Stories from behind the scenes when building courses: I’m neck deep in a complete rebuild of our fall protection training. This course started as an 18-page handout back in 2018 and has been in constant evolution ever since. I started tracking the time I invest into each revision sometime around 2020.
This course is up to 450 hours so far and will likely top 600 hours by the time the new version is finally ready. This one page is an excerpt from the ladder portion of the course. The red text with yellow highlighting is the answer key. The course will eventually be applicable across Canada (except Quebec and Newfoundland).
This one page also represents more than 5 hours of work. Here’s what’s easy: · It’s easy to jam a ton of content into a course. · It’s easy to fill every page with text. · It’s easy to avoid creating engaging learning activities the class. Here’s what’s hard: · It’s hard to stay focused on the learning objectives.
· It’s hard to clarify content to get to the point. · It’s hard to design activities for theory topics that minimize writing. · It’s hard to build learning materials for people with reading disabilities. · It’s hard to make learning material be accessible for English language learners.
· It’s hard to find the right blend of questions, activities, information, graphics and space on every page. · It’s hard to build the course to be easy, and cool for the instructor to teach. We consider the students, the instructors, the accreditation bodies and the local OHS regulatory authorities in every part of the courses we build.
This one page took 5+ hours to make… and its entirely possible this page can get thrown in the garbage if we find a better way to satisfy all the needs of this training. Excellence is the ONLY goal we aim for. I couldn't be happier to be part of the team at Haland Learning where we get to spend as much time as we want on this type of stuff.