In 2012, I completed the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program at Vancouver Community College (VCC). Up until that point, I’d already been building courses for years — but without education on how to design training. The work was mostly trial and error. PIDP gave me language and structure for something I had only partially understood: Alignment.
At its simplest, alignment means this:
- The course has clearly written learning OBJECTIVES.
- The learning ACTIVITIES help students achieve those objectives.
- The ASSESSMENTS measure those same objectives.
That’s it. If a course teaches someone how to make a peanut butter and jam sandwich… And students are required to demonstrate making that sandwich… But nowhere in the learning objectives does it state that participants will demonstrate that skill… The course is not aligned.
The objectives, activities, and assessments must point in the same direction. After finishing PIDP, I assumed most organizations designing training were doing this. What I’ve learned since has been sobering.
Over the past decade — including formal audits and course reviews I’ve conducted — fewer than 50% of the courses I’ve reviewed or been asked to deliver were properly aligned. In some cases:
- There were no written learning objectives at all.
- The assessment had little connection to the content delivered.
- The content was static information with no structured learning activities.
- Instructors were expected to “infer” what learners were supposed to achieve.
That’s not a design preference issue. That’s structural misalignment. And when alignment is missing, it’s not the instructor who pays for it. It’s the learner.
- Instructional design isn’t mystical.
- It isn’t elite.
- It isn’t complicated.
But it does require intention. When objectives, activities, and assessments align, learning becomes defensible, transferable, and measurable. When they don’t, we’re just hoping.