Your team analyzes the course containing forty slides, six videos, four downloads, and one final quiz. The experts provided correct information, and designers organized it appropriately. Learners stop at the first task. They cannot recognize the first step and the criteria of success. They have difficulty relating the content to their job.
The design teams react by providing another piece of explanation or resource. Learners categorize the content and spend their practice time. They compare different messages, look for instructions, reconcile the examples and guess which details should be important. The learners use their cognitive resources on comparing the options, not on learning and applying them.
The designers make it easy for learners to recognize the goal, follow the straight path, practice the right behavior, and evaluate their outcome. They create clarity by cutting off unnecessary options and ambiguous language. The designers keep the content that helps complete the task and eliminate everything else.
Before you add another module to the course, analyze the places where learners hesitate. You can trace back each question to some unclear goals, poor structure, lack of practice or uncertain feedback. Improve these issues before you provide additional information.
Confusion Blocks Useful Learning
Students get confused when they cannot figure out the purpose of the lesson, the order of its components, the step they should perform, or the standard that they need to reach. The students rely on their attention to analyze the course, so there is not much room left for skill building. A student can understand everything about each screen but cannot put all these screens together into a working process.
Designers should be able to distinguish productive challenge from preventable uncertainty. In the former case, learners try to remember a rule, evaluate the situation, choose the action, and do the task. When learners experience preventable uncertainty, they look for buttons, figure out ambiguous instructions, speculate on what the right answer might be, and try to understand the criteria of success. Designers can keep the demanding task and make instructions clear.
Learners with unclear screens search for information about the course and devote less time to the verification of the idea. Some students simply copy an example without understanding the rationale behind it, while others go through explanations and learn new terms for the test. Both groups may finish the course, but they will gain no practical skills.
Managers notice the effect of the training on employees. They think and act more slowly, make unnecessary mistakes, ask for help, and follow the process in their own way. Designers may take such results as evidence of the need for the extra module. Adding more content to the teams, designers provide learners with more confusion.
Designers provide learners with enough information about the task. They set up the goal, the path, the example, and the criteria of success. Learners can focus on evaluation and practice.
Learners Spend Attention on Excess Content
Learning is possible through solving a problem and keeping a small amount of information about the problem in mind. Designers call this limited capacity working memory. Each label, direction, example, and decision uses part of the capacity in working memory. Learning the target skill becomes impossible because of comparing redundant explanations or finding the required step.
Cognitive load refers to a learner's mental efforts during a task:
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Nurses compare symptoms and provide safe responses to the patient.
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Managers analyze the evidence to deliver feedback.
These activities require learners' attention and effort. Cognitive load increases when designers fill screens with information, use different terms, hide instructions, or provide links without a purpose.
Designers may include reports, articles, videos, and job aids alongside the main content of a lesson. Learners will have to decide which resources are necessary and when it would be useful to use them. Some open links and forget the main task. Others ignore the resources because designers did not clarify their role. Both groups waste their attention on managing the course.
It is beneficial for learners to recall information and use it in a new situation. It is useless to repeat the same point throughout slides and narration. Designers change the wording; thus, learners spend time and energy comparing them.
Before adding any information to a lesson, designers should consider whether it is necessary and whether it includes examples, practice, or directions. Learners who already know the facts may need to make a decision or complete a task. Designers may reduce the way, eliminate competing messages, focus attention on the action, and integrate practice with job performance.
Find the Source of Confusion
Confusion can be identified before the product is released through observing learners use a prototype of the program. Each tester should be given a practical task. Ask the tester to talk out loud about clicking and doing things. Document all pauses, backtracking, wrong clicks, and requests for assistance. Do not explain the training while testing it. You would conceal the problem if you explained the design.
Use five criteria to classify the evidence:
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Purpose. Question: Can the learner articulate the outcome expected from them by their manager? The learners must relate the course to a job function or decision. The designers who describe completion rather than performance deprive learners of an achievable goal.
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Structure. Question: Can the learner locate the starting point and next step? The learners have to see only one route through the necessary information. The designers may include references outside of the path and tag them as support materials.
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Language. Question: Does the learner comprehend all the words without translating them? The designers should use only one term for each concept and define unknown ones on first mention. The subject experts should delete all acronyms not used by new employees on the job.
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Instructions. Question: Can the learner take action after reading each instruction? The designers should specify the action, context, tools, and standards of success. Writers can substitute "Review this case" with "Select the safest solution and explain your reasoning."
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Feedback. Question: Can the learner understand why the response is right or wrong? The designers should clarify the sound or flawed judgment made by the learner and give examples of a better one. Learners require assistance they can apply next time.
