Training is a serious business today and can be done right only if bring the indented results! To do so in a proper manner you need:
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Tangible and consistent goals for the course,
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A formal methodology or suitable strategy to help you find the knowledge and assets needed to compile a successful learning experience, and set the right goals for the course to serve,
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The right SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) with whom you will cooperate in order to elicit the proper knowledge and lead to required skills development,
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A proper instructional design to help learners to easily acquire the knowledge/skills the course indented to provide,
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Suitable support material and infrastructure (helpdesk, learners support, FAQs, forums, discussion groups, assessments, quizzes, etc.), and
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The right content deliverable system according to the course delivered and your audience.
As you can see the process can become complicated if you are not set the right goals from the start or you have not faced properly the various course development problems may arise during the implementation.
Course Development Problems Should Be Addressed
Course development is just a small activity when considering the whole picture which is, of course, training in specific skills/knowledge/competencies.
As an expedient instructional designer and a driving force behind the course development process you should be able to foreseen and deal with the various problems may arise during this process.
Training is a complex procedure which should provide the right incentives for behavioral change in a number of people.
To gain a piece of knowledge or a new skill is not always easy or without problems. As the course development process is!
That’s why you should cope effectively with the course development problems may arise in various areas.
Make Training A Core Activity
The first thing you should make clear to the owners or sponsors of the process is that training is not an occasional procedure!
It is a core activity should actively pursue and facilitated in the framework of an organization, agency or community.
Without commitment you cannot expect the training process, fueled by your course, to have the required results.
Pick The Right Topic
Knowledge in a topic can be vast and difficult to be elicited or deduced for the purposes of a course.
The required specific knowledge for the development, of course, can become a real problem or a nightmare for an instructional designer, who usually tried to design a learning experience which would serve the goals of the course, for a specific group of learners.
There are many approaches to solve this course development problem, many of which have tangible results.
It is in the realm of the project manager or of the instructional designer to select the proper one(s) for the course at hand.
Design The Course For A Specific Audience
When you design a course you always addressed to a specific audience with specific knowledge, skills, demographics, and similar background.
The learning experience you going to developed and boost with your course should facilitate this specific audience to learn something or gain knowledge previous they haven’t.
The whole learning experience leads to a change of behavior, without which cannot exist an effective training.
Without addressing to a specific audience the course would never reach the goals indented for its development.
Cooperate Effectively With SMEs
Another area of problems may arise is to select the right persons for the transfer of appropriate knowledge for the development of the course.
You are seeking for people you or your team can cooperate with, they are good at what they do and have the experience to channel you to the limited set of knowledge you should provide to the course in order to have the results you want to achieve.
The good cooperation with the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) is essential for design the right course.
Develop The Right Course
After you have solved all the collateral problems may arise in the process of developing a course for a specific audience, you need to be alert all the time if you are developing the right course.
Developing the right course with specific goals, for a specific audience is not strictly a course development problem. But it is essential for the reception and the effectiveness of the course.
From the idea phase until the employment you need to monitor closely what it is developed and if necessary to alter it in order to align the result to the goals have been set for the course.
Next Steps
The course development process is not always a straightforward approach. It has many ups and downs as well as many cascading circles of changes and alterations in order to be solved all the course development problems may be raised during the process.