What's New at DSA?

Upcoming DSA fall workshops and events are now posted at www.dsink.com. DSA offers certification by taking 2 DSA workshops and passing a criterion-referenced test at 80% or better. Details and procedures at the web site.

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We’d like to thank National Instruments for co-hosting the August 23-24-25 presentation of The Instructional Developer Workshop at the NI facility in Austin, TX. There’s still time to register!

The next presentation is in San Francisco September 26-28, Union Square:

The Instructional Developer Workshop
September 26-27-28, 2005
San Francisco, CA
Become the Best Developer You Can Be...

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Continuing our follow up from The Learning and Performance Strategies Conference 2005:
Be sure to read A Day in the Learning and Performance Conference Life, a write up on the last day’s sessions from William Hall, conference attendee. Oh, and have you seen the pictures at the web site?

Upcoming Events

Designing Instruction for Web-Based Training
November 1-3, 2005
Chicago, IL
Learn from Dr. Peter Honebein in person, see actual real world project examples of his Authentic Activities...

The Criterion-Referenced Testing Workshop
November 14-15, 2005
San Francisco, CA
Do You Struggle With Writing Test Questions...?

ISPI Fall ISD Conference
September 19-24, 2005
Las Vegas, NV
Limited Registrations Available...

VNU Training Fall Conference
The Instructional Developer Workshop Certificate
Presenter: Dr. Darryl Sink
October 13-19, 2005
Long Beach, CA
Get Certified in Three Days...

Today's Tip
Authentic Activities to Enhance Transfer of Skills

DSA would like to thank Dr. Peter Honebein for contributing this month’s tip on Authentic Activities. Dr. Honebein is an active associate, working on several DSA e-learning projects and he regularly teaches the DSA workshop: Designing Instruction for Web-Based Training.

If you are designing courses for your learners that involve high-level problem solving skills, an instructional strategy you should consider is authentic activities. Authentic activities engage learners in situations that reflect real-world cognitive challenges. The advantages of this strategy include richer experiences for learners, easier transfer of skills to real-world tasks, and strong performance outcomes.

So, how do you construct authentic activities for your training courses? The following list offers some key principles for you to follow.

Authentic activities are problem-focused
It is more frequent than not that content is taught for the sake of the content itself. In a course for front-line employees, my subject matter expert (SME) was adamant about teaching employees about the company’s target market. I asked why. “Because they need to understand who are customers are,” replied the SME. The novice designer typically accepts this answer. Instruction that stops with this level of analysis typically ends up as four PowerPoint slides defining the target audience, with a multiple choice test at the end.

It usually takes two or three more rounds of “why” questions to finally yield what a designer needs to develop problem-focused instruction. “Employees need to know who the target customers are because employees need to qualify those customers,” relinquished the SME. Bingo! Now we had a problem – qualifying customers. And it was authentic, since employees performed the task on a regular basis.

Authentic activities involve the learner playing different roles
While authentic activities typically engage the learner in the role they will play on-the-job, it doesn’t have to be so. Many courses I develop these days have wide, varied audiences as companies try to stretch their training dollars to be as inclusive as possible. In such situations, designing activities that let the learner play different roles associated with the task at hand appears to be an acceptable solution. It gives learners a better idea of the interconnected relationships that get work done.