What Happens When They Ask for Training and You Deliver a Manual

March 17, 2021
5 minutes
Jeni Johnson Interactive PDF manual

Creating alternative learning solutions is often the best instructional design choice. But it's rarely what internal stakeholders, customers, clients, ask from you. Trends in performance support like the 5 Moments of Need have been leading the way in alternative learning solutions and yet, a large portion of practitioners still need to create courses.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could offer up a solution other than training courses? Well, thankful we can. And we found someone who did just that.  

In this episode we had a conversation with an instructional designer who recently successfully navigated this common request: "Can you build us a training course?".  

Jeni Johnson published a short LinkedIn post to highlight part one of her project with an Animal Rescue organization. Here’s where you can read Jeni’s original post on LinkedIn.

I was impressed with Jeni's enthusiasm to take on ALL the roles for the project. This is very common in our industry and many are hesitant to spend time perfecting their graphic design, writing, editing, photography, and video skills. But it's a perfect opportunity to learn new tools as well as take some chances with alternative learning solutions.

There is a lot more to this story as well, from project management, to tool selection, to reviewing content, and gaining customer buy-in.  

To see all the comments from the chat, check out the full session right here.  

And to ask more questions, or participate in extended conversations about this episode, please join us in our new IDIODC LinkedIn Group.  

You can also sign up for our next episode, Visual Design Principles in eLearning When You're Not a Graphic Designer with Rachel Dillon. Save your spot now!  

If you’re interested in strategies and alternatives to handle the expectation that everything needs to be an elearning course, here are a few past IDIODC sessions you can check out:

About Jeni Johnson

Jeni Johnson is a Senior Instructional Designer with over 15 years of experience with training, instructional design, and eLearning development.

She has taught and designed curriculum in the United States, Germany, Thailand, and Costa Rica and has worked in the public, private and government sectors. In addition to Instructional Design, she has a background in graphic design and media creation. Jeni has a passion for understanding how people learn and creating enriching training experiences. Her love of knowledge began with her first trip to the public library at six years old.

About IDIODC

Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee (affectionately known as IDIODC) is a weekly live videocast and podcast that helps instructional designers with pain points and provides best practices and industry insight.  

Every Wednesday morning at 10am ET hosts Brent Schlenker and Chris Van Wingerden guide us through an upbeat and candid conversation with their guests from the elearning and training world. The live cast session encourages peers to participate in the chat and share their own personal insight! After airing live, you can catch the learning podcast on all major streams such as Spotify, Apple and Google Play podcasts, as well as on YouTube.

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