AXIOM Insights Podcast – Learner-Focused Content Development

Scott Rutherford
Hello, and welcome to the AXIOM Insights Learning and Development podcast. I’m Scott Rutherford. This podcast series focuses on best practices to create and sustain performance through learning. And today we’ll be talking about the development of learner focused content. And I’m really happy to be joined by two learning content experts. Vanessa Alzate is founder and CEO of Anchored Training, and Susan Beck is vice president of learning design and strategy at AXIOM Learning Solutions. So, Susan, Vanessa, great to have you both here, and nice to talk to you.

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Great being here. Thanks so much, Scott.

Scott Rutherford
So, as we got ready to record this episode, we sort of discussed how can we approach learner focused content development under the general banner of meeting our learners where they are. And I kind of wanted to start with that concept, first of all. I mean. Well, let’s describe what we mean when we use that phrase. Vanessa, do you want to take a first stab at that?

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah, sure. You know, I think that for so many of our designers and strategists, we think we’re not always clear as who exactly where our learners may be. And some of our learners may all be in different places in their journey. And so what I love to do is really immerse myself in their experience. You know, when I’m designing a solution, I think about, how are they going to access this solution, especially for asynchronous solutions? What is their day like? You know, if I know that my learner does not get more than five minutes in between meetings because they’re just back to back to back, I’m going to rethink an hour long session. Right. Or a five hour long session in their day that is really hard for them to be part of. Another area that I found to be challenging is really knowing where is the learner hanging out? Where are they going to be day in and day out. And that’s why I love utilizing things like TikTok for learning and development. Right. And not necessarily using the TikTok platform, but knowing that a lot of our younger demographic, that is where they’re accessing a lot of their instructional content, their learning content, their educational content, and leveraging some of those strategies as I’m designing. So it’s really just knowing where they are, not only physically, in their day and in their space, but where they may be in terms of emotionally, you know, academically, educationally, psychological safety is a really big thing that I think of a lot. So just really understanding that framework right.

Scott Rutherford
Now that makes sense. And I guess, Susan, I’ll let you jump in here, too. But it sounds like a lot of this is going to require sort of, it sort of starts in that probably initial intake conversation, right, to say, okay, not only what’s the topic we’re talking about, but, but Vanessa, as you say, where physically are the learners? Are they, are they in a warehouse? Are they going to be taking this content through, through a cell phone, or are they, or can they be brought into a sit down one, two, or longer, or a face to face session or whatever the delivery format is? So. So is it, does it. It has to start in that initial conversation to say where. What’s the target look like?

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yeah. It’s not only understanding who is the learner, where is the learner, but where is their starting point? Where are they starting from? That could be anything from prior skills and knowledge to contextual, contextual factors that Vanessa was talking about, personal circumstances, work environment, things that will affect their learning. And that’s beyond their personal quote, unquote, learning style, which. That’s a discussion for a different podcast.

Scott Rutherford
(Laughs) Exactly.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Things like meeting the learner, where they are. That original concept that we came to has to do with understanding the learner. And I think that today most of us are in such a rush to get training out, we forget that basic concept of who is your learner? What is their starting point? What do they bring to the table, and what factors do you need to take into consideration for them?

Scott Rutherford
So with that sort of urgency and rush and the speed of content development, and I hear you, I think that there’s always a pressure to get to the moment of delivery first. And maybe let’s take this from the perspective of if you’re talking to other instructional designers, how do you avoid those stumbling blocks or pitfalls to make sure that you don’t end up delivering something that’s nothing, not on target or not matched for, as you say, context or format or whatever?

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah, I think for me, it’s reminding folks that in order to run further, we’ve got to start slower. So everyone wants to sprint right out of the gate to get to that, to the delivery of a solution. And if people will assume that taking the time to do an analysis is slowing us down, well, in my experience, it actually speeds us up because I can avoid creating timely solutions that won’t work.

You know, if I’m going, if I was told, yeah, we need a whole bunch of videos on this topic, but my end user is in a place, you know, they’re not, you know, at a place that has great Wi-Fi access or things like that. They’re on the go on the phone or they’re in a location in which they don’t have great service, having to review a bunch of video content is not going to be the solution that works best for them.

And I think that if we can take that time and build that consultative framework into our solutions, that’s where you start to be seen less as the order taker, more as the business partner, and it starts to become common knowledge and practice. Right. If we think about it, you know, people will say, well, how do you turn. Change the tides? Like, how do you get people to listen to you? I just keep trying, little by little, piece by piece, conversation by conversation.

You know, people will, they will show up the way that you kind of train them to show up for you. So if you’re the yes person and you’re just going to take their solution at face value, that’s what they’re going to expect. So then when you start to push back and be more consultative, they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not the Vanessa I know. You know, I’m not used to having to do all of this perceived extra work. So just trying little by little and having that consultative conversation, I think, is that first step. And for me, too, is I like to always relate some to how people.

