Why Your Modules Turn Into Content Dumps

A client sends over a sixty-page policy document and asks whether you can turn it into a module. What happens next is the most common failure in corporate e-learning: the document becomes the module, screen by screen, with a quiz bolted on the end. This is not a production failure. By the time anyone is building screens the outcome was already decided, in the first meeting, when nobody asked what the learners were supposed to do differently. That is where this session is aimed. Two models, both older than e-learning and both routinely ignored by it. Bloom's Taxonomy in its revised form, for stating an outcome you can actually observe. Backwards Design, from Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design, for deciding the evidence before deciding the content. It is for people who design e-learning, people who buy it, and anyone who signs it off before it reaches their staff. No product demo. What is covered: 1. Why the 2001 revision by Anderson and Krathwohl is the one to use: nouns became verbs, and Synthesis at the top became Evaluate then Create. 2. The three domains, and why corporate e-learning lives almost entirely in the cognitive one, which is part of why attitude and behaviour change is hard to get from a module. 3. Why Bloom's is not a staircase you have to climb in order, and what it is genuinely useful for instead. 4. Why "understand" cannot be assessed, and what happens to a build when the objective puts no constraint on it. 5. The verbs that do design work before a screen exists: identify, classify, demonstrate, prioritise. 6. How the level you pick dictates the assessment you can honestly use, from a recall question up to a submission a human has to review. 7.The honest limit: e-learning on its own cannot assess the top of Bloom's, and why that is an argument for blending rather than a weakness to hide. 8. The diagnostic you can use this week: if every objective in the brief begins with "understand" or "be aware of", you are about to build a content dump. 9. The three stages of Backwards Design, and why the order is the entire idea. 10. Write the assessment before the content. 11. The two failure modes Wiggins and McTighe named: activity-oriented design, and coverage-oriented design. 12. The three questions to ask a subject-matter expert, in the right order, starting with what they will do differently on Monday. 13. What to do when the client says it all needs to be in there. There is an answer that does not involve an argument. 14. Why doing this properly makes the module shorter, and why shorter for the learner is not less work in design. The deck in this video has no images in it on purpose. Chapters: 00:00 Who this session is for 00:53 The sixty-page policy document 01:29 Not a production failure, a design failure 02:13 Bloom's Taxonomy, and why the 2001 revision is the one to use 03:18 The six levels, and the three domains 04:08 Bloom's is not a staircase you have to climb in order 04:48 Why "understand" is not an outcome 05:53 The level dictates the assessment 07:07 Create needs a human, and the argument for blending 07:58 The diagnostic: spotting a content dump in the brief 08:28 Backwards Design: Wiggins and McTighe, 1998 08:59 The three stages, and why the order is the whole idea 09:58 Write the assessment before the content 10:13 The twin sins: activity-oriented and coverage-oriented design 11:13 The three questions to ask a subject-matter expert 12:23 "It all needs to be in there": split it, do not argue it 13:30 How Bloom's feeds stage one of Backwards Design 14:14 Do it properly and the module gets shorter 15:02 Close This is session two of a series on instructional design. Session one covers Cognitive Load Theory:    • Cognitive Load Theory and E-Learning   The next session covers what separates a module that works from one that merely exists, using Gagne and Merrill. Related videos on this channel cover the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, Kolb's experiential learning and Malone's intrinsic motivation. Capytech builds custom e-learning and digital learning solutions from Dubai. If you need support on a digital learning initiative, get in touch. https://www.capytech.com