Categorize each observation into one checkpoint after the completion of the test. Improve patterns when learners have problems with the first task, and validate the improvements by testing them on another representative learner. The learner who completes the course without help proves more convincingly than the designer's explanation.
Six Ways to Create Clarity
Designers create clarity by making design choices that reduce interpretation and direct focus on the job task. There are six ways designers can use to ensure learners can identify the goal, follow the path, practice the skill, and assess their work. The design team may review each of these actions when reviewing the design.
Begin with the job task or decision
Write the goal before you write the content. State the person, the action, the condition, and the standard. Designers get very little guidance from "Handle customer complaints." Designers can create meaningful practice with "Choose a refund or replacement based on the review of the order record." Use the decision to determine examples and feedback. Eliminate irrelevant information. A clear goal allows reviewers to eliminate content with no connection to the learner's action.
Provide learners with one path through the essential content
Sequence all required content into a logical job process. Provide one next step on each screen. Designers can provide references either after the practice or through a clearly labeled job aid. Learners must not need to select from several possible paths before they understand the process. For the compliance learning module, walk the employee through the steps from identifying the risk to reporting it. Policy information may be put in a searchable reference section. Learners can refer back to the reference after understanding the process.
Use familiar words and consistent terminology
Select terms used at work. Define each technical term on its first occurrence and use the same term throughout the screens, practice, feedback, and the job aids. Designers confuse staff when using terms such as "client," "customer," "account holder" or "user" for one person. Have a new employee point out words requiring interpretation. Either change the term or provide a definition.
Delete redundant content and decorative examples.
Compare each content element against the performance objective. Retain elements needed for action or judgment. Reference content is transferred to a job aid. Subject matter experts should validate each element by identifying the corresponding learner action. If sales representatives need to select a product, provide them with a comparison table. Delete content related to the product history unless customers ask questions about it during sales meetings.
Combine each key idea with practice
Require learners to apply an idea on the next screen. Designers can employ decision screens or simulations. After the instruction on recognizing phishing attacks, require employees to examine the email and make a choice. Provide feedback on a clue they have failed to notice or used. Learning happens due to such choices. The designer supplies an additional paragraph without practice.
Guide the next attempt
Provide the effect, the evidence, the mistake, and then give the next course of action. It is important to ensure that the feedback should not be in "Correct" or "Try again". In a class on workplace safety, change the "Incorrect" to "The worker entered into the restricted area without disconnecting the power supply. Select the lockout procedure before entering the area."
Run a Content-Reduction Audit
Each item requires a specific decision rule. Start from the goal of performance. Collect screens, activities, resources, and assessment items into one review file. Provide the required learner action next to each item. Mark the items with no connection with any learner action.
Four actions should be used here:
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Keep. Keep items when learners have to recognize the cue, make a response, perform steps, or judge the result. It is necessary to keep a fraud checklist where staff use the cues provided to make account reviews.
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Cut. Remove an item if writers provide repetitive information, history not used, unneeded definitions, and stories without any learner action. Learners do not need a founder biography to handle refunds.
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Combine. Merge screens where designers split an idea and force learners to go back and forth. Designers can unite a rule with an example on one screen. Learners can observe them without having to remember information from several pages.
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Move. Put reference material out of the learning path and label the access point. Employees may require an expense policy after training. In the course, learners can practice finding the limit in that policy.
After the first reduction, involve a subject expert and a learner representative in reviewing the reduced content. Provide the learner with a task to complete. Make the learner explain each step of his work. Notice the path taken, decisions made, mistakes, and help required by the learner. Force the subject expert to make connections between additions and learner actions.
Measure Clarity Through Learner Behaviour
Clarity is measured by observing learners as they take the course. Teams that monitor completion cannot observe learner uncertainty and guesses.
Monitor four measures:
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Time to first action. Time learners take to initiate actions. Ask learners to explain delays before first actions.
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Requests for help. Track inquiries on navigation, definitions, process steps, and criteria for success.
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Practice mistakes. Identify mistakes and ask for explanations. Designers will be able to distinguish skill deficiencies from those due to the course.
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Performance following training. Ask managers to track mistakes and requests for help in performing the task.
Compare two versions of the course with similar learners. Some learners may skip sections or guess to move on to the last slide. Compare completion rates, mistake types, help requests, and task performance. Designers define the course as clear if learners initiate the course confidently, choose wisely, recover from mistakes, and apply the skill on the job.
Conclusion
The student must be aware of the objective, take the route, practice the skill, and evaluate the outcome. Those designers who add elements before evaluating might hide the objective behind more options and repetitive information.
Review one course this week. Assign a task-related job to the learner and observe any signs of delay or request for assistance. Get the learner to clarify the reason behind each delay. Alter the instructions or format and then repeat the process with another learner. Provide additional information when a learner recognizes a lack of knowledge.
