It seems that, every few years, there’s a hot new trend in learning and development. Mobile learning, gamification, microlearning, metaverse… the list goes on. There’s nothing necessarily wrong in experimenting with new learning trends; it’s great that technological advancements create new opportunities for learners to experience learning in different ways.

But there’s a problem when that trend becomes the focus of your learning solution when you should instead be focusing on the problem you’re trying to solve for your learners. Here are a few ways you can avoid “shiny new object syndrome” and refocus your efforts where your learning audience needs it the most.

Gain clarity with a needs assessment

Remember learning about the scientific method in school? No worries if not—here’s a quick refresher. First, you have a question, then you do a little research to learn more. You use that research to inform a hypothesis, and then you test that hypothesis with an experiment, going back to iterate as much as possible.

We have our own kind of scientific method in instructional design: the ADDIE method, which stands for analysis, design, development, iteration, and evaluation. The first step in the ADDIE process—analysis—points to the importance of understanding learner needs before you begin creating your learning solution. By completing a needs assessment, you can begin to uncover the gaps in your target learner audience’s abilities and discover the actual (not assumed) problems that they’re facing.

There are plenty of ways you can conduct a needs assessment, depending on the time and resources at your disposal and how rigorous you want to be. Here are just a few things you could do:

• Conduct interviews with the target audience, being mindful of the illusion of explanatory depth
• Spend a day job shadowing or observing learners
• Send out a survey to the audience

Keep in mind that when conducting analysis, you’ll want to gather as much input from the target audience as possible—that is, the folks who will actually be taking the training you plan to create—rather than relying on assumptions or opinions held by people who might be out of touch with the actual lived experience of your learners. If you can, observe their opinions and behaviors for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Here are a few questions you can ask to help start uncovering learner needs:

• What challenge do you face that needs addressing, and what do you think is the source of this challenge?
• If we solve this issue, what will be the benefits?
• What’s your background, and what is your motivation to change or adapt?
• How will we know if we’ve solved the issue?
• What constraints do we need to consider?

A needs assessment can take you to unexpected places. For instance, you might find that what you originally assumed (your hypothesis, if you will) is incorrect. Or you might realize that the problem you’ve uncovered doesn’t need training to be solved! Even if your needs assessment confirms your hypothesis, you can now carry on with relief knowing that you’ve validated the learning need and that you’re operating off the right assumptions.

At the end of this process, you should end up with at least one specific, observable action that learners should be able to do after they complete your training. You can capture this goal with a learning objective.

Ideate, create, and iterate

Now that you know more about your audience, where they’re at, and where they need to be, you can shift your focus to figuring out how they should get there—that is, creating a learning solution.

First, consider all the tools at your disposal. What methods can you use to get learners practicing this behavior? Do you have any authoring tools to help you create the training? Any platforms that enable spaced repetition or just-in-time training? Considering all the possibilities can help you think outside the box and come up with a lot of ideas for how the training could take shape.

Next, step into your learners’ shoes. Do any of the ideas you’ve generated resonate with the input you gathered from your needs assessment? If you’re not sure, try following up with your target audience to pressure-test your plan.

Finally, recognize any constraints that could affect the rollout of your solution. You might have a great idea for training delivery that resonates with your audience but still have limitations that make the project unfeasible. Do you have the time and resources to create what you’re envisioning? Will you be able to realistically implement your solution? For instance, will your solution require learners to use certain devices or be connected to the internet when that might not be possible for the entire learner audience?

It can be tempting at this stage to once again become distracted with learning trends. Take a step back, though, and ask: is this modality the best format to get learners practicing the behaviors they need to? If you’re not sure, can you create a quick prototype and bring learners in to provide feedback? This is one of the best ways to determine whether the learning trend you’re considering works for the solution this learning problem requires.

Follow up

Let’s jump back to the scientific method for a second. An important aspect near the end of the process concerns analyzing the results of your study and seeing if your hypothesis was correct. In the L&D world, this is represented by the last step in ADDIE: evaluation. This step, where learners have an opportunity to provide feedback on their experience, is crucial, yet it can easily be forgotten as learning designers roll out their solutions and move on to the next project.

What good is creating a solution and not sticking around to know whether it worked? You might find that, even with a validated need and a well-designed solution that delivers the right content with the best delivery method… well, it just doesn’t land with the audience. Taking time to evaluate can help you determine what worked, what didn’t work, and what you can improve on your next iteration so that the solution is even more effective.

You’re likely never going to create the perfect learning solution for every learner. Remember, you’re dealing with living, breathing people who have their own complex needs and preferences. But you can still be smart about how you approach your learning projects, and by focusing on the problem you need to solve and taking the right steps to solve that problem, you’ll be setting learners up for the most effective solution possible. And sometimes, that means leaving the learning trend for another day.