Nikolay Komarov
17 Mar 2016, 03:07 AM
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?

Martina's training

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1) What do you want/expect Martina to learn?
By the end of the course Martina delegates tasks to her subordinates and effectively communicates with management.

2) How will you know and make sure that Martina has learned it?
- survey her subordinates, see if they receive more requests and assignments from Martina (i.e. whether she delegates more)
- survey her management, see if Martina’s communication has improved
- survey herself, see her own perception of how her behaviour and working habits have changed (is she still swamped with work? is she delegating more? has her communication with the management improved?)

Compare the three results.

3) What learning experience do you want Martina to have?
- assign her a mentor (if possible), someone who has been in her shoes and can give her practical and applicable advices (active learning). Have them sit down regularly to check-in on progress.
- in parallel, sign her up for a good MOOC about leadership (passive, self-paced learning), this will give her idea of more fundamental, theoretical concepts of leadership.

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