ROLES:
• Analysis
• Online Course Design
• Development
• Implementation
• Evaluation
DURATION:
September 8, 2021 – December 13, 2021
TECHNOLOGIES:
Articulate Rise 360, Google Forms, Photoshop, Cyberduck
BRIEF:
Across the company, digital product collaborators have been asked to apply a new system of thinking to their work. To kick this off a multi-day seminar showcasing the “7 Design Principals” was presented in Zoom and recorded. Soon after it was posted to a website that also included slides, references, and extra links. It was discovered that there was a need to support for new employees, an ability to appeal to different motivation drivers, and the ability to measure the impact of the trainings.
SOLUTION:
To address these findings, the seminar was re-imagined to an online training course that caters to individual learning. Using a learning management system (LMS), a week-long asynchronous training course was developed. These lessons have been segmented into 7 microlearning sections. This will allow for easy consumption and increased employee engagement over the work week. Learners discover what the 7 Design Principals are, why they are important, and how they can use them to help reach their product goals. Once they’re done with the course they get links to resources and a Teams channel to connect with others for help and inspiration. They also can sign up to have a special “7 Design Principals” sticker sent to them. After, they’ll complete a survey about the training course. These metrics will be used to improve upon the training course over time.
WEBSITE:
7 Design Principals (best viewed in Chrome browser)
ANALYSIS:
To start this project, I first meet with Subject Matter Experts (SME) to identify their want’s and needs for the desired outcome of training course. We discovered the future delivery method needs to have clear learning goals with measurable outcomes. Along with appealing to different motivations, we’ll needed to be able to quantify the quality of the training.
The audience is defined as digital product stakeholder employees. These employees are encouraged to take the training. Our long-term learning goal is: 1) For the learner to always think about their designs from the user’s point of view. 2) Re-use, don’t reinvent components 3) consistency across the user’s experience.
ONLINE COURSE DESIGN:
This will also be asynchronous to accommodate for the user’s time.
As adult learners are self-directed and problem oriented, the motivation would be in that this will help them achieve their goals in increased KPI. It has also been gamified by adding a sticker as a reward upon completion. This sticker will not only aid in motivation, but it will create a sense of community as the stickers are recognized around the office.
Using a mix of Bloom’s and Fink’s Taxonomy I created a taxonomy to align the course objectives and my ideal of a good learning experience. My taxonomy starts with letting users know how learning this subject applies to them and help them. Getting the learners to care about the subject will help them understand the information. This technique also helps them remember a few years down the road and use it in the future. Next, they learn the foundational knowledge. This is where they can apply what they learned right away in a low cost. Unlike Bloom’s Taxonomy, I believe it’s important for learners to be able to experiment with creating even before they have come to fully understand the subject. This will help sustain the excitement about what they are learning by giving them the opportunity to dive right in without a lot at stake. Giving learners the freedom to try and fail without feeling pressure. And finally, through story telling and resource links, users learn how to learn more in the future.
Built using the Backwards Design Model, I thought about what we wanted the users to walk away learning from this course. From there I designed the assessments and final review assignment taking those goals into account. To support these assessments the content from the existing sessions and documentation were tailored to suit the goals.
A natural conversational tone was used in the course language. This was done to make it easy for users to read, but to also create a sense of a instructor presence. Although these online courses are not live, it’s important to help increase participation.
The organizational plan consists of a consistent pattern for each of the 7 Design Principals. The flow for each will cover: the lesson’s objective, what the Principal is, how to do it, examples and/or statistics, a low stakes assessment, and finally the recap of key factors. The final activity will be in a form of a reflection of how the user can apply the learning to their own projects.
DEVELOPMENT:
Rise 360 does have one drawback in that they don’t offer a way for a learner to answer an open question. All the forms they offer now have to have correct or incorrect answer. To get around this for the final project, I embedded a Google Form. Due to this work-around, there will be two places to gather assessments and feedback.
IMPLEMENTATION:
EVALUATION:
An online survey at the end of course captures user’s immediate feedback. Review questions range from level of satisfaction, to if the information is relevant to their work. I also added an open field for users are able to leave extra comments. Once captured and collected in Google, these learning will help to influence future updates.
Feedback and interactions on the Team channel will also help us to assess how employees are applying the 7 Design Principals to their work. It’ll also give us an idea if they have any questions that can be addressed in next iterations of the training course.
