Your organization has identified a key position or key task that impacts the bottom line and that isn’t getting the needed results. You’ve conducted the front-end analysis, found a skill gap, and now you need to develop training to address it. Although knowing what skills you need to teach is half the battle, a critical component of a good performance-based course is a curriculum blueprint. This blueprint is used to determine how the needed skills and knowledge should be combined into modules, and the sequence in which learners will progress through the course. The result is learning that is efficient and effective.
The Importance of Curriculum Blueprints
By creating a curriculum blueprint for your course, you ensure:
- learners have the necessary prerequisite and subordinate skills before they complete each module of instruction
- the appropriate number of modules are developed for your course
- your course is organized in a way that helps learners achieve course objectives
- modules don’t overlap
- the learning environment is conducive to learning
The Process
Below are the steps we follow at CEP, as part of our training development process, to create a curriculum blueprint.
1. Describe the learning environment. Write a description of the main environment in which your course will be delivered. Review the description for course design implications and the effect it might have on the instruction. For example, equipment constraints may dictate how you present the training. If there are any environmental constraints, address them to the extent possible to create the best learning environment.
2. Group skills into modules. Examine the skills and group together any smaller skills that can be learned together. By the same token, look for larger skills that may need to be divided into two or more modules. Make sure each module is short enough so it won’t overwhelm your learners and that each module has a logical beginning and ending. For each module, ask yourself, “Will learners see this as being useful back on the job?”
3. Determine the course flow. If one course objective is to teach a new job process, sequence the modules according to that process. If that’s not required, decide whether learners must “stay together” to participate in group activities. If not, impose as few sequencing rules as possible. There are some rules of thumb you can use for sequencing, such as:
§ Try to make the first module easy or short, and of interest to the learners. Group interaction is a good way to build enthusiasm early on.
§ For the last module, select one that integrates learned skills or shows participants how they will use the skills back on the job.
- Review module sequencing. Make sure you haven’t overlooked any interrelationships between skills, and that all interrelationships are represented on the course map by arrows in the right places going in the right directions.
Once you’ve taken the time to complete the curriculum blueprint, you can use it to communicate with others in the organization about the proposed training program; as a tool to analyze, determine, plan, and secure resources for implementing the course; and as a resource for developing detailed instructional modules.
If you’d like more information on how curriculum blueprints fit into the creation of training you can guarantee delivers the required results, contact Paula Alsher, Vice-President, Client Solutions at 770-458-4080 or by email at palsher@cepworldwide.com.
