When you are developing a solution, particularly if you are trying a new approach make sure that you share it with your colleagues. There are loads of ways you can do this, it could be on the intranet, you could just send out an email - or - do it the old fashioned way and actually talk to colleagues.
Ask what people think, make sure they know you are open to feedback.
Ideally you will not do this just at the start of a project, you will do it at several phases during development. You may even decide to give people a link to your content whilst it is in development (I'll come back to this in a minute).
Each time you ask for feedback a proportion of those who respond will be full of praise. Whilst this is always a great morale boost, these are not the people that you should focus on.
Potential learners may come back to explain why the solution will not work for them. It could be location, work pattern, somewhere to study quietly… Etc.
Colleagues may come back and let you know that something similar has failed before because…., intranet traffic is going to be busy on the delivery day, nobody in the audience has email…. Etc.
Listen to feedback and act on it. This is the feedback that will help drive success and it also benefits the implementation phase as it means you are prepared for barriers to success and have already resolved issues.
User Groups
I mentioned that you can share some of the content whilst in development and ask for feedback. It goes without saying that whenever you can you should include those that will ultimately be the audience for your solution.
There are several benefits to this - the obvious one is that you can get a feel for whether your approach is suitable and engaging for those that will complete it. There is another benefit though - if you get it right and your user groups like the solution - they will share this with other learners. Ultimately this means they become advocates for the solution and help you with your implementation by engaging other learners on your behalf.
So share what you are doing - and love your haters.
Image by Andre Hunter on Unsplash
Find out more about Learning Perspectives
Comments
Post a Comment