Moving Forward with your Customer’s eLearning Project . . . Documenting the Learning Challenge

You're moving forward with your eLearning project - You’ve successfully shared a strong understanding of your team’s eLearning KSEs (Knowledge, Skills, Experience) with your customer. You’re beginning to establish a common language going to better connect and communicate with your customer and key project players as you move forward.

So, what’s next?

Begin by Documenting the Learning Challenge to set the foundation for your project. And, you’ve begun working toward a better “Understanding of the big question”. Or, what Learning Challenge are we trying to address? 

• It’s important to discuss, brainstorm, interview key players, facilitate crucial conversations, and to start documenting and accumulating different perspectives from key stakeholders involved with this learning challenge. The goal is to help clarify, sort out and prioritize the key learnings early on in your project engagement.
• How can you summarize and share the crucial parts of what you’re seeing and understanding the learning challenge to your customer?

Focus on: 

• What are the key eLearning methodologies, pedagogies, models, etc.  that are driving the learning challenge?
• What key performance objectives are being addressed? What are some examples of performing or understanding these effectively?
• Which knowledge, behaviors, or attitudes are they trying to change?
• How will learners practice, fail, and learn about the key learning concepts?
• How will learning be measured, or assessed for this learning challenge?
• Document overall strategy of who, what, when, why, and where? What are the key components/functions to be developed? 
• Are you able to translate what you are seeing and understanding into terms that you and your team can readily use to begin developing effective learning content, tools, exercises, etc.?

Next, start to focus and clarify the Learning Challenge:

Begin to adapt or detail out responsibilities, rules, deliverables, communication modes, etc. that support the development of the Learning Challenge.

Think about:

• How will the learning solution(s) be developed in order to measure success or failure for the learning challenge?
• What will change for the users to indicate learning success or failure? What’s being measured?
• What knowledge, or understanding are we trying to impart? What will users understand?
• What skills will users be able to better perform, share, or achieve?
• How will user behaviors and attitudes change after engaging with this new learning solution?

Documenting the learning challenge, and then continually working to focus and clarify details to help you to better assess and understand the impact on your customer’s key players - those folks that are the users, managers, administrators, leaders, etc. involved with using and supporting the current (existing) learning environment, or learning tools and who are moving to the using and supporting the new learning solution. 

While, at the same time, you are providing your eLearning development team - designers, programmers, trainers, project managers, etc., with strong, and in-depth understanding of the Learning Challenge. They’re gaining the insight to help them with get a better start on the design, development, modeling, testing, and implementation of potential solutions (wireframes, demos, betas, etc.) early enough to ensure a more accurate start for eLearning development that can address your customer’s Learning Challenge.

#Danny Ortegón leads and develops strategic e-learning implementations across multiple industry sectors. His recent focus has been developing innovative and effective e-Learning strategies for various clients serving millions of learners.