Post by Melissa Milloway

Before I open a tool on a new project, I write a learning plan. It's where I figure out what behaviors we're trying to change and what a solution looks like. Every deliverable I build after that ties directly back to the behavior change I outlined in the plan. I'm currently building Meridian Emergency Communications, a fictional 911 dispatch center training program. This post is about the learning plan for that project. For the Meridian project, the plan covers things like: ➡️ The performance problem and why existing protocol training fails when a caller can't tell you what's wrong. ➡️ The terminal and enabling learning objectives, written around what operators will do differently on a call, not what they'll know after the course. ➡️ The full solution set mapped to Bob Mosher's 5 Moments of Need, so every artifact has a job across the performance lifecycle, not just inside the training event. ➡️ The measurement and evaluation plan using LTEM, Will Thalheimer's Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model, because it separates knowledge, decision-making competence, and task competence into distinct tiers. Here's what came out of building it so far. We renamed the course. The working title was Triage Under Pressure, which is fine as a hook but tells you nothing about what you'll be able to do. The full name is now: Triage Under Pressure: How to Make Protocol Decisions with Incomplete Information. It tells operators when a caller can't tell you what's wrong, what do you do? We mapped the full solution to the 5 Moments before designing anything. This project covers all five: ➡️ Moments 1 and 2 are the Rise course focused on practice. New operators learning protocol selection under ambiguity. ➡️ Moments 3 and 4 are the Triage Decision Aid. A tap-to-reference tool on the dispatch floor for when a call is live and they need help. ➡️ Moments 3, 4, and 5 are the Post-Call Automated Feedback Tool (future-state). After every call, the system pushes KBI-specific feedback to the operator automatically. We built also an xAPI data strategy mapped directly to the LTEM tiers. Every meaningful learning event will report data with a clear line to a learning outcome. Without that mapping, xAPI is just completion tracking. With it, you have a behavioral data strategy that connects what happens in training to what happens on the floor. I'm still working through the plan before I write any content. Typically as a part of this process I would also interview learners and stakeholders to help craft the strategy for the solution. What do you do before jumping into building out projects? #eLearning #InstructionalDesign #LearningandDevelopment #AIinLearning