Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design

Once we've listed our actions, we're going to choose the most important ones and ask for each one, "Why aren't they doing this?"

Write each activity as a question or a very short problem. Don’t write the options or provide lots of details. Some examples: Customer calls to complain that widget is wobbling. Diagnose it over the phone as efficiently as possible.

Has it been in the news lately? Are they in legal trouble that might be inspiring their interest in a course? Did they win something major that you can congratulate them for?

In the example above, we could ask the sheep an additional question, like, "Is there anything you could have done to avoid getting wet?" Simple reactive answers like, "The gaskets that I'm given are defective" or "The software is hard to use" need follow-up questions.

By "training" I mean "practice activities of some sort," not necessarily a course or training event. You might decide that no course or event is necessary.

Obviously, people have preferences for how they learn. No one denies that. No one is saying that you and I aren't special snowflakes. But research doesn't support the claim that we should tailor our materials to specific "learning styles." Our limited resources would be better used on more effective techniques.

First, the name: "Action" refers to focusing on what people need to do, not what they need to know. "Mapping" refers to the visual way you can show how all the elements of the solution depend on each other.

When instructional style matches the nature of the content, all learners learn better, regardless of their differing preferences for how the material is taught.

Branching scenarios are useful when... A decision made at one point determines the input for a decision made later.