IT’S TIME TO

CHANGE HOW YOU DESIGN TRAINING

INTRODUCTION

The main challenge that is slowing down learning and development leaders in being able to scale training is being able to get information out

of the heads of subject matter experts (SMEs) and structure it in the form of training. While this doesn’t sound like an overly complex problem,

it is a product of multiple contributing factors including:

That’s why best in class learning and development departments are taking a different approach to developing training. In this

ebook we’ll take a deeper look at the underlying issues and reveal how you can overcome some of these obstacles and scale training across

your organization.

1. Lack of a knowledge sharing culture

2. SMEs are hard to identify and often aren’t equipped to design training programs

3. Creating properly designed, effective training programs is incredibly time-consuming

4. Lack of a process to capture training requirements

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An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage

-Jack Welch -“ “

Building a great learning culture depends on capturing and sharing

knowledge from company experts, managers, leaders and top

performers so it can be used to train others. This approach not only

improves performance across the enterprise due to improved

knowledge transfer, it builds a more engaged workforce.

The good news about fostering a knowledge sharing culture is that

systems exist to support this approach in a way that they never did

before. Employees can easily connect with others leveraging messaging and

conferencing tools like #Slack, Skype, WhatsApp and Google

Hangouts among others.

But while tools can support a knowledge sharing culture they can’t build it. That

needs to be built into the fabric of the organization.

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CREATE A KNOWLEDGE SHARING CULTUREDo You Have A Knowledge

Sharing Culture?

1. Does knowledge sharing exist as a component of your existing company values?

2. Are employees encouraged to share acquired knowledge or expertise on particular topics? How?

3. When employees lack knowledge or require training, does a mechanism exist for them to ask for training?

4. Do employees know who within your organization possesses existing knowledge on various topics?

5. Are departmental leaders measured on their ability to encourage collaboration and capture learnings?

6. Do processes exist to reward knowledge acquisition and sharing?

7. Are systems in place to make sharing and accessing knowledge easy?

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CROWDSOURCE CONTENT

One of the most important components of a sharing culture

is having mechanisms in place for employees to create

content. These 5 tips can get you started.

Leverage rewards and recognition

Designing training content is time-consuming

so if you want buy-in, you may want to offer

employees’ incentives to help motivate them

to build content.

Curate Corporate Training

If you want to scale corporate training development

efforts, you need to enable subject matter experts

to use tools that are familiar to them.

Specialized e-Learning authoring tools won’t cut it.

You need subject matter experts to repurpose as

much existing content as they can find, whether is it

a YouTube video, PDF, blog post or other.

Streamline Instructional Design

While there are still many debates about whether

or not you need instructional design, the evidence is

clear that good instructional design results in

training that impacts performance.

Seed Content

If you want your subject matter experts to align to

business needs, a great way to get started is for

your corporate training and development

department to first build or curate some of the

content.

This should include great examples of what is

expected and make recommendations on handy

tools that people can use.

Collaborate with SMEs

With crowdsourcing, any SME can participate, but

you need great collaboration tools to support them

and set clear standards of what is acceptable

quality.

Streamlining instructional design so that SMEs are

not expected to become instructional designers is

critical.

SMEs are dispersed throughout your company and hold incredible value to the

organization if you can extract their knowledge and leverage it to train others.

Easier said than done though.

The Problem with SMEs

But with the right tools and technology, SMEs can help design and

develop training like never before. The trick is you need to adapt to their world,

rather than asking them to adapt to yours. Treating SMEs like

instructional designers is notoriously dangerous and so asking them to fit into

your current instructional design process or ask them for

multiple in-person meetings that compete with their regular day-to-day activi-

ties will make the process difficult for everyone.

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WORKING EFFECTIVELY WITH SMEs

• They can be difficult to identify

• They are hard to schedule because they have full-time jobs doing something else

• They don’t know how to write in the voice of learning

• They haven’t been trained in course design

“The trick is you need to adapt to their world, rather than asking them

to adapt to yours.”

“

A massive gap exists between the current elearning authoring tools and training delivery that is making it impossible for learning

and development professionals to create training at scale.

