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| Photo: Linda Rening |
On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) personality inventory, I scored very highly in “N” (Intuition), which means that I see the big picture first and then the details. (That may seem like a good thing until I’m so busy walking through the forest that I don’t see the tree right in front of me.)
Similarly, on StrengthsFinder 2.0®, my number one strength is “Strategic,” which means I can pull together seemingly disparate pieces of information into a cohesive whole.
As I thought more deeply about those two things (perhaps pulling disparate pieces of information into a whole?), I realized that they are essential characteristics for Instructional Designers. I’m sure many of you reading this blog would score similarly on the assessments should you be moved to take them.
Either naturally or because we’ve been trained to do it, Instructional Design always starts at the 40,000-foot level. We look at the entire landscape, and then begin to focus on the details within it.
That kind of big-picture thinking is probably what is needed for two of the hottest techniques out there right now: microlearning and serious learning games. Think about microlearning. Without a big picture plan, what is coming to be called “content curation,” we will simply have a hodge-podge of learning objects with no rhyme or reason as to how and when they are put to use. Learners need some guidance to finding the correct microlearning events when they need them, or else “just-in-time” quickly becomes “just-too-late.”
So where do we start? I think we should go up 40,000 feet and take a look at the big picture. Chances are that existing training materials, job aids, resources, and subject-matter experts for almost any topic already exist within your organization. So, how do you go about making sense of all of it? Here are some suggestions based on the work we’ve done with different organizations.
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Source: e-Learning Leadership Blog
