Sharing Learning Objectives: Think Like a Marketer, Not an Instructional Designer--Part 2

By Tracy Wright, MAED | July 12, 2016
Project Director, ETR

Are you a trainer or facilitator? You can improve the delivery of your learning opportunities by spending a little more time thinking like a marketer, and a little less thinking like an instructional designer.

 

In Part 1 of this post, we reviewed the use of learning objectives to support effective instructional design. I suggested that while carefully constructed learning objectives are a vital step in the design of a learning opportunity, they may not be the best choice when promoting or delivering a training.

Remember, the three most important purposes of sharing learning objectives with participants are to:

1. Describe what the event is about.
2. Focus learners’ attention on the critical content.
3. Motivate people to act (e.g., register for the event, attend the event, change their behavior as a result of the event).

Let’s look at some different but effective approaches to achieving each of these ends.

Purpose 1: Describe the Event

Adults are most interested in learning when they can see a direct connection or relevance to their work and/or personal life.

Success in learning is also tied firmly to the motivation to learn. Offering a well-written description of a learning event is one of the first ways you can support that motivation.

After all, if I read a description of a learning opportunity and think, “Wow! This is exactly what I need,” I’m going to be motivated to register and attend the event, right? The instructional designer and trainer sure hope so!

In 2012, ETR conducted a research synthesis to identify the critical elements needed in professional development events in order to bring about learner change. ETR’s Research Based Design Elements were born out of this synthesis. “Establishing learner relevance” made the list of must-haves!

Purpose 2: Focus Attention

Learning-and-performance consultant and researcher Will Thalheimer has done a lot of research (and even created a video) about objectives, including the different types of objectives. He refers to one type as “focusing objectives,” which he frames this way: To guide learner attention to the most critical information in the learning material.

Research supports the idea that when information is somehow identified as important, learners are motivated to pay more attention. That can subsequently improve learner performance related to that content.

What would focusing objectives look like? Here’s an example:

We all know that learners can be distracted during the learning opportunity, especially if the learning is taking place virtually. And we know that paying attention to the material is one of the first steps for learning and memory formation. Getting learners’ attention and directing it to the critical content is necessary for learning to take place. Sharing focusing objectives is one way you can do that.

What are other strategies you can use to focus learners’ attention on the critical content?

Thalheimer suggests you could simply make statements. “The key piece of information here is….” Or, “This will be on the end-of-course exam.”

You could also tell a relevant story, present a problem to solve or offer an engaging statement to highlight key information and reinforce motivation.

Focusing objectives serve a different purpose than learning (instructional design) objectives. The learning objective says, “You must include key content and practice opportunities in your training design to enable learners to achieve this objective.” The focusing objective says, “Hey! Pay attention! This is important!”

Purpose 3: Motivate to Act

The third reason to share learning objectives is to help motivate your prospective participants/audience to act. You want them to register, attend, pay attention and change behavior.

Are you seeing a theme here? We’ve already talked about how motivation relates to describing the event and making it relevant (#1 on our list of purposes), and helps participants focus attention on important learning (#2 on our list).

This is why you really need to think more like a marketer and less like an instructional designer. When communicating to prospective learners about a learning opportunity, perhaps the most important thing you can do is craft messages that are motivating enough to get them to act. “Click Here to Register” is the first action you hope for, but learners need to know why they would want to click here to register, so you’ve got to go further.

WIIFM—Motivate by Revealing the “What’s In It for Me?”

In Julie Dirksen’s wonderful book, Design for How People Learn, she states: Ultimately, we are all the “what can I get from this?” learner. We want to know why a learning experience is useful or interesting to us.

When you’re promoting an event, you want to craft a description that shows people how your session is relevant to their work. Help them understand how attending will help them do their job better, more easily or more efficiently. Show them how the content will help them master a skill they need. Help them realize what the reward is for attending—the what’s-in-it-for-them.

This brings us back to our key question. Is sharing a bulleted list of learning objectives that were used to guide the design of the learning opportunity an effective way to create participant motivation? As Donald Clark puts it: “Arouse people at the start and they will remember more. Yet if the first experience many learners have is a detailed registration procedure followed by a dull list of learning objectives, attention is more likely to fall than rise.”

How about using a statement like the following to express the objectives of a learning opportunity?

True or False? Here Are the Answers

Let’s return to the original true/false questions from Part 1 of this post. What do you think now? Should we use the same set of objectives both to design and promote our learning events?

The reality is there are supporters for both approaches—use the same set, use different sets. So there really aren’t wrong answers here as long as you can support your position.

But for me, after reading what other experts think, looking at what the research shows and reflecting on my own experience, my answer is this: the objectives used to guide the design of the learning opportunity should not be the same as those shared with learners.

How are you presenting objectives in your learning events? Have you tried using focusing objectives? How has it worked? Have you tried illustrating the WIIFM? How has that worked?

If you haven’t used this approach, do you feel motivated to give it a try?

I’d love to hear about your own experiences sharing objectives with participants in training events.

 

Tracy Wright, MAED, is a Project Director at ETR. She is a skilled distance learning, eLearning and professional development specialist. She has also served as a health education teacher in both middle and high schools. She can be reached at tracy.wright@etr.org.