How to Design Training for How People Learn with Julie Dirksen

Join us to hear learning strategy and design expert Julie Dirksen explain how to create a learning experience that’s effective instead of one that gets forgotten as soon as the learner completes the session.

The first important steps in Dirksen’s process are to understand who your learners are, then define the behavior you want them to learn. This might seem obvious—but the trick is to identify the specific steps required to make that behavior visible and then teach them in a way that is both memorable and applicable to the learner.

Dirksen understands that the goal of good learning design is to help learners emerge from the learning experience with new or improved capabilities—skills they can take back to the real world and apply immediately. With the recent shift to virtual learning, this includes using methods to keep people engaged in the session. Dirksen encourages you to use tools available on learning platforms to keep people active, such as asking participants to write on a whiteboard or put comments in the chat, or calling on them to unmute and answer a question. She also stresses the important role that repetition plays in the transfer of knowledge and offers methods to enhance memory.

Dirksen’s favorite learning tip? Designers should ask themselves one question about every single thing they are trying to teach: Can I provide a real-world example that will illustrate this learning point?

About Julie Dirksen:

To learn more about Julie Dirksen, go to www.usablelearning.com.