Think back to when you learned a new skill or tackled a tough topic. Did you feel overwhelmed by too much information? This common experience shows a flaw in learning design: the idea that more content means better learning. For busy adults with specific goals, this can be counterproductive.

At Verbosity Creative Solutions, we often get client requests in terms of instructional minutes. While this is helpful in defining the scope of the project, it often reflects this deeper misconception that “more” is “better.”

In instructional design, creating effective learning experiences requires a careful approach. While pedagogy is important, user experience (UX) is just as crucial. This is why we at Verbosity Creative Solutions address UX right after the Needs Assessment.

We all like to skip to the end. 

Too often, when clients come to me, they tell me that they want a 40-minute instructional video on XYZ or a 30-minute slide presentation with X-number slides. They’re focused on the output. But Instructional design, at its core, seeks to create effective and efficient learning experiences to achieve specific outcomes. 

To ensure that is really happening, we have to back up for a moment and look at what we’re trying to achieve with the training. One of the most critical initial phases in this process is the needs assessment. 

If you are a parent and your child is in third grade or above and participates in California’s Assessment for Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP), you may have noted some changes this year in how those results are being reported to you.

In particular, you may have noticed the Lexile and Quantile report accompanies the main report.

Have you noticed that problems don’t seem to get solved these days? There are a number of issues that one would think, after all this time, that time, money, technology, innovation, policy or any combination of these things would have at least made a sizable dent in the issue if not resolved outright. And yet, there are a number of societal problems that seem to be getting worse as time passes rather than better.

The short answer is that I had to leave the classroom after 22 years for my health. But the long answer is just what one would expect…