Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime

1.5. WHY DO YOU WANT TO USE WBT?

Before you begin designing a course, understand why you are doing so. What are you trying to do for your organization and for your learners?

1.5.1. What will you do for your organization?

Identify your business goals first. Only then can you decide whether training is the best solution and whether WBT figures into that training.

What are you trying to accomplish for your organization? Before you start listing the things you will accomplish for learners, think about what you will do for your organization, your sponsor, or your financial backers. What does your business or university hope to accomplish? Your list might look something like this:

• Reduce costs of training by 50% over the next year

• Quickly prepare a global marketing plan to sell a new line of products.

• Reduce misdiagnoses of battery failures by 90%

• Earn $200,000 by selling courses

• Recertify 150 nuclear power plant operators

Keep the business objective in the back of your mind as you make other decisions. Write it on a note card and tack it to your wall so you never stray too far from this objective.

1.5.2. What will you do for learners?

What will you teach and to whom? Start off by setting specific teaching objectives. Good objectives specify which learners will accomplish what results under what conditions and to what degree of success.

NOTE

I distinguish teaching objectives from learning objectives. Teaching objectives are what you want to teach someone, and learning objectives are what ...