Article: Audience and Training Analysis - Part 2

(This article follows the article “E-Learning or E-Burning”)

The first step towards creating online courseware is understanding the audience and need for the training.

Traditional interviews held by the instructional designer or representative with the prospective consumers of the learning product had the following questions: (more or less)

1.??????What is the age of the learning group?

2.??????What are the current gaps in their knowledge of this program?

3.??????Which device will they take this training on?

4.??????Are they technology savvy?

5.??????Are you looking for a WBT, ILT, or blended learning?

6.??????Do you have an LMS and want to track the learner participation, progress, completion, etc.?

7.??????Is this a mandatory training or a good-to-know training?

8.??????Do you want assessments?

9.??????Are you willing to spend more on an attractive solution?

10.??Are there any existing trainings that you have and would like to improvise upon?

11.??What is the current methodology for imparting this training and what are the drawbacks noticed?

12.??Do you already have something in mind for how this training should look?

13.??Will you provide the content and subject-matter-expert?

14.??What kind of branding do you want us to follow?

15.??What is the timeline that you have in mind?

Considering the breadth of questions being asked, I am sure most learning producers get started immediately on receiving the responses.

I believe that the future of e-learning will change drastically and the nature of questions may also have to adapt to the new demands of the learning process. The nature of questioning must comprise of 4 areas, namely:

1.??????Motivation of the audience.

2.??????Demographics in terms of accessibility to learning, devices, age, exposure to gaming, how much time is at their disposal for learning, existing proficiency for a subject, gaps in learning in terms of failure to perform which task or exhibit behaviors, lack of consistency, etc.

3.??????The content that must be transformed, intensive study, questioning, identifying important and core areas, understanding relevance, segregating theory from practice, planning to provide proficiency in both areas with weightage for each, and so on.

4.??????The training requirement’s details, just-in-time, high proficiency, mandatory, split into different delivery modes, and so on.

Let’s now discuss each aspect in detail.?

1.??????Motivation of the audience: Most e-learning programs though created well with quality in language, graphics, interesting narrative, well-designed testing, have found it difficult to hold the audience’s interest. Persons who abandon the training quickly, immediately, or in the middle exist. Although a lot of work has gone into analyzing the reasons for non-completion of an online training program, the lessons learned have not been harnessed or explored.

When I speak of motivation, it’s not really the motivation to take an e-learning course. It’s more about enquiring into what would motivate a learner to take a program for 30 minutes to 2 hours on a certain subject, attempt the assessments, and pass. Take for example, a fast food chain wants their sales persons to take a training on the POS system, so that they can handle it efficiently and process 3 customers in 7 minutes during peak hours. In this statement, you can see the motivation of the fast food chain for its employees. But what is the motivation for the sales person to be undergoing this training? This is the question that you must ask and seek an answer for. The answer will help you design a far better course than you thought you could.

If you ask the prospective learner this question, you may receive answers that will help you see their learning requirement from their perspective. Maybe, you may be told that if I learn to handle the POS well, I will be moved from probation to a permanent role and that will be really useful for me. You can read the motivation to be “mastery needed for security in job role.” Another person might tell you that ever since these new systems have been brought in, it has been chaos at the till. None of us know how to use it well and stop often to seek our supervisor’s intervention, and that delays billing. You will read the motivation to be: “need to be better at the system to prevent confusion and inefficiency”. Another person may tell you that they know the system well as they used it in their previous employment, but now they’d like to complete the mandatory training for a promotion in role.” This example pertains to using a system. You may find other subjects to be in the lime light for the training, and you will receive varied responses, but the point of the exercise is to find out what motivates individuals to take a training and also receive clues about why they may abandon it.

Read this Article about motivation in e-learning.

1.??????Demographics:

While the training manager of a prospective client may tell you that they want a web-based training with an assessment categorically, it is really your duty to understand whether all of the audience can access this training, is it more convenient to present it on a smartphone, what is the average age of the audience, will they like a gaming format, what is their academic qualifications, how good are they already at the planned training, do they have time to do an elaborate training or nuggets, are all the learners from a certain geography or from different parts of the world, know how many from which part, take the male/female ratio (helps design the course); learn about the tenure of the participants in the organization (design the course as beginner level/intermediate/senior); be alert to the typical words/colors/objects/personifications that are not acceptable to the organization, language majority (all the learners can speak/read/write Spanish although the planned courseware is for English); find out how many of the audience own smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. How much time can each participant give for this training? (30 minutes-a-day etc.) Check for the popularity of gaming among the audience. Game-based course designs can make the training interesting and easier to follow than a traditional approach. Keeping in mind the nature of the content, explore how many persons of the audience are expected to take it as mandatory and how many will take the course as an optional one. You can have two versions of the course designed for the real consumers. Knowing all the parts of the world in which the audience is helps create a course that can be viewed and understood by all. Getting to know these details after you have finished the creation leads to rework while trying to fix cultural nuances. If you know upfront that the course ware must be translated as well, you can plan in advance how to create and present the content to facilitate translations.

Read this article on audience analysis.

1.??????Content to be transformed: This may seem to be “stating the obvious”. But, motivation to take a course, complete it, and pass the assessment all of this revolves around the content itself. Content study must be thorough in the following areas:

a.??????Nature of the content: Technical (theory), soft skills, skills, application, behavioral change, knowledge, etc.

b.??????Clarity about what the learner must exhibit at the end of the training.

c.??????Measurable goals, tests that can be properly assessed to know the ability of the learner before and after the training.

d.??????Can the goals be achieved through the planned training intervention or does it need further practice and support?

e.??????Is the current content relevant and in a shape that can be used to impart the training effectively?

f.???????The current content is being used in the classroom training and its effective, we need the same content in the online training as well. Mull on this request because often, the CRT material will not suffice.

g.??????The content does not necessarily transform to a fixed predictable online training duration. Therefore, study it in detail to assess the planned training duration.

h.??????Learn to look at the content as opportunities for Instructor-Led training, mobile training, web-based training, simulations, AR-VR opportunities, game based training, and so on. Do not approach the content with a solution in mind instigated by the client or your own thoughts.

i.????????“Little is more” the future is all about concise content and easily digested nuggets for all age groups. Therefore, look for opportunities to cut down huge chunks of learning through various media.

1.??????Training Requirement: The type of the training requirement will help design far effective courses. For example, if a training is clearly Just-in-time, then it can easily be adopted into a nugget training that can be accessed on-the-go on a smartphone or tablet. Take this case study: The sales team of a refrigeration company that sells all kinds of domestic and industrial refrigerators with nearly 15 product lines of 6-10 types of products in each line wants to train its sales personnel who speak to nearly 10 customers on an average every day and are expected to close 30 deals a week which is a proven track record of some top performers. They approach you for a solution to their needs which is sales personnel must be thorough in the specifications of each product line and the products within, their prices, performances, warranty details, discounts that change every month, and be familiar with the forms that must be filled to close the deals.

?Typically, if you approached this requirement as any other WBT requirement and start designing courses for 30 minutes seat time for each product line, with pages for details, specs, prices, discounts etc. this may not help the sales person much who does not have the time to be seated for so many hours taking this online course. Worse, the salesperson cannot remember the details once the course is closed. They don’t have anything to refer to except the product details page printed by the company. So, the traditional solution may not be right one. On the other hand, if each product’s details are given over the smart phone as nuggets for each product that can be viewed quickly in less than 10 minutes, and the data is always on the salesperson’s phone that he can refer to before entering the customer’s office, this will be just-in-time and far more effective and fresh than the traditional learning method.

Knowing the type of training, which is just-in-time, mandatory, optional, good-to-know, specialist training and so on, will help you solution the need the better.

Here’s another example, when the content is such that the learner must exhibit a skill that can be achieved only with practice and supervision cannot be "solutioned" as a web-based training alone. It is clear that the learner must practice further in a measurable manner under supervision before they can be called proficient. So, this can be achieved in two-part training of a web-based training followed by simulations and then a test.

Read this article about training need analysis.

Owing to the new avenues now available for online training, the manner of consulting with a prospective client must change to accommodate the new methods available to train, solution, and actually provide a cost-effective solution.

Next Article Part 3 - Planning