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CHANGING THE STATUS QUO IN TRAINING DESIGN

For the last fifteen years, the training world has tried to push

specialized eLearning authoring tools to subject matter experts.

Although there are some good tools in the market like Storyline,

Captivate and others, there’s no way an SME can devote the kind

of time necessary to learn these tools. Not only that but in order to

produce training that works the SMEs would need to have a

background in adult learning theory.

No matter how many times you hear “anyone can create

highly interactive training”, the majority of solutions are too

basic - allowing only for uploads of assets like slides or

videos - or the learning curve for the advanced tools is

significant so SMEs simply won’t use them.

While the specialized tools are extensively used by

Instructional Designers to create content, the process of design

and planning is still done in Word or other document processing

programs. This is where the problem of scale starts to arise. As

these documents quickly become unmanageable and redundant

within the organization and in some cases even lost. There are

lesson templates, course standards, and brand guidelines, but for

the most part the entire process of designing training is still largely

manual.

“ For the most part, the entire process of designing training is still largely manual”

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THE SOLUTION: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN MUST BE SCALED

In many areas of business, new technology has allowed people to

learn skills that used to require dedicated people. Business

intelligence (BI) tools are a good example. Prior to modern BI tools,

data analysis was the domain of specialized people in an

organization. If you needed to analyze, correlate, or slice and dice

information, you asked someone who knew how to do it. But over

time, technology (tools) became available that allowed

non-specialists to do their own analysis.

This is what must be done with instructional design as well in

order to scale training. As stated earlier, there is no time to

transfer knowledge from SME to ID to customer or employee with

today’s speed of business. Many organizations run train the trainer

programs for SMEs to try and fix this problem. Classes are offered

on the basics of instructional design and SMEs are expected to

attend, but this process is highly ineffective. If every employee can

become a subject matter expert, you can’t scale with this model.

In a Chapman Alliance survey, nearly 250 learning designers reported that they took almost 45 hours to create an elearning course

before the authoring and programming stage. That’s nearly $5,800 spent before even building out the training content.

Instead of manual processes and a disparate collection of tools or

classes to design training, it is possible to leverage new technology

such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate

best practices in instructional design. Everyone can now use a

systematic framework that guides SMEs through best practices

and recommends ways to align content with learning objectives

and assessments.

Instructional design must become a skill that everyone can learn,

not a job role for specialized individuals anymore. This will allow

current instructional designers to expand their roles into more

valuable areas of the learning organization such as content

curation, project management, and performance consulting. It’s

the only way to get everyone in the organization to be a subject

matter expert so scaling training becomes possible and business

needs are met.

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TECHNOLOGY THAT ENABLES SCALE

A Learning Design System is a platform that automates and streamlines the training development process. Best practices are built into the

system that guide stakeholders and SMEs through the entire process, increasing speed and allowing people to collaborate on things like

training requests, needs analysis, and instructional design. Learning Design Systems take this information to create storyboards, blueprints,

and courses that work with existing training tools.

Training Request

Storyboards

Needs Analysis

Blueprints

Instructional Design

Courses

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Synapse empowers organizations around the world to automate and streamline their training development processes. Our Learning Design Systems

enables learning teams and subject matter experts to design, develop, and scale corporate training in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of

typical processes and tools. Studies show that it can take up to 90 hours to produce an hour of training content, Synapse reduces that number dramatically

by automating the planning and design phase of content development and helps you turn every employee into an SME.

IN CONCLUSION

Everyone knows that training is paramount to the success of any organization, but with business being conducted in a fraction of the time

compared to the past, learning and training development departments need to adapt to train the workforce and remain competitive.

In a Chapman Alliance survey, nearly 250 learning designers reported that they took almost 45 hours to create an elearning

course before the authoring and programming stage. That’s nearly $5,800 spent before even building out the training content. Implementing

an automated instructional design process will reduce the time and costs that it takes to produce training. And

will allow you to easily integrate with other enterprise applications so you can scale.

Automate and Scale Training Development at Your Company

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The Synapse Learning Design System empowers you scale training by automating instructional design. Learn how you can make every employee an SME.