Saturday, 28 March 2020

Tips and Strategies to Convert Your Outdated eLearning Content to Highly Engaging Training

Over time, L&D professionals accumulate significant inventories of legacy course materials. But as technology, techniques, and teaching strategies evolve, the legacy content becomes outdated. It fails to deliver engaging training or high-impact eLearning experiences.
Thankfully, when embarking on an eLearning course refresh cycle, not everything you have in your legacy eLearning content archives may need drastic upgrading.
In this article, I share tips, strategies, and ways to make this transition to convert your outdated eLearning content to highly engaging training more effective and efficient.

How Can L&D Professionals Leverage the Mandate of Converting Legacy/Outdated eLearning Content to Training that Engages Learners, Improves Performance, and Behavioral Change?

 You can use the opportunity of updating legacy or outdated eLearning content to highly engaging training that can help change learner behavior and create the impact the business seeks.
In this transition, you can use several tips and strategies that will help you improve the following 4 aspects:
  1. Enhance learner engagement.
  2. Improved learner retention.
  3. Facilitate better application of acquired learning.
  4. Achieve higher levels of learning transference.

Enhanced Learner Engagement

When it comes to assignments, tests, and assessments, most legacy eLearning content focused on static learning, where “one and done” rules prevailed. Using the same scenario, test case, or case study repeatedly – or variants thereof – with modern learners is a recipe for disengagement.
Today, millennials as well as other profiles of multi-generational workforce, crave for more engaging, relevant, and immersive training. This should sync with their lifestyles and must be available within their workflow. It must be easily accessible and should be packaged to address their learning need or help them clear a challenge. The training should fit in their workday that is fraught with the challenge of inordinate number of “distractions” (many of them as a result of multitasking in a highly connected world – that learners face in the digital workplace today). These disruptions prevent them from carving out time for learning.
Tips: What can be done to enhance learner connect and engagement
  1. L&D teams must, therefore, repurpose eLearning content to deliver Mobile Learning that allows learners to pick it up on the go, between breaks/meetings, and even during commute. This should include formal learning as well as just-in-time learning aids (Performance Support Tools). Mobile Learning solutions can also be used to promote Social Learning as well as Self-Directed Learning.
  2. L&D teams can repurpose the current lengthy text-based or graphic-intensive content into Microlearning nuggets, including Microlearning Videos to stimulate learner engagement. The series of Microlearning nuggets can also be threaded into Personalized Learning paths to provide more relevant content to each learner profile.

Improved Learner Retention

Traditional approaches, whether paper-based or digitized, relied heavily on quizzes, essays, and oral/verbal elocution to foster learner retention. And while stand-alone True/False (T/F) questions, multiple choice (MC) assessments, or fill-in-the-blanks tests are still valuable teaching aids, today’s learners are looking for eLearning content beyond those approaches.
Tips: What can be done to improve learner retention
  1. One way to enhance learner retention is to repurpose legacy content into Scenario Based Learning. For instance, instead of simply porting legacy T/F or MC assessments into online HTML5 (or other newer web-based standards) web pages, consider framing learning objectives as learner-relatable scenarios. Applying T/F or MC quizzes to those scenarios helps deliver a more engaging context that aids learning and retention.
  2. Additionally, L&D teams can add Micro Challenges (Assessments that are designed in Microlearning formats) that helps them validate their learning. Learners can also use the formative feedback to review/practice and achieve higher retention.

Facilitate Higher Application of Learning

eLearning content refreshes are an ideal opportunity to repurpose existing content for higher learning applications. Instead of using static PPT slides or legacy Flash-based eLearning content to deliver “101-type” learning, L&D professionals could migrate those training assets to latest techniques. This would enable them to create more engaging training that not only creates sticky learning experiences but also facilitates the application of learning.
Tips: What can be done to facilitate better application of acquired learning
  1. You can now produce contextual, dynamic (changing) content; deliver interactivity; and create a higher, broader, and more engaging eLearning experience that support multi-device delivery. This gives learners the control to learn, practice (on the device of their choice), review, and increase the probability of application on the job.
  2. You can offer content in a series of Microlearning nuggets to offer a learning journey that has a combination of Learn, Practice, Apply, and Test. This will enable learners not only learn but also apply the acquired learning on the job.

