What You Don’t Need to Create Great Workplace Training

Disclaimer: This article is intended for those who’ve never heard of the term “Instructional Designer”.

There’s a dirty secret in Learning and Design when it comes to workplace training and corporate learning activities. It's masked with jargon, exorbitant fees, slow timetables, ineffective pedagogy, and rounds of feedback with strangers who’ve never actually stepped foot on your work site. I may even be banished from the Instructional Design cabal for telling you this, but: You do not need to be an instructional designer to do instructional design or incorporate instructional design models or principles. 

If you are a small-to-medium-sized business that cannot afford hundreds of hours of design work for blended learning, there is absolutely no reason you should be deprived of great workplace training. In some instances, when it comes to safety or PPE precautions, it’s a matter of safety.

3 Things You DON'T Need for an Online Learning Experience

Here are three things you do NOT need (though you may think you do) to make an incredible online learning experience.

1) An external SME

External SMEs (or subject matter experts) are most of the time completely unnecessary. There is no need to go and search for an outside professional for work that you’ve been doing for years. Your SMEs are your co-workers! They know how to do their job, the tricks to make it easier, the learning strategies for performance improvement, and the pitfalls that a newcomer might experience. Use them, ask for their opinion, set up a time to interview them or shadow them and ask for a candid tour of their day-to-day for the summative evaluation of your instructional approach. This will help you understand the instructional design process and effectively implement instructional strategies for your online course development processes. More specifically, you’ll learn about what to include in the learning objectives, allow them to be heard, and establish a relationship that might not have previously been there.

2) A degree in education

While it always helps to have teaching experience and an understanding of how your learners learn, there is nothing you absolutely need that you cannot learn on YouTube or the hundreds of books about adult learning on Amazon. Adults are by no means simple learners, in fact, there are some areas that make them a more difficult audience than younger learners. 

One of the main rules of thumb is to make relatable pieces of training that reference actual situations you may encounter in a day’s work. This is why many IDs tend to opt for storyboards or scenario-based presentations. You are already an expert in this, as you know better than anyone else what happens during a typical day on the job!

If you want more insight, I can’t recommend enough the book Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen.

3) L&D experience

You have to start somewhere! Even the most talented instructional designers and design technologists at one point knew nothing about learning, development, and enhancing talent. It takes trial and error. So make the first step. Make those first errors. You can only learn by making mistakes and improving.

Make something—anything. While you’re finding your tools and learning materials, you may want to start with a lesson about yourself, or your favorite movie if you’d like. See what works for you. Once you’ve made your first module, give it to a friend or fellow learner. See if they enjoy their coursework! Or check if they’re retaining new knowledge and skills. Are they falling asleep while taking it? Their snores can be all the feedback you need to make it more engaging.

There are a ton of great authoring tools and other instructional technology out there, though none are easier to use than SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s learning management system for non-IDs (full disclosure, I work for them). It’s template-based, free, has easy customization of learning objects, offers interactive learning tools, and has the best live support in the biz. It also allows you to create self-paced learning, active learning, and collaborative learning. Not only that, it also considers different learning theories in the tools and features they make. 

Covering five different time zones around the world, there is not an hour when someone isn’t here to answer your questions if you get stuck. You can even schedule a one-on-one session to walk you through the authoring tool. You can even make your own certificate program here. 

So what do you need to do Instructional Design or Instructional Systems Design? Something to say. 

Everyone has something to teach. All it takes is some elbow grease, a systematic approach, a good understanding of the theories of learning, a little bit of humility, and the right instructional design and educational technology to have a stellar e-learning experience and learning outcomes from your co-workers.

You can do this.