How To Create And Customize Effective Curriculum Mapping
Effective curriculum mapping strategically organizes and prioritizes program goals, learning objectives, and existing source material. Because each of these categories lands on a spectrum of undeveloped to long-established, the process depends on the quantity and quality of what content and source material already exists. Three very different clients exemplify how Inno-Versity adapted curriculum mapping to produce the desired results.
1. Paint Supplier Curriculum Mapping
A global industry leader seeking a conversion of their curriculum is nothing out of the ordinary for Inno-Versity. But this automotive paint supplier needed a digital solution for their customer-education program. Historically, they’d provided free-of-charge, one-on-one ILT to their collision-center clients, an approach that outgrew the company’s workforce realities. It was time to develop an eLearning package—and IV stood at the ready to begin curriculum mapping.
A Roadmap For Prioritization
The client had already experienced long-term success, and their primary stakeholders had answered all the questions about program goals, written cohesive learning objectives, and identified materials with specific courses to be developed. What they needed was a deep dive into instructional strategy and guidance in prioritizing and organizing content. This customization served to remove redundancies, update content, and convert their existing model into engaging learning that continues their trend of building efficient collision centers and fostering customer loyalty.
Ensuring The Desired Delivery
While curriculum mapping looked different, yet again, the process afforded the trust needed to expand out the specific instructional strategy this company needed and desired. This time of aligning to the program goals of their company and establishing the specifics before getting into the actual blueprint helped ensure IV delivered to this global industry leader exactly what they were looking for.
2. National Family-Owned Restaurant Brand
When a fast-casual restaurant chain needed instructional buy-in across their brand and alignment of the learning path being developed, IV and twelve of the restaurant’s stakeholders met together to engage in creating effective curriculum mapping.
Representation
The room held employees from all different parts of the company—from middle managers to the founder’s son—each one hand-picked to offer input at this foundational stage of the process. All were aware of a previous fracture between the operations team and management on the ground. This variety of representation in the curriculum mapping session would ensure no such repeating of history.
Connection Learning To The Company's Core
Twelve stakeholders in one room present their own challenges in terms of session productivity. IV used this time to get everyone on board with the learning initiative—giving input to all, whether the discussion centered on larger program goals, business metrics, or the best way to organize courses. This involved writing out the vision and values of the company and then focusing on how important it is to tie every bit of learning to that vision and those values. We asked why people choose to come work for this particular company when they could work at any of the fast-casual restaurant chains that fill their city, and we then designated that, because employees resonate with the company’s values, those values must breach all learning materials, overtly or covertly. Such a discussion aligned the stakeholders and motivated them to buy into the forthcoming learning.
Questions To Guide
The brand leaders knew they wanted to align career paths with needed courses, so we walked all the stakeholders through a step-by-step approach:
- What are the roles?
- What training already exists?
- How can we organize the courses?
- Who needs to take them?
- What are the course objectives?
- What is true of the target audience?
- What is the existing content?
- Where are the gaps?
- What instructional strategies should we use?
When they identified two career paths they wanted to dive deeper into, we then worked together to establish the learning objectives for those paths.
A Compelling Vision
To give all twelve stakeholders a vision of what’s possible, we presented examples of IV’s work. They were in awe of what could be done and repeatedly asked if what they were seeing could be done in their company’s LMS. Those stakeholders walked away from that time of curriculum mapping excited and had buy-in on the curriculum and strategy IV would develop.
3. Luxury Carpets Curriculum Mapping
Partnering with a local luxury-carpet family of brands that was preparing to develop offline training into online learning, IV used effective curriculum mapping to turn factory managers into learning developers. With volumes of training packed into spreadsheets and handbooks, managers worried that this mountain of content would overwhelm their employees. Knowing they needed meaningful instruction, this national bespoke-carpet retailer turned to our learning experts at IV. Working with this company’s limited budget, IV’s learning experts provided the guidance needed to prioritize repurposing content for powerful employee engagement.
Customized Structure
IV saw a small company that believed in the importance of strategic instruction but didn’t know how to deliver it, so we used an approach that was sensitive to both their budget and need. Around the whiteboard together, we fit their ambitious eighty courses into categories structured by each phase of the sales-fulfillment process identified by their internal cross-functional team. The overwhelming trove morphed into a manageable curriculum.
Next, we provided a crash course in writing learning objectives. What did they want their learners to know, do, and believe? We advised them to develop ten-to-fifteen-minute courses, where every chunk of learning drives the learner to the identified learning objectives. We practiced writing learning objectives together and sent them off with homework, dividing the courses among their team to write learning objectives for each one. When we returned a week later, for our third and final day together, we helped them refine their learning objectives for ten of their eighty courses.
A Side-By-Side Solution
With learning objectives on a solid trajectory, we moved on to discuss assessments. Based on their learning objectives, what kinds of assessments made sense? We navigated their team through how to best assess learners on each know, do, and believe. Then, further customizing our service to the client’s needs, one of Inno-Versity’s IDs sat side-by-side with the person on the client’s team who would ultimately develop the learning and taught him how to use an authoring tool to develop the courses. They created one course together, equipping him to develop the other seventy-nine on his own.
Our deliverable was an incredibly clear and applicable process that this small company understood and could replicate to design their envisioned learning. Not all companies are in a position to invest in professional course design. With only a few days together, IV successfully equipped a local business in our community to create instructional sound materials of their own.
Conclusion
No two effective curriculum-mapping sessions ever look the same, though each sets the stage for delivering the quality learning the client expects. It’s a time not only to organize but also to help the client prioritize, affording a global view of the company that beckons every piece of micro-learning to drive the learner toward clearly established learning objectives in the context of the company’s vision and values.
If you're wondering how to deliver quality training in the shifting sands among onsite, completely remote, and blended learning, download the eBook How To Create Custom Remote Learning Experiences For Large Corporations and find out all you need to know! Also, join the webinar Why Curriculum Mapping Is The Cornerstone Of Custom Remote Learning Success, and discover more about the subject.