Achieve Higher Levels of Learning Transference

The objective of training is to ensure that the learning transfers into measurable behavioral changes in the workplace. Unfortunately, while using a passive format legacy (Lectures and notes, PowerPoint slides, Spreadsheets, Word-based templates), training materials may help “teach” learners a new concept or theory but they do not guarantee that learners can successfully apply what they’ve learned to their work environments.
Tips: What can be done to achieve higher levels of learning transference
  1. The use of Branching Simulations is a great strategy to enhance decision-making capabilities among learners. You could use existing eLearning content, such as case studies and scenarios, and convert them into interactive decision-making experiences based on past work situations or potential future interactions employees are likely to encounter.
  2. L&D professionals should also consider moving to more interactive eLearning content, such as experiential learning One way to do that is to embrace Gamification techniques. L&D teams can leverage existing learning assets (including lecture notes, workbooks, policies, procedure manuals, and study guides) to gamify eLearning courses and deliver training experiences that more closely mimic the workplace. Another approach is using Storytorials (Story Based Learning) with real-life characters and situations to drive the message. This approach is a very effective way to bring in behavioral change and can be augmented by Video Based Learning for a higher impact.

Tips: To draw up a successful action plan

In this transition, you can maintain learning relevance by applying the 3R’s approach – Recycle, Repurpose, and Reuse – as you convert legacy eLearning content. The advantage of using the 3R’s is that it delivers significant benefits to all stakeholders:
  • Learners become more engaged.
  • L&D professionals save time when creating new learning modules.
  • HCM teams can respond faster to changing training needs.
  • Line managers can ensure that the staff continually have the most updated knowledge they need to function efficiently.
Do use the following tips as you draw up the action plan to transform your legacy eLearning content into content that delivers more engaging training to your audience:
Scope and Pre-requisites
  1. Create a detailed inventory of legacy content.
  2. Assess what’s relevant (salvageable) and what to discard.
  3. Decide on standards. Before converting legacy eLearning content, decide on standards, such as Backgrounds, Color schemes, Font, Pitch, etc. for Titles, Headings, and Sub-headings and Naming conventions for files, images, screens, assessments, tests, and quizzes.
  4. Make technology decisions early in the process. Your choice of technology may help maximize the amount of legacy content salvaged and shorten conversion time.
Value-adds
  1. Identify shortcomings and deficiencies in salvageable content (from 2), and quantify what’s required to fill the gaps.
  2. Plan the conversion carefully. Consider delivery options, including Mobile, Responsive design, Microlearning, and bandwidth limiters (video, graphic-intensive).
  3. Think about design features: Legacy courses might have mouse-click elements that are no longer relevant on mobile devices. Mouse-hover events may still be relevant on laptops and desktops, but not on smartphones.
Validate with the Target Users 
  1. Create a wireframe (a blueprint of the upgraded course) and conduct a target user group testing to validate your assumptions.

I hope this article provides the tips and strategies that L&D professionals (with significant inventories of outdated learning materials) can use to quickly and effectively turn that eLearning content into highly engaging eLearning experiences for their learners.
The result would be more engaged learners, effective training that creates sticky learning, facilitated application on the job, and higher learning transference.
Meanwhile, if you have any specific queries, do contact me or leave a comment below.

Thursday, 26 March 2020

How to Measure the Business Impact of Your Workforce Training Programs

Given the significant investment on time and money organizations make on workforce training programs, there is an intrinsic need to ascertain its impact on business. Not only does this have a bearing on approvals on further investment, it can serve as a great cue to determine which programs are delivering impact and tweak or update the ones that aren’t.

Challenges in measuring the business impact of your workforce training programs

However, there are challenges associated with this exercise of determining the impact of the workforce training on business. Without the supporting analytics (that can help confirm the business impact), L&D teams often find it difficult to showcase the impact on business and justify the ROI. I typically see the following two reasons given by L&D teams on why this is a challenging task:
  1. Standard reports from LMS do not provide the required perspective or actionable insights.
  2. Limited manpower and resources (tools) to collect data, analysis, and validation with business.
As a result, this area is often neglected, or the exercise takes so much time that it may now be too late to apply the actionable insights. As a result, the business finds that the training investment of a given financial year will not really help them see the impact of the workforce training on the business goals for the year.

What Will Help You Measure the Business Impact of Your Workforce Training Programs?


Focus on L&D Metrics is Not Enough

I believe that the L&D teams need to look beyond the basic assessment of training impact, which typically includes:
  1. The number of training registrations.
  2. The training completion rates.
  3. Learner reaction/feedback on the training.
  4. Learner reaction/feedback on the trainer.
  5. Assessment scores.