Something that they could relate to, right. So I always think of, like, think of a TV show, right. One of the best things about tv is you get to watch the person’s experience in their journey and their character art, but they’ve got to start somewhere. So let’s plot that journey for them by first meeting them where they’re at and, like, where are they on this continuum? And now, again, it may be different depending on where they’re coming in from. And then we can have that discussion of how do we personalize learning. That is how you can create solutions that feel custom but are almost, but still have a, you know, you’re not creating 100 different versions of the same course. There’s different ways that I’m sure we’ll get. We’ll talk about later to be able to do that.

Scott Rutherford
Right, yeah. And you were talking about, really, how do you get folks to listen to you at the. At the start of the process, which, you know, is perhaps the oldest question in L&D, invoke by reference, Dr. Keith Keating was a guest on a previous episode of a few episodes back.

Vanessa Alzate
(Holds up a copy of Dr. Keating’s book, “The Trusted Learning Advisor”) It’s right here.

Scott Rutherford
And he’s written a book about, you know, essentially getting a seat at the table, but to paraphrase, his approach is, is, you know, don’t wait to be offered. Take a seat at the table. And I think, I think what you’re saying kind of aligns with that, which is to say, you know, we talk about, okay, we want to act based on, and I’ll put it in air quotes, sound instructional design principles. Well, we have to put ourselves forward as the expert in those and explain what they are, what we mean.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vanessa Alzate
In their language.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yeah.

Scott Rutherford
So, Susan, how do you take your knowledge—because you both are experts in the development of learning—but you have to translate that expertise to an audience who, you know, maybe there’s, maybe they’re functional experts, managers, SME’s in their own area, but they’re not learning experts generally.

Susan Nabonne Beck
No, sir, they are not most of the time. And it’s education to the science behind instructional design and development. I always come to the table with the receipts, the whys behind why I’m asking you these questions. Something as simple as, what is the objective of this course? What is your goal for this course? Many times, the client does not know what it is other than to take the training.

Okay, great. That tells me it’s a checkbox training. But I’m going to dig deeper through probing questions to figure out what really do they need to be able to do once they’ve completed this training. Once again bringing it back to the learner-centric approach.

I think there’s been a strange pendulum shift in the last maybe five to seven years in our industry, where rapid development, these great tools that we have, like storyline, some of the videos, like Vyond, AI, for that matter, are coming into play, and people are thinking, oh, I can just bang this out really quickly. And they’re skipping the core design phase. And that’s really where we’re missing these instructional design principles that we’ve grown up with. We know they are embedded, but a lot of people now are like, oh, we can just throw that into storyline and it’s a great training, but again, there’s no objectives. There’s no learner centric approach. They don’t even know who all the learners are possibly. So it’s just bringing it back to that and educating them on why it’s important to have these things, things, objectives, learner analysis.

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah. Everything has to tie back to the business and the why. You know, aside from anchored training, I also own Kirkpatrick Partners, where we did the evaluation, the Kirkpatrick model evaluations. And that’s where we start. I need to, I need, if you want me to evaluate your product up to level four? We’re going to have to find out what is that level four that we’re looking for.

And sometimes I also. I think we also have to meet not just our learners, where they’re at, but our business stakeholders, where they’re at. And some of them, they just don’t have the same vocabulary that we do. So they just assume because they’ve been in, this is the environment in which they’ve grown. It’s always been training. Training has always been the answer. It’s what I. It’s all I know.

And, you know, I think about (this is literally very random), but I had to, like, submit some paperwork to a bank, and he wanted me to send my tax returns, like, just via email. And I’m like, sir, I’m pretty sure, number one, you’re probably trained, you’re not supposed to do that. You’re probably supposed to give me some sort of secure link. I’m sure you got trained on it, but, like, in conversation, you’re just, you know, I don’t know if it’s easier for you. There’s something wrong with the system.

And, like, because I can only think in learning, I was like, you know, if I was his boss or like, the branch manager or something like that, I could just imagine seeing this sort of conversation happening over and over again and then going to my learning department and saying, we need a training on how to properly ask for confidential information from our customers, or we need to resend out that training when maybe it’s just the fact that it’s a cumbersome system or they forget the steps. You know, like, I can go and create the training if you want, but that’s not going to solve the problem because the problem still is the system is very cumbersome.

Scott Rutherford
Right.

Vanessa Alzate
And so I think that’s where you can have those conversations and then help give the language, which then helps to design the solution to really be the proper solution for the learner.

Scott Rutherford
Yeah. I think what you’re describing, though, is really interesting, too, from the perspective of, you