Victoria's Mini-Course
Navigation Links: ETAP 623 Spring 2016 | Victoria's portfolio page
This course introduction/front page shows what information should be provided about each mini-course. This is only an example. Feel free to modify/adapt as you'd like. I want our mini-courses to be creative, instead of only uniformed.
Overview and Purpose
This section provides the learner with an inviting and engaging introduction to the topic of your mini-course, specifies the target learner, and gives an overview of how this course works. The importance of the topic may be demonstrated through problem scenarios, storytelling, case analysis, statistics, etc.
Feel free to name and organize this section (and other sections) in a way that is most effective for your mini-course. For example, designers from the past sometimes set this section into two parts: Instruction, Course Overview (How This Course Works).
Action mapping involves a streamlined approach to instructional design. It analyzes the need for training in order to define a targeted business goal with realistic actions to get people there. In other words, instead of simply gathering all the information that you think people need to know, action mapping starts with the problem/issue that the training is supposed to solve. This approach, is more cost effective, efficient and actually improves outcomes.
Needs Assessment
Briefly summarize what you found out from your needs assessment regarding the learners' gaps of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that your mini-course means to address.
When approaching training, the instinct is to gather as much information as possible and turn it into a power point presentation or an online course. No matter how you present it - chunk the information, include cool graphics or encase it in a story or a game, it is as Cathy Moore defines “information dump.” The challenge is to get people away from this traditional way of approaching training and on the path of action mapping. The goals of content driven courses focus only on what people need to know and not the needs and goals of an organization. Good learner goals need to produce a change in behavior and that change must be measureable. Too often learning is not connected to actions with measurable outcomes. "Action mapping is a visual approach to eLearning, which focuses on performance, not information.
Performance Objectives
State the course-level objectives here. Sometimes, when the course objectives actually map onto the unit objectives, it is fine to combine the objectives with the following unit structure to state the objective(s) of each unit.
This course will:
Help you to understand the common pitfalls in traditional instruction/training solutions
Help you to understand why Action Mapping is an effective tool in business solutions.
Help you apply effective Action Mapping strategies.
Provide the necessary framework for you to be able to adopt the strategies of Action Mapping when tasked with developing training instruction to solve your own training need or business problem.
Course Units
This mini-course includes the following units. Click the title of a unit to go to its page.
Unit 1: What is action mapping and why do I need it?
In this unit, we will introduce Action Mapping and go over the benefits of using Action Mapping over traditional training/instruction. We will compare examples of traditional instruction versus action mapping strategies.
Let's say that your supervisor comes to you and tasks you with training employees on Paid Time Off (PTO). HR has been drowning in work because employees are not correctly entering PTO. You pull up PowerPoint and start creating slides that cover the company policies on vacation time, sick time, holidays and all other time off policies that can apply to any employee. Then, you add a couple dozen more slides that cover the web site that employees use to enter their time every month. When all is said and done, you've spent hours compiling all this information and have a presentation that includes over 40 slides! You get the go ahead to send out your presentation to employees. The following month after PTO has been entered HR reports that errors have not decreased. What happened? The better question to ask is "what didn't happen?" The email went to the junk folder or employees didn't read it when they noticed it was from HR. Employees read the email but didn't notice the attached. Employees randomly clicked through the presentation looking for any information on how they could get more vacation days. Employees started viewing the slides but got distracted by a co worker or had to go to a meeting or the bathroom... you get the picture. Even if you presented the instruction live, chances are the information would not transfer to when employees are submitting their PTO. This is a common approach to a business problem and as this example illustrates, one that is costly, inefficient and not effective.
Focus on actions rather than learning
Answer the following question:
What do the two people in this photo need to do?
- A. Put out the fire
- B. Describe the techniques used to extinguish a fire
The answer is of course, “A. Put out the fire." "Put out the fire" is an action. It takes place in the real world and helps us achieve our goal of a fire-free environment. We don’t hire firefighters because we want them to “describe techniques used to put out a fire.”
Source: http://blog.cathy-moore.com
Brief Overview
Brief Overview ...
[[ File:Studentsatcomputers.jpg|thumb|300px|left|something about the pic]]
To place the above picture, first I uploaded it using the Upload file button in left pane. Then in Edit on this page I typed File:thenameofmypicture.jpg in double brackets. For the advanced features I added after jpg the following
|thumb - puts the image in a frame and allows me to add a width for my image
|300px - using any number sets the width of the image
|left - or right sets the alignment and allows text to wrap around the other side
|any text - place after the final pipe will be added as a caption to the image
The video for adding images can be found on youtube here.
Extended Resources
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