Need of the Hour

What is required is to map the evaluation of the L&D parameters to the parameters the business wants to see. Essentially, you need to couple the L&D Metrics with the Business Metrics.
Let me illustrate how you can work with the combined view (L&D and Business) with an example.
Training Need: A Sales team needs to undergo training for the new CRM tool (as the organization moves from multiple tools or Excel based trackers to a single, enterprise wide tool).
Audience Profiles
Set 1: Sales Executives, Sales Managers, and Head of Sales – Maps to acquiring three levels of tool proficiency.
Set 2: CEO and COO – Only Dashboard review – with a focus on actionable insights.
The TNA would lead L&D teams to create a training that would help the Sales team achieve the required proficiency levels. This would be duly validated through assessments.
However, the focus is only on the L&D Metrics and the Business Metrics is currently missing.
For instance, the expected gain from the Sales Manager was that with the new CRM tool, the individuals spend less time on creating reports and more time on prospecting and customer engagement. This should translate to 12.5% increase in time spent on prospecting and customer engagement (basically, additional 1 hour/executive/day). This should have a proportional impact on leads conversion.
You see how the two teams are looking at very different pictures!

The Way Forward

Unless, the L&D teams work with the Sales team to identify how the business impact of the training will be measured, the desired gain will not be demonstrated. This exercise (to couple the L&D Metrics with the Business Metrics) needs the following:
  • There must be a strong collaboration between the L&D teams and the Business teams from TNA to training deployment, collation, and interpretation of data that will help determine the impact of training on the business.
  • During the Training Needs Analysis (TNA) phase, the two teams must clearly identify the parameters that will be used to illustrate the direct impact of training on business.
  • All through the journey, a strong communication link must exist between the two teams so that both teams indeed look at the same picture (L&D teams speak the language the business wants to hear).

How Can You Accomplish the Mandate to Measure the Business Impact of Your Workforce Training Programs?

There are several models that can be used to ascertain the business impact of the workforce training programs.
At EI Design, we use a custom approach – an adaptation of the Kirkpatrick’s model of training evaluation.
For each level,
  • We first identify exactly what is being measured.
  • Then, we look at the outcome of this evaluation and see how we can use it to enhance the business impact of the given workforce training program.


Level 1: Reaction
Objective: As a first step, we need to validate the learners’ reaction – did they find the training to be useful, was it relevant, will the acquired learning be easy to apply on the job, and so on.
From an evaluation perspective, this feedback allows L&D teams to get the basic insights if the training was relevant and useful. Furthermore, would it help the learners apply the learning on the job. If there are any gaps, they can fix them through remediation or reinforcements.

Level 2: Learning
Objective: The TNA provides the L&D teams to arrive at the learning objectives of the training. The second level helps them validate if these learning objectives were met.
From an evaluation perspective, this feedback allows L&D teams to measure if they met the required learning mandate (this could range from knowledge gain or triggering a behavioral change).

Level 3: Behavior
Objective: The third level is used to evaluate if there is a change in the learner behavior that is directly attributable to the training.
From an evaluation perspective, we are moving up to validate the application of the acquired learning leading to behavioral change.

Level 4: Impact
Objective: The fourth level is used to evaluate the gain or the impact of the training.
From an evaluation perspective, this should validate if the goal of the desired gain that the business had sought (that is, the Business Metrics) was met.

EI Design’s approach – To assess the business impact of the workforce training

At EI Design, we use the following approach to assess the business impact of the workforce training and we leverage the Kirkpatrick’s model of training evaluation. We overlay this on a Learning and Performance Ecosystem to deliver the training and ascertain its impact.

Step 1: Training Needs Analysis (TNA) + Methodology to measure the training impact: As I had highlighted in my example, besides identifying the learning outcomes, we focus on collating the improvement areas – the key parameters where the business wishes to see a tangible improvement.
We also identify how this training impact will be measured. This needs a methodology to be defined that encompasses:
  1. What would be measured.
  2. How will this data be collated.
  3. How will the data be analyzed.
  4. Who (manpower) would be responsible to pool, collate, and analyze, and so on.
  5. Additionally, to present the impact, we also secure the baseline data (current state) and quantify the anticipated gain (desired state).

Step 2: Select the right training delivery format: The next step is to select the learning format (ranging from online, blended, or facilitated) that will resonate with the audience (for instance, should it be on the go, available within their workflow, or facilitated or a blend) and help them meet the learning objectives.
Sometimes, we recommend other supporting measures to achieve the business mandate (for instance, coaching or mentoring).

