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Michaels & Associates Docntrain, Ltd. dba Michaels & Associates

11639 E. Wethersfield Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85259 USA

marketing@michaelsandassoc.com www.michaelsandassoc.com

Phone: 480-614-8440 Toll-free: 877-614-8440 Fax: 480-614-2775

Copyright © 2008 Michaels & Associates Docntrain, Ltd. dba Michaels & Associates. All rights reserved.

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Many instructional designers follow the ADDIE model to develop effective training

programs. Completely sticking to this methodology, however, is quite a challenge when

you’re faced with reduced budgets, tight timelines and other demanding priorities.

How can you use the tried-and-true principles of ADDIE on a shoestring, without sacrificing

the effectiveness of your training program? Here are a few ideas shared during a recent

Q&A session on LinkedIn.

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Analysis

During the Analysis stage of the ADDIE model, you should spend time identifying the learner audience, the job and tasks that comprise it and the

learning/work environments. Some ADDIE experts say that you should spend at least 33% of your time on this phase. However, if you’re running on a

shoestring budget, here are some ideas for cutting this stage down to a minimum while still achieving the desired results.

Why spend valuable time determining the necessity of training if your customer is

already convinced that training is needed? Instead of wasting valuable time

challenging or proving your customer’s belief, go ahead and begin designing the

training materials. In an instance like this, you can then step back and analyze

tasks when you find inconsistencies or holes.

If you decide that analysis is the way to go, develop and use a task analysis

template to help you save time. This template should include common questions

to ask during a task analysis as well as areas to help you organize your findings.

As a matter of fact, if you spend time now developing detailed templates for most

of your instructional deliverables (like design documents, job aids, assessments

and facilitator guides), you’ll reap the rewards with every project. For some ideas

on effective analysis templates, visit this website.

Instead of performing a task analysis, needs analysis and/or skills gap analysis

from scratch, spend time with successful existing training materials for the target

audience and related subjects. Examine the materials to identify basic processes.

You can also use them to identify content gaps. Then, concentrate your

interviewing time on filling the gaps you find during the initial analysis.

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Design

After you create a strong infrastructure with a succinct but effective analysis, you can begin the formal design of your course. Consider these

suggestions to create a thorough design document without spending excessive time and resources.

If you’ve developed training for the target audience before, stick with what works. There’s no need in reinvent the wheel if learners are

benefitting from designs and methods you’ve already created. Instead of spending valuable time prototyping new formats and deliverables,

jump ahead to development based on what methods have worked in the past.

When designing the training, allow for lots of learner discovery activities. In other words, don’t design training materials that teach a process to

death if the learners can discover it on their own. Instead, design training around realistic scenarios and activities.

Consider the time, cost and effort to develop training materials early on in the design stage. Use the table below as a guideline, but use your

own experiences with the target audience, too. Then, choose the instructional methods that work for both the audience and your budget.

Course Development Characteristics1

Le

ctu

re

Qu

esti

on

ing

Ex

erc

ises

Ins

tru

cto

r-le

d

Dis

cu

ss

ion

Sm

all G

rou

p

Dis

cu

ss

ion

Fa

cilit

ati

on

Gu

est

Sp

ea

ke

r

Pa

ne

l o

f E

xp

ert

s

Ca

se

Stu

dy

Ro

le P

lay

Ha

nd

s-o

n

Time L M M M M M L L M M M

Cost L L L L L L L M L L L M H

Effort L L L L L M L L L M L M M

Legend – Requires a high (H), medium (M), or low (L) level of cost, time or effort.

1 Hassell-Corbiell, Rives. Developing Training Courses – A Technical Writer’s Guide to Instructional Design and Development (2001): p. 154.

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Development

Once you identify what should be taught, you have the foundation upon which

to build the training materials. To reduce development costs and still create

valuable materials, consider these ideas.

You’ve probably heard this before, but develop the final assessment

first based on your learning objectives. This ensures that your learning

objectives are met and also identifies where you should spend time

developing content. There’s no need to develop content that doesn’t

related to a learning objective and assessment item.

Develop brief job aids instead of detailed participant manuals. This

actually has a two-fold benefit: it saves you hours of development

time, and the learners have tools they can use long after training is

over.

Set strict review schedules. The biggest money pit of a project can be

the time related to getting and implementing SME feedback. One

great way to do this is to set appointments (either live, by phone, or by

a conferencing system) to review materials with the SMEs. Then the

SME can give you all the feedback you need in one meeting, instead

of trying to fit multiple reviews into his or her busy schedule.

Videotape a SME demonstrating a process instead of documenting

the process in detail. You can use this videotape to create a job aid,

and you can also use it during training as a primary teaching tool.

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If you have SMEs or other experts as trainers who really know the material, you can

devote less time to development of facilitator guides. Then take time during the train-the-

trainer or pilot classes to take notes on what the SME says, and beef up the facilitator

notes if/when other trainers take over the delivery.

Why spend time creating the training yourself if you have SMEs that can put all their

knowledge into something you can use? You can easily create a website portal (such as

a discussion board or forum) or spot on your server where SMEs can create some of the

content for the course. For example, they might be able to suggest good test questions or

scenarios for exercises. They could also provide links to documents or other resources

you can use.

Create shared objects that you can reuse with all your training projects. For example, if

you are developing software training, create generic ―chunks‖ of training for activities like

installing, creating, deleting, updating and troubleshooting. Include learning objectives,

facilitator notes, participant activities and other elements common for those tasks. Then

use the chunks as templates for the new similar pieces that need to be created. You can

use a content management system to hold these objects, but it’s not a necessity. An

organized folder on your server works just as well.

Instead of copying graphics and other objects directly into your training documents,

embed the objects by reference. Working with these dynamic objects stored on a central

server allows for easier updates—if an object changes, all documents that link to it are

automatically updated when you open them. However, be sure to keep the objects in the

same location on the server to avoid broken links within your documents.

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Implementation and Evaluation

When it’s time to roll your training solution out to the public and evaluate its success, you can reduce

costs and still have a great result. Try the following tips for completing these two stages of ADDIE on a

shoestring budget.

If the target audience hasn’t changed from the last project you developed, use the same or

similar delivery options. There are two benefits of this approach: the learners are already

familiar with the delivery mode so they need less ramp up, and you can achieve cost savings

by sticking to a method that has already been planned and carried out before. Once again,

don’t fix what isn’t broken!

Whether or not you are reusing a delivery method, standardize and streamline your delivery

models as much as possible. Analyze the steps you take to deliver the training, and trim

unnecessary steps. This way, your focus and time can remain on the training content rather

than spending excessive time on new fangled presentation development/deployment ideas.

Save those ideas for when you have the time and resources to try something new.

Attend the train-the-trainer session to combine implementation and initial evaluation. This

allows you to see how the training goes and get valuable input on its success.

Related resources:

No budget? Great! - blog

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/?p=171

ADDIE Model – article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADDIE_Model

Training and Performance Management

http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/index.html

Rapid Instructional Design - article

http://www.stc.org/ConfProceed/2003/PDFs/S

TC50-048.pdf

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Remember: Effective training does not have to be expensive or take months of development. By taking the time up front to develop reusable tools and

templates, and by analyzing your process to trim any unnecessary steps, you can achieve the results you and your audience want.

If you’re not sure where to start, or if you’d like help analyzing and streamlining your process, drop us a line and we'll be glad to get you started.

Michaels & Associates — making training a little easier.

marketing@michaelsandassoc.com www.michaelsandassoc.com toll-free: 877-614-8440