MANAGED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN SERVICES
Case study: 90-Hour Course Redesign
What might Managed Instructional Design Service engagements look like?
The Business Need
Our client, an online professional certification school operating in the US, approached us with a unique challenge: can you help us improve our students’ pass rates on the real estate licensing exam of a specific US state?
The customer had an existing 90-hour pre-licensure program that was entirely audio-based online training. The immediate need was to redesign this training to a format that:
- was more amenable to daily study
- provided learners with flexibility in terms of when and how they took the training
- helped learners to retain key information from the course
- enabled learners to perform better on the state licensing exam
The Challenge for Learners
As we began consulting for the learning design, we built an understanding of our learners: who they were, what they were looking to achieve, and the challenges they were facing.
- Learners are committed to passing their licensure exams and starting a new career in real estate.
- However, the sheer volume of pre-licensure study material is often overwhelming.
- Learners found it difficult to commit to the daily study time required to complete the existing video course format.
- However, our learners did appreciate having audio within the course.
The Instructional Design Challenge
As with any business requirement, our learning design would need to do a balancing act between the learners’ needs, expected business outcomes, and the ever present restriction of budgets!
- Can we help increase daily study time by introducing more flexibility?
- Can we increase information retention with a combination of flexible content delivery, succinct summaries, and more practice opportunities?
- Can we do all this while keeping course development costs low?
Our solution
Here’s what we proposed after the learning design consulting stage.
‘Audio-first’ strategy for the redesigned course
- Learners can dedicate more study time in a day if they are able to listen to course material while doing mundane chores (driving, cooking, etc.).
Lesson content was split across audio segments that were 2 - 5 minutes in duration.
- Just the right amount of information at a time for learners to be able to focus.
- At the end of each segment, a narrator reinforced key points as a summary.
Audio segments were supplemented with ‘summary infographics’.
- one summary infographic after 3 - 4 audio segments.
- Learners had the dual benefit of the flexibility of audio-driven lessons and the summary infographics to fall back on for information retention.
All audio using AI voice recording software
- We were able to provide our customer with significant cost benefits and also good output with the audio recordings.
We increased the number of questions within the course, which provided learners with extensive opportunities for practice.
- Questions were presented across quizzes, mock tests, and a final assessment.
- Module-end quizzes emulated the state licensure exam questions.
How We Did It
And here’s how we went about executing this engagement.
1
After a detailed analysis of the business need and course content, we set up a dedicated team of Instructional Designers, led by a Senior ID responsible for planning work packages and overseeing execution of our strategy.
2
We developed a small prototype, which went through several iterations with the customer before we settled on the treatment that worked best for the audio strategy.
3
We then set up workstreams to manage development, internal reviews, and feedback incorporation of all deliverables to the customer: storyboards and course builds in the customer’s LCMS platform.
4
We developed the entire 90-hour program within a span of 5 months. We planned monthly work packages and shared reports that enabled our customer to track the team’s throughput and plan the go-live of their program.
