When it comes time to create learning materials, how can we avoid reinventing the wheel?
In addition to providing a snapshot of the training to be later developed, the “Content/ Learning Activities Outline” represents a sort of shopping list for directly relevant materials that may already exist in one’s organization or elsewhere. Here the design team searches for pertinent reports, articles, books, videos, CDs, and training programs that can potentially save time, money, and effort. Prepackaged e-learning lessons related to any number of the training’s components may also be available and can be searched via the Internet. The result of this step is a listing of what’s available and what’s lacking. Whenever delivering training to corporate human resources and training professionals at Fordham University, I ask this question concerning the search for existing learning materials: “Why is this the last step, instead of one of the very first steps in the design process?” The correct response holds the answer to why a lot of training fails to live up to expectations. It’s simpl
