THINK-IT-AS-A-TRIP APPROACH

Instructional design can be tedious and boring for many trainers. A mixture of creativity with fixed processes: learning objectives, content design, learning strategies, support means, manuals, train-the-trainers’ workshops plus learning evaluations. This process-like approach can be challenging if you seldom do instructional design.

A powerful practice of this process is to “think-it-as-a-trip” approach even if you have a bit of training on instructional design. Traveling teaches, so buckle up! Every trip has a starting point. Our client thinks a training must be a good idea based on how they see-think-feel at present time. They experience some context, challenge, or problem that triggers the idea of a training.

A trip has always a sequence of places to visit. We are not only interested in visiting the places, but live some personal experiences through activities in each place that enriches and enhances our trip. In our case, the participant’s learning experiences. Each place is a piece or type of content. We need tourist guides explaining the contexts, frames, training objectives, and facilitate the learning activities, such as, self-reflection and self-creating spaces, group discussions, peer learning, experts’ demonstrations, testimonials, storytelling, participant’s deliberate practices, and exercises.