Align the Four Components of Training
In the 1970s, I was a devotee of the ADDIE model for instructional development. At least, I pretended to be one. The acronym stood for analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. But I frequently began with implementation and completed the other steps in a haphazard fashion. Sometimes I began with evaluation and worked backwards. I felt so guilty about my desultory behavior that I wrote a project report, making up a fictional chronology of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation activities.
What I Do Now
Since I am in a stage in my life when I don't have to convince others that I can do systematic training design, let me tell you how I actually do it: I roleplay a grasshopper and jump around, coming up with different ideas. The metaphor I use is that of sitting in front of four shoe boxes labeled objectives, activities, content, and test items. When an idea pops into my mind, I write it down on an imaginary index card and drop it in the appropriate box. Sometimes I come up with lots of content. Sometimes, I generate several ideas for training activities.
From time to time, I compensate for my divergent thinking sprees with disciplined convergent alignment activities. I make sure that for every index card in one shoe box, there are corresponding index cards in the other boxes.
An Example
I am currently designing a training package on conflict management. During a recent flight to Denver, I read an article about the differences in the way men and women communicate. I wrote down the content topic of gender differences in conflict resolution on one of my mental index cards and threw it in my content shoe box. Later, I pored over a copy of Deborah Tannen's book, went on a Google rampage, talked to a few researchers, and came up with a checklist on how to use appropriate communication strategies when managing a conflict with a person of the other gender. After I got my content shoe box overflowing, I looped back to fill the other boxes:
The content suggested a training objective: Adapt to the differences in conflict-management patterns between men and women. This suggested a roleplay exercise as a training activity: Two people roleplay the same conflict scenario in three different ways: both as men, both as women, and one as a man and the other as a woman. I also came up with the idea for a final test: Another roleplay with a new scenario to be scored with an objective rating scale.
I start with any one of the four components (objective, content, activity, and test item) and pursue the idea to wherever it leads me. However, from time to time, I stop meandering around and align what I have in the shoe boxes either by creating suitable items for the other boxes or by throwing some unaligned items out.
An Important Rule
In your training package, align the objectives, activities, content, and test items.
Aligning the four components of a training package is a powerful design principle that has been clearly articulated by educators, trainers, and designers.
Our creative design efforts don't have to reflect the final structure of the training package. Go wherever you want but remember to line things up from time to time. When you are ready to hand over your training package to your client, other trainers, or participants in your workshop, make sure that the structure of your training is saliently displayed.
This is not cheating but the blending of convergent and divergent thinking, and engineering and artistic workflow.