How to Design a Better Digital Learning Process

When an architect designs a building, they have to imagine what the building will look like when it's finished, plan the details of each floor and each room in the building, and plan what to do first and what to do next. After all, you can't build the third floor without completing the second floor, right? Designing digital learning is similar to architecture in many ways. It is a design process where you start with raw materials at one end and end with a finished product at the other. What makes the completed product first-class is implementing the process correctly.

The Right Digital Learning Design Process

Designing something from scratch is never an easy task, especially if you are designing digital learning that should help individuals learn and develop knowledge and skills. This process requires a lot of planning, expertise, and work. In this article, we will discuss how digital learning designers can design better digital learning for users and the steps in this process.

1. Planning

Contrary to what many designers believe, planning begins even before the instructional designer begins working on the outline or plan of the training. The first step in the process begins with an analysis of employees' training needs, followed by a meeting with senior managers to explain how this training will benefit company employees. Afterwards, discussions are held with subject matter experts about what content to include in the training, adhering to the findings of your training needs analysis, and finally, a meeting is held with the actual designers and developers of the training to discuss the entire plan and timeline. This process is a team effort organized by the L&D (learning and development) manager and involves the entire L&D team. Everyone's contribution must be included in this process if you want to produce accurate and useful training.

2. Drafting

After planning, it's time to put the training on paper. As digital learning designers will know, the draft is the stage where all the learning content to be included in the course is outlined. In the past, it used to be in the form of a written document, but nowadays it is usually done in PowerPoint or Storyline or a similar application. The draft is important because it helps designers show the L&D manager and senior managers how the content will be presented, how it is structured, and how the user will experience it. It is a roadmap shown to all relevant parties to ensure that there are no errors or inaccuracies in the training. In this way, if there is anything to be changed, it is done before the actual development begins.

3. Development

The development part is an incredibly smooth step if proper planning and drafting have been done. The first draft or prototype of the training is the first version where everything works like in the actual training, unlike the pre-development draft. Once the prototype is created, the training is reviewed once again by all relevant parties to ensure that there are no elements that need to be corrected or changed, then all issues are resolved and the training is prepared for delivery to users.

4. Quality Control

However, before the training is actually presented to users, there is one more step where quality control is performed. The final version of the training is sent to the quality control team or teams that specialize in determining whether the training is suitable for consumption by users. This step is the final test before the training is presented to users, so quality control experts review every aspect of the training and all its elements, such as text, graphics, interactions, and menus, run the training, and complete it several times to ensure that it is truly flawless.

5. Delivering the Training

Once quality control is complete, the training is now ready to be delivered. This version of the training is called the gold version. The training is now published on the learning portal or LMS where users can access it.

If you follow the process mentioned above in digital learning development, your process will always be easy and you will get better outputs.