Christian Holz
25 Mar 2016, 01:30 PM
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Chapters 3 › Unit 3: Backwards Learning Design: Help out Martina! View instructions Hide instructions

Help out Martina!

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Imagine Martina, a junior but enthusiastic project manager in her company’s marketing department. She was recently promoted to Senior Marketing Manager and Team Lead, supervising 3 other staff members she was previously colleagues with. Even though Martina is quite enthusiastic about her new position, she is also anxious about all the paperwork and new responsibilities. After the first few months, she is swamped with work, feeling shy to delegate and struggling to juggle her old tasks as a project manager on top of now reporting to management.

Martina’s boss feels she now needs to learn management and team leading skills, so she approaches her about getting trained. In order for the training to be effective, we need to identify her possible knowledge gaps and desired skills.

So think about what you want Martina to learn. How can you assess this and how do you want her to learn?

Start with the learning objective and design her training backwards. If you prefer to do this by hand, download the worksheet below.

1) What do you want/expect Martina to learn?
Formulate learning objectives and standards: What should Martina know, understand and be able to do by the end?

2) How will you know and make sure that Martina has learned it?
Determine assessment and impact measurement: How can Martina show what she has learned? What should she be able to demonstrate?

3) What learning experience do you want Martina to have?
Design instructions and decide on learning activities and content forms:
How do you want Martina to learn?

Martinas course proposal

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1) What do you want/expect Martina to learn?
I think some main learning objectives for martina are
- the ability to delegate and let got of very operative tasks,
- self management in order to organize her self more effective
- how to assess her teams strenghts and fields for development to lead her team during the next time
- and maybe some management tools (rather practical skills like reporting, project management, etc.) in order to cope with the paperwork related to her new management function

2) How will you know and make sure that Martina has learned it?
From my perspective it is extremely important to not overload her with even more work related to learning. I think it would help to include her in the KPIs ore subjective measurements we want to implement. During the learning process some small learning quizzes might help to measure her progress - especially the skills part, a buddy/mentor might help to reflect on the overall progress and also provide feedback about open room for improvement. I think a test as a final measurement doesn't make sense, I would prefer a self evaluation, maybe even a 360° Feedback of her coileagues and boss with regards to Martinas performance. Additionally an assignment might me worth a try.

3) What learning experience do you want Martina to have?
I think it has to be entertaining, fun and in small bits/learning nuggets. She already has lots of work to do and another big amount would probably stress her too much. She needs the opportunity to learn independent of time and location. But I think a physical meeting as part of a blended learning approach, maybe at the end of a certain seminar, offers more insights and the chance to discuss her experiences with other managers in a comparable situation.

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