ADDIE ON A SHOESTRING

ADDIE ON A
SHOESTRING

Michaels & Associates Docntrain, Ltd. dba Michaels & Associates

11639 E. Wethersfield Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85259 USA
marketing@michaelsandassoc.com www.michaelsandassoc.com
Phone: 480-614-8440 Toll-free: 877-614-8440 Fax: 480-614-2775

Copyright © 2008 Michaels & Associates Docntrain, Ltd. dba Michaels & Associates. All rights reserved.
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ADDIE ON A SHOESTRING – MAKING THE MOST

OF YOUR TRAINING TIME

Many instructional designers follow the ADDIE model to develop effective training
programs. Completely sticking to this methodology, however, is quite a challenge when
you’re faced with reduced budgets, tight timelines and other demanding priorities.

How can you use the tried-and-true principles of ADDIE on a shoestring, without sacrificing
the effectiveness of your training program? Here are a few ideas shared during a recent
Q&A session on LinkedIn.

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Analysis

During the Analysis stage of the ADDIE model, you should spend time identifying the learner audience, the job and tasks that comprise it and the
learning/work environments. Some ADDIE experts say that you should spend at least 33% of your time on this phase. However, if you’re running on a
shoestring budget, here are some ideas for cutting this stage down to a minimum while still achieving the desired results.

 Why spend valuable time determining the necessity of training if your customer is
already convinced that training is needed? Instead of wasting valuable time
challenging or proving your customer’s belief, go ahead and begin designing the
training materials. In an instance like this, you can then step back and analyze
tasks when you find inconsistencies or holes.
 If you decide that analysis is the way to go, develop and use a task analysis
template to help you save time. This template should include common questions
to ask during a task analysis as well as areas to help you organize your findings.
As a matter of fact, if you spend time now developing detailed templates for most
of your instructional deliverables (like design documents, job aids, assessments
and facilitator guides), you’ll reap the rewards with every project. For some ideas
on effective analysis templates, visit this website.
 Instead of performing a task analysis, needs analysis and/or skills gap analysis
from scratch, spend time with successful existing training materials for the target
audience and related subjects. Examine the materials to identify basic processes.
You can also use them to identify content gaps. Then, concentrate your
interviewing time on filling the gaps you find during the initial analysis.
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Design

After you create a strong infrastructure with a succinct but effective analysis, you can begin the formal design of your course. Consider these
suggestions to create a thorough design document without spending excessive time and resources.

 If you’ve developed training for the target audience before, stick with what works. There’s no need in reinvent the wheel if learners are
benefitting from designs and methods you’ve already created. Instead of spending valuable time prototyping new formats and deliverables,
jump ahead to development based on what methods have worked in the past.
 When designing the training, allow for lots of learner discovery activities. In other words, don’t design training materials that teach a process to
death if the learners can discover it on their own. Instead, design training around realistic scenarios and activities.
 Consider the time, cost and effort to develop training materials early on in the design stage. Use the table below as a guideline, but use your
own experiences with the target audience, too. Then, choose the instructional methods that work for both the audience and your budget.

Course Development Characteristics1

Panel of Experts
Guest Speaker
Instructor-led

Small Group
Questioning

Case Study
Discussion

Discussion

Facilitation
Exercises

Hands-on
Role Play
Lecture

Time L M M M M M L L M M M

Cost L L L L L L LM L L L MH

Effort L L L L L M L L LM LM M

Legend – Requires a high (H), medium (M), or low (L) level of cost, time or effort.

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1 Hassell-Corbiell, Rives. Developing Training Courses – A Technical Writer’s Guide to Instructional Design and Development (2001): p. 154.

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Development

Once you identify what should be taught, you have the foundation upon which
to build the training materials. To reduce development costs and still create
valuable materials, consider these ideas.

 You’ve probably heard this before, but develop the final assessment
first based on your learning objectives. This ensures that your learning
objectives are met and also identifies where you should spend time
developing content. There’s no need to develop content that doesn’t
related to a learning objective and assessment item.
 Develop brief job aids instead of detailed participant manuals. This
actually has a two-fold benefit: it saves you hours of development
time, and the learners have tools they can use long after training is
over.
 Set strict review schedules. The biggest money pit of a project can be
the time related to getting and implementing SME feedback. One
great way to do this is to set appointments (either live, by phone, or by
a conferencing system) to review materials with the SMEs. Then the
SME can give you all the feedback you need in one meeting, instead
of trying to fit multiple reviews into his or her busy schedule.
 Videotape a SME demonstrating a process instead of documenting
the process in detail. You can use this videotape to create a job aid,
and you can also use it during training as a primary teaching tool.
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 If you have SMEs or other experts as trainers who really know the material, you can
devote less time to development of facilitator guides. Then take time during the train-the-
trainer or pilot classes to take notes on what the SME says, and beef up the facilitator
notes if/when other trainers take over the delivery.
 Why spend time creating the training yourself if you have SMEs that can put all their
knowledge into something you can use? You can easily create a website portal (such as
a discussion board or forum) or spot on your server where SMEs can create some of the
content for the course. For example, they might be able to suggest good test questions or
scenarios for exercises. They could also provide links to documents or other resources
you can use.
 Create shared objects that you can reuse with all your training projects. For example, if
you are developing software training, create generic ―chunks‖ of training for activities like
installing, creating, deleting, updating and troubleshooting. Include learning objectives,
facilitator notes, participant activities and other elements common for those tasks. Then
use the chunks as templates for the new similar pieces that need to be created. You can
use a content management system to hold these objects, but it’s not a necessity. An
organized folder on your server works just as well.
 Instead of copying graphics and other objects directly into your training documents,
embed the objects by reference. Working with these dynamic objects stored on a central
server allows for easier updates—if an object changes, all documents that link to it are
automatically updated when you open them. However, be sure to keep the objects in the
same location on the server to avoid broken links within your documents.

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Implementation and Evaluation Related resources:

When it’s time to roll your training solution out to the public and evaluate its success, you can reduce  No budget? Great! - blog
http://blog.cathy-moore.com/?p=171
costs and still have a great result. Try the following tips for completing these two stages of ADDIE on a
 ADDIE Model – article
shoestring budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADDIE_Model

 If the target audience hasn’t changed from the last project you developed, use the same or  Training and Performance Management
similar delivery options. There are two benefits of this approach: the learners are already http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/index.html
familiar with the delivery mode so they need less ramp up, and you can achieve cost savings
 Rapid Instructional Design - article
by sticking to a method that has already been planned and carried out before. Once again,
http://www.stc.org/ConfProceed/2003/PDFs/S
don’t fix what isn’t broken!
TC50-048.pdf

 Whether or not you are reusing a delivery method, standardize and streamline your delivery
models as much as possible. Analyze the steps you take to deliver the training, and trim
unnecessary steps. This way, your focus and time can remain on the training content rather
than spending excessive time on new fangled presentation development/deployment ideas.
Save those ideas for when you have the time and resources to try something new.

 Attend the train-the-trainer session to combine implementation and initial evaluation. This
allows you to see how the training goes and get valuable input on its success.
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Remember: Effective training does not have to be expensive or take months of development. By taking the time up front to develop reusable tools and
templates, and by analyzing your process to trim any unnecessary steps, you can achieve the results you and your audience want.

If you’re not sure where to start, or if you’d like help analyzing and streamlining your process, drop us a line and we'll be glad to get you started.
Michaels & Associates — making training a little easier.

marketing@michaelsandassoc.com www.michaelsandassoc.com toll-free: 877-614-8440

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