Motivation and Simplicity - Back to the Basics
"I was once told by a manager of a software company that customers were complaining that they couldn't find anything on the support section of the Web site. The response of the technical writers was that the customers weren't searching hard enough."
The article, "Simplicity is Hard Work", that this quote comes from is great. One of those pieces that you'll want to read and re-read because it summarizes a concept that is both basic and key: the difficulty of designing a lesson that is simple and easy for the learner.
But there was a reason that the quote caught my attention. The attitude is so easy for a designer to adopt:
"The learners don't want to learn touchy-feely stuff."
"The company culture is against change."
"They just want to get the information they can use immediately, they don't want to learn any of the background material, even though it's crucial for success."
"We have a bunch of non-adopters."
How often have we heard excuses such as these for the failure of our training programs? I know I used one or two of these after my first professional design. The one where the students were too intimidated to complete the assignments.
There is some truth to all of these statements but, after performance testing, motivating the learner is the most important role of the designer. The article: "The Magic of Learner Motivation: The ARCS Model" offers a great summary of the ARCS model and also suggests some questions to determine learner motivation. As Kevin Kruse, the author of the article says "Designers must strive to create a deeper motivation in learners for them to learn new skills and transfer those skills back into the work environment."
After I got over my first disappointment in the success of my lesson, I admit that it was my responsibility to make the activities familiar and achievable for the learners. And it's the responsibility of the people writing the reference material to make reading it easier than a call to tech support. And, unless we take this responsibility to heart, we could just as well have the SMEs write the training material.
The article, "Simplicity is Hard Work", that this quote comes from is great. One of those pieces that you'll want to read and re-read because it summarizes a concept that is both basic and key: the difficulty of designing a lesson that is simple and easy for the learner.
But there was a reason that the quote caught my attention. The attitude is so easy for a designer to adopt:
"The learners don't want to learn touchy-feely stuff."
"The company culture is against change."
"They just want to get the information they can use immediately, they don't want to learn any of the background material, even though it's crucial for success."
"We have a bunch of non-adopters."
How often have we heard excuses such as these for the failure of our training programs? I know I used one or two of these after my first professional design. The one where the students were too intimidated to complete the assignments.
There is some truth to all of these statements but, after performance testing, motivating the learner is the most important role of the designer. The article: "The Magic of Learner Motivation: The ARCS Model" offers a great summary of the ARCS model and also suggests some questions to determine learner motivation. As Kevin Kruse, the author of the article says "Designers must strive to create a deeper motivation in learners for them to learn new skills and transfer those skills back into the work environment."
After I got over my first disappointment in the success of my lesson, I admit that it was my responsibility to make the activities familiar and achievable for the learners. And it's the responsibility of the people writing the reference material to make reading it easier than a call to tech support. And, unless we take this responsibility to heart, we could just as well have the SMEs write the training material.
posted by Varda Lobanov | 4:19 PM
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