Step 3: Identify the learning strategy: The right learning strategy helps engage the learners, acquire the learning, and apply it on the job.
Besides formal training, there must be room for just-in-time learning aids. These nuggets are available within the learners’ workflow and go a long way in supporting both learning and business mandates.
Additionally, we support the program through teasers (before the training), reinforcements, and challenges (post the training) to offset the “Forgetting Curve” and ensure learners are well equipped to learn, apply, practice, and gain the required proficiency and behavioral change.

Step 4: Validate the learners’ gain: This focuses on assessments to determine if the learning acquisition was in line with the learning mandate.
We integrate additional measures to facilitate the application of learning (business mandate).

Step 5: Assess and measure the business impact: This crucial step entails looping back to the TNA phase and seeing if the identified parameters show the required improvement.
If not, we assess what reinforcements or remediations would help the business see the desired impact. This may impact the selections made in Step 2 (training format) or Step 3 (learning strategy) or Step 4 (validating the learners’ gain).
While there is no single approach that can help you measure the business impact of workforce training, I hope my article gives you several practical cues you can use to measure the business impact of your workforce training programs.

Meanwhile, if you have any specific queries, do contact me or leave a comment below.

Wednesday, 25 March 2020

How to Use the Migration to HTML5 Opportunity to Enhance the Impact of Your eLearning Courses

Although Flash was the leading authoring tool to develop eLearning courses, in 2020, Adobe will stop its support formally.
Hence in 2020, all organizations need to factor for the migration of their legacy, Flash courses to HTML5. The migration exercise presents an amazing opportunity. You can use this exercise to not only gain a technology uplift but also incorporate trending and more immersive learning strategies.
Take a look at this Infographic, where we show you how you can use the migration to HTML5 opportunity to enhance the impact of your eLearning courses.

How to Use the Migration to HTML5 Opportunity to Enhance the Impact of Your eLearning Courses - Featuring 2 Examples

We hope this Infographic gives you food for thought that you can use as you plan the migration of your traditional eLearning courses to HTML5 format. Do use this opportunity to enhance your training delivery’s impact.
Want to learn more? Reach out to us.

L&D Guide Series – 10 Must-Use Strategies to Engage and Train the Overwhelmed Employees

The Overwhelmed Employee

Today, the concept of work-life balance is getting lost. With the blurred line of when the work ends and personal time begins, the overwhelmed employee is now visible across all industry verticals.
After the widespread usage of smartphones and the ubiquitous Internet, there appears to be no barriers between work and home anymore. Furthermore, with increasing globalization, employees run from a packed workday at office to home – only to take the last call from home or to clear a few emails from colleagues in another time zone.
Although these overwhelmed employees would love to put in lesser hours than what they usually do, the fact remains that a large percentage of the workforce is putting in close to 50 hours per week.
During the workday, there are distractions of incoming emails, messages, plus scheduled concalls or meetings. As a result, the uninterrupted window of time shrinks further and further. If these dynamics are a part and parcel of the employees’ workday (that often stretches to personal time as well), how can the L&D team get to engage them and ensure that they invest the requisite time on training?

Impact on L&D Initiatives: This is a big challenge for the L&D teams as,
Overwhelmed employees = Low engagement and low motivation to invest time on training.
While the average employees put in their best and commit to make a difference at work, they are distracted and find it difficult to concentrate on aspects that make a difference to their performance as well as career progression (this includes investing time on training and other avenues for growth).
Being “wired” all the time eventually takes a toll on the creativity and it also impacts the productivity and performance. It takes the joy away from the accomplishments. As a result, the overwhelmed employees are unlikely to realize their full potential, even though they are working longer hours.

So, how can this be remedied?

The answer lies in adopting an approach to deliver training that syncs up better with the learners’ workday and lifestyle. In this article, I share a few L&D strategies that would help you train the overwhelmed employees.

Despite the Tough Schedules and Ongoing Distractions, What Would Excite the Learners and Motivate Them to Carve Out and Invest Time on Training?

