quickly become unmanageable and redundant
within the organization and in some cases even lost. There are
lesson templates, course standards, and brand guidelines, but for
the most part the entire process of designing training is still largely
manual.
“ For the most part, the entire process of designing training is still largely manual”
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THE SOLUTION: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN MUST BE SCALED
In many areas of business, new technology has allowed people to
learn skills that used to require dedicated people. Business
intelligence (BI) tools are a good example. Prior to modern BI tools,
data analysis was the domain of specialized people in an
organization. If you needed to analyze, correlate, or slice and dice
information, you asked someone who knew how to do it. But over
time, technology (tools) became available that allowed
non-specialists to do their own analysis.
This is what must be done with instructional design as well in
order to scale training. As stated earlier, there is no time to
transfer knowledge from SME to ID to customer or employee with
today’s speed of business. Many organizations run train the trainer
programs for SMEs to try and fix this problem. Classes are offered
on the basics of instructional design and SMEs are expected to
attend, but this process is highly ineffective. If every employee can
become a subject matter expert, you can’t scale with this model.
In a Chapman Alliance survey, nearly 250 learning designers reported that they took almost 45 hours to create an elearning course
before the authoring and programming stage. That’s nearly $5,800 spent before even building out the training content.
Instead of manual processes and a disparate collection of tools or
classes to design training, it is possible to leverage new technology
such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate
best practices in instructional design. Everyone can now use a
systematic framework that guides SMEs through best practices
and recommends ways to align content with learning objectives
and assessments.
Instructional design must become a skill that everyone can learn,
not a job role for specialized individuals anymore. This will allow
current instructional designers to expand their roles into more
valuable areas of the learning organization such as content
curation, project management, and performance consulting. It’s
the only way to get everyone in the organization to be a subject
matter expert so scaling training becomes possible and business
needs are met.
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TECHNOLOGY THAT ENABLES SCALE
A Learning Design System is a platform that automates and streamlines the training development process. Best practices are built into the
system that guide stakeholders and SMEs through the entire process, increasing speed and allowing people to collaborate on things like
training requests, needs analysis, and instructional design. Learning Design Systems take this information to create storyboards, blueprints,
and courses that work with existing training tools.
Training Request
Storyboards
Needs Analysis
Blueprints
Instructional Design
Courses
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Synapse empowers organizations around the world to automate and streamline their training development processes. Our Learning Design Systems
enables learning teams and subject matter experts to design, develop, and scale corporate training in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of
typical processes and tools. Studies show that it can take up to 90 hours to produce an hour of training content, Synapse reduces that number dramatically
by automating the planning and design phase of content development and helps you turn every employee into an SME.
IN CONCLUSION
Everyone knows that training is paramount to the success of any organization, but with business being conducted in a fraction of the time
compared to the past, learning and training development departments need to adapt to train the workforce and remain competitive.
In a Chapman Alliance survey, nearly 250 learning designers reported that they took almost 45 hours to create an elearning
course before the authoring and programming stage. That’s nearly $5,800 spent before even building out the training content. Implementing
an automated instructional design process will reduce the time and costs that it takes to produce training. And
will allow you to easily integrate with other enterprise applications so you can scale.
Automate and Scale Training Development at Your Company
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The Synapse Learning Design System empowers you scale training by automating instructional design. Learn how you can make every employee an SME.