S1E8 - Revamping Your Department's Training Curriculum with Victoria Leyton and Sarah Daadi | EdTech Learning Lab Podcast Ep. 8

Yeah, I think thinking about the way we decided to go ahead and design the curriculum, having it move away from being so long form and content driven.

So we really focused on really micro learning, small modules, and having, I think, really focusing the content on being as minimal as possible in terms of the rote teaching.

and shifting that time, whatever is available to the learner towards more applied stuff.

That was one of our goals to keep these kind of like mini modules, almost like just in time type of training, just like our introductory courses will go through and it won't be kind of like one-offs, but just thinking about the time of each sort of lesson as being like 20 minutes instead of like an hour-long PowerPoint that needs to kind of like churn through and very little applied.

We tried to flip that to have it be like mostly applied, like going through scenarios and after doing these mini modules.

So maybe we can talk about the the sort of mini modules first.

So we started with everything just sort of written out in like a script format in like a Google Doc.

And then we ended up moving everything to Articulate Rise and having these lessons be about 20 minutes.

You know, one of the advantages of that is that you have that content, but you also have the opportunity to really easily add these small interactions and make it a little more interesting, both in terms of the UI, the user interface, and like visually how it looks.

And it's a pretty easy platform to use.

What did you both think about that move to use that platform?

Sarah, do you want to go first or?

Yeah, sure.

I really enjoy a lot the online platform that we're using, the Articulate platform, because it is very intuitive.

There's a lot of space in it, so there's lots of time, space for users to kind of reflect on the content.

And I think working with Adam's team, we really focused on curating the content from a subject matter expert's position.

So we've spent a lot of time in making sure that the content we're delivering is really packaged in a way that makes sense.

So it's a really balancing act, because you don't want to just have this huge content dump within the platform.

You want it to be very refined, to be very selective, so that it's really meeting the user's needs.

And we've mentioned that at Stanford, we have a wide, diverse range of learners' needs.

So it's hard.

It's not easy to figure out what we should include, what we should leave out, you know, what level of complexity you want to present to the learners.

And this takes time.

So I really appreciate that we have this platform that can really present the key content in a really effective, intuitive, pleasing, aesthetically pleasing way.

Like Adam mentioned, it's really bundled in tight units.

Yeah, I think thinking about the way we decided to go ahead and design the curriculum, having it move away from being so long form and content driven.

So we really focused on really micro learning, small modules, and having, I think, really focusing the content on being as minimal as possible in terms of the rote teaching.

and shifting that time, whatever is available to the learner towards more applied stuff.

That was one of our goals to keep these kind of like mini modules, almost like just in time type of training, just like our introductory courses will go through and it won't be kind of like one-offs, but just thinking about the time of each sort of lesson as being like 20 minutes instead of like an hour-long PowerPoint that needs to kind of like churn through and very little applied.

We tried to flip that to have it be like mostly applied, like going through scenarios and after doing these mini modules.

So maybe we can talk about the the sort of mini modules first.

So we started with everything just sort of written out in like a script format in like a Google Doc.

And then we ended up moving everything to Articulate Rise and having these lessons be about 20 minutes.

You know, one of the advantages of that is that you have that content, but you also have the opportunity to really easily add these small interactions and make it a little more interesting, both in terms of the UI, the user interface, and like visually how it looks.

And it's a pretty easy platform to use.

What did you both think about that move to use that platform?

Sarah, do you want to go first or?

Yeah, sure.

I really enjoy a lot the online platform that we're using, the Articulate platform, because it is very intuitive.

There's a lot of space in it, so there's lots of time, space for users to kind of reflect on the content.

And I think working with Adam's team, we really focused on curating the content from a subject matter expert's position.

So we've spent a lot of time in making sure that the content we're delivering is really packaged in a way that makes sense.

So it's a really balancing act, because you don't want to just have this huge content dump within the platform.

You want it to be very refined, to be very selective, so that it's really meeting the user's needs.

And we've mentioned that at Stanford, we have a wide, diverse range of learners' needs.

So it's hard.

It's not easy to figure out what we should include, what we should leave out, you know, what level of complexity you want to present to the learners.

And this takes time.

So I really appreciate that we have this platform that can really present the key content in a really effective, intuitive, pleasing, aesthetically pleasing way.

Like Adam mentioned, it's really bundled in tight units.