Overwhelmed employees too want to improve their situation. However, they will invest time on learning if it is aligned to their lifestyle and is available within their workflow. Only then will they be motivated to carve out time for training.
Before you draw up a strategy to engage your overwhelmed employees, do take a look at what the employees want and how they want to learn.
  1. The learners want the training to be as seamless and as easy to access as Google or Amazon or Netflix. Each learning experience should lead them up to the next plus give them recommendations.
    • They want to get the right learning resources quickly, easily, and on-demand.
    • They want access to the learning content and resources on the go, on their devices, and they do not want to log in to the LMS every time they have a need.
    • Additionally, they want meaningful recommendations that keep them connected and encourage them to come back for more.
  2. They understand the value of “continuous learning” and expect the L&D teams to provide this environment in the workplace.
  3. The content should be searchable and must be packaged to address specific needs and trigger the desired action.
  4. They need the learning journeys to match their career progression goals and should move up from “learning pathways” to specific “career pathways.”

How Can L&D Teams Change Their Current Approach to Meet This Expectation?

Given the fact that modern learners’ expectations reflect the “new normal,” the L&D teams need to rise to this challenge. Clearly, they need to move away from the prescriptive “push” based training delivery to “pull” based learning experiences.

What L&D Strategies Would Help Engage the Overwhelmed Employees?

At EI Design, we work with several customers to offer learning that aligns better to the learners’ expectations. It is short, focused, and personalized and enables employees to consume this either at the moment of need or during breaks.

I am sharing a list of L&D strategies that have helped us achieve this mandate:


L&D Strategy #1

Add Microlearning nuggets that precede the online training that encourage, motivate, and engage the learners. These could include teasers, highlighting the value for each learner, and how will it help them do their tasks better or upskill or help them fix an identified gap.

L&D Strategy #2

Provide a judicious mix of Macrolearning and Microlearning. Additionally, offer flexibility to consume the training on the go and on the device of their choice.

L&D Strategy #3

Leverage learning design formats that resonate well with modern learners. These could include Microlearning, Video Based Learning, Apps for Learning and so on.

L&D Strategy #4

Invest on strategies that engage and create more immersive learning experiences – notably, Gamification, Branching Scenarios, AR/VR and so on.

L&D Strategy #5

Invest on instant or just-in-time learning aids (Performance Support Tools) that are available in the learners’ workflow and easily accessible when they need them.

L&D Strategy #6

Supplement the primary training with Microlearning challenges (assessments) that facilitate learning retention and based on the learners’ scores, nudge them to review the primary training collateral.

L&D Strategy #7

Have practice zones or avenues to facilitate the application of the acquired learning.

L&D Strategy #8

Provide room to practice and offer learning paths that help learners gain higher proficiency.

L&D Strategy #9

Provide flexibility to learners to create personalized learning paths.

L&D Strategy #10

Enrich the learning by providing recommendations (based on the pattern of learning or learners’ interest) and push Self-Directed Learning.

Additionally, here are some tips that will help you sustain this momentum: 

  1. Limit prescribing – Instead, allow higher control to the learners. Essentially, nudge them towards the required path but don’t push!
  2. Make content available on demand and easy to search and locate.
  3. Encourage participation by opting for techniques like Content Curation and Crowd-sourced assets (these could include videos/links to public domain resources).
  4. Recognize employees who align to the mandate and highlight their contribution in public forums.
  5. Leverage Learner Analytics to assess what the learners’ consumption pattern shows and make further tweaks that can meet the mandate more effectively.

I hope this article provides ideas, techniques, and L&D strategies that will help you engage your overwhelmed employees and meet your mandate.

Meanwhile, if you have any specific queries, do contact me or leave a comment below.

Wednesday, 11 March 2020

How to Use Audience Analysis and Learner Personas to Create a High-impact Learning Experience

Most of us (whether from the Instructional Design or L&D team) are aware of the significance of audience analysis. We know that only when this analysis is correctly applied to identify a learning strategy is when we would see the required gains in enhanced skill, thinking, or behavioral change in the learners.
Yet, quite often, this aspect is driven by assumptions and a limited analysis of what would truly resonate with the learners. Why does this happen?
Here is my take on this gap on audience analysis and how it impacts the eventual gain the learners seek. As Instructional Designers, we want to create courses with a “wow” factor, and this often leads us to opt for learning strategies that excite us, but they do not resonate well with the learners.
While it is important to create learning designs that excite learners, the learning journey must enable them to meet their specific mandate. Only then will they walk away with a sense of fulfilment and accomplishment.
Significance of audience analysis: To understand the learners (as in, by being in their shoes), we need to do an extensive audience analysis. To achieve the learner mandate, we need to understand the learners, think like them, and ascertain what would excite them and, more significantly, what would not.
Specifically, while conducting audience analysis, we need to identify what would help create a sticky learning experience, help them improve their performance, or solve a problem.
Additionally, we need to extend the audience analysis to include what learning strategies would help influence learners’ thinking process and, eventually, behavior.
In this article, I begin with the significance of audience analysis. Then, I take you through the technique of Learner Personas that can be used (in contrast to limited, real user sampling) to help you choose the right learning strategies and design formats that would create high-impact learning experiences.

Why Is Audience Analysis Necessary and How Does It Impact the Learning Design?

Today, Instructional Designers are spoilt for choice with the range of learning strategies and multiple design formats that can be used to craft a learning design. However, this does make the selection process a bit more difficult. How do you select the right option, when more than one approach or a combination thereof can work?
This is exactly where audience analysis helps. It helps us understand:
  • Who are the target learners.
  • What are their preferences (how they want to learn, when and where would they want to learn, what degree of control they require on how they want to consume learning, and so on).
  • What is their current knowledge or proficiency level.
  • What is driving or motivating them.
  • What exactly do they want to accomplish (through training or performance support).
Sounds simple, is there a catch?
Online training typically addresses a wide and heterogeneous set of learners (coming from multicultural backgrounds, different geographies, different age groups, different proficiency levels, and certainly different motivation levels, and so on).
It is practically impossible to interact with each learner to understand what would resonate best with each of them.
This is where the technique of using Learner Personas comes in.
  • By using the technique of Learner Personas, you can identify and select the learning design that will deliver the desired impact.
  • It also helps you eliminate certain options (that may work with certain Learner Personas but not with others).

What Are Learner Personas and How Do They Offer a Better Option as Compared to a Limited, Real User Sampling?

It goes without saying that using cues from real or actual users will lead to a more definitive audience analysis. However, it is very challenging to pool in this data from all users. Hence, we take cues through a partial sampling of the real users, but this may lead to picking up limited cues and not necessarily the overall patterns. On account of this, we can miss the bigger picture and may potentially get a limited impact from the selected learning design.
This is where the use of Learner Personas comes to the rescue and it can aid in helping us hit the bull’s-eye with the right learning strategy.
Learner Personas are fictional learner profiles that are generated through the aggregation of real user data. They are very useful in understanding the target audience in terms of their background, what would motivate them, and how they would like to learn. In fact, Learner Personas are created by using a partial sampling of the real-world users. They enable Instructional Designers to validate what approaches or combination thereof can meet the expectations of different learner profiles.
With Learner Personas, you look at the learning design from the learners’ viewpoint and assess if the selected approach would work or otherwise.
  • You work with more tangible cues rather than assumptions to craft the learning design.
  • Different stakeholders in the project development cycle can use this to validate or tweak their approach and re-draw the learning design suitably.
As a result, you are likely to meet the learners’ mandate without the pain of re-work on the developed training.

How Can You Build Learner Personas?

As I have highlighted, while the Learner Personas are a fictional profile, they draw upon real-world users’ data. This data can be collated through a step-by-step approach to create and refine the Learning Personas.
At EI Design, we use a combination of the following approaches:
Step 1: Have a discussion with:
  1. Project sponsors.
  2. L&D teams.
  3. The Business Unit.
Step 2: Survey/Interview a small group of target learners. If feasible, spend some time with the target user group and observe them.
Step 3: Analysis of past data for projects with a similar mandate to ascertain what worked and what may need to be updated/worked upon to meet the mandate.
At EI Design, we use a simple two-tiered model to create the Learner Personas.
We begin with basic cues on demographics that typically include:
  • Age.
  • Role.
  • Region or Geographic location.
  • Interests.
  • Cultural aspects.
Then, we look at the next tier of cues that typically include:
  1. Learning mandate/needs (What are they exactly aiming to accomplish through the training or Performance Support intervention).
  2. Current proficiency and expected gain.
  3. Motivation factors.
  4. Preferred device to learn (Smartphone/Tablet, Laptop/Desktop, or the flexibility to work across devices).
  5. Preferred approach to learn (Microlearning or Macrolearning as well as different formats).
  6. Preferences for learning strategies (particularly relevant when there are existing training programs).
  7. Preferred mode of training delivery (prescribed learning path, Personalized path, or customized path).
The value of using Learner Personas is in working with a bigger picture that increases the ability to achieve the learner mandate through the most appropriate learning design.
I hope this article will help you in crafting more effective learning experiences by leveraging the technique of Learner Personas. These learning strategies will resonate better with your learners and deliver the required value to them as well as to the business.
Meanwhile, if you have any specific queries, do contact me or leave a comment below.