How to Structure a Course to Maximize Learning

You’ve gathered all the relevant content needed to write a training course. You are sitting in front of your computer screen ready to knock out the slides. And…you are stuck. What is the best way to structure the content? Where do you begin?

When instructional designers get stuck, they naturally fall back on what they know – the model for teaching they saw year after year in school. So, they group related chunks of content together to form topics. Then, they string these topics together in an order that seems to make logical sense.

For example, here is the original structure of a product knowledge course for a sales team that I ended up re-designing:

• Introduction & Objectives
• Background on the New Product
• New Product Features & Benefits
• Comparison of the New Product to Competitive Offerings

Looks pretty good, right? But, there is a hidden issue with this approach that makes it less effective than it could be.

Think about it. Basically, one of the most important aspects of the sales job is to answer questions from prospective customers. Answering questions could take the form of making sure that answers to top-of-mind questions are embedded into the sales presentation. Or, it could mean being prepared with a ready answer during meetings, phone calls, and email exchanges.

The above approach to the training structure assumes that learners will translate what they learn into answers to these questions. It is an extra step that top performers will take. But, what about the rest of the sales team?

Plus, there is the added risk that by not directly answering the most likely questions the sales team will have to field about the new product, critical information may be missing from the training.

To address these problems, I re-designed the training to mirror the job as closely as I could.

My new design looked something like this:

• Introduction & Objectives
• Answers to Questions About the New Product
• Answers to Questions About How the New Product Compares to the Old Product
• Answers to Questions About How the New Product Compares to Competitor 1’s Product
• Answers to Questions About How the New Product Compares to Competitor 2’s Product
• Answers to Questions About How the New Product Compares to Competitor 3’s Product

This structure eliminated that extra translating step to make it easy for learners to apply what they learned in training to their real life work.

There are basically four ways you can structure a course to mirror a job:

• A series of steps
• A series of tasks
• Questions to answer
• Problems to solve

Whichever you choose, the only rule is to make sure that your structure mirrors the job as closely as possible.

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Diane Valenti, founder of Applied Performance Solutions, Inc., uses her instructional design ninja skills to help people reach their potential at work and to help companies drive business results. She works with Fortune 500 and startup companies on the fast track to success. Her specialties include gamification, curriculum design, instructional design, job analysis, needs assessment, project management, task analysis, training evaluation, training facilitation, and learning strategy.

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