Monday 24 December 2007

One Page Guides - Quality over Quantity

Tim Davies has produced some great examples of how small, targeted and (crucially) well designed resources can be highly effective in learning. Tim's One Page Guides on subjects such as wikis, blogs and sharing stories give novices the confidence to take some action of their own. As Brent Schenkler comments:

"I'm certain it did not take ANY ISD knowledge to create these. But I'm certain MANY people will be learning from these...go figure."

I've long advocated a wider sphere of design influence for those involved in training and learning design. Doggedly sticking to one structured methodology is not going to work any more, if it ever did.

2 comments:

Tim Davies said...

Thanks for the mention.

Brent's post had got me thinking about the underlying principles for the guides (not something I'd consciously explored). I think I've discovered the key is in taking a values based approach - founded on empowering users of tools to explore them - rather than an instruction-based approach... although I'm still reflecting on it...

Lars Hyland said...

Tim, let me know how you develop your thinking on a values based approach. Intuitively, this feels right, especially where exploration and experimentation are really the only way to make the learning transferable and usable in "live" situations.
I'd welcome the dialogue... Oh, and thanks for posting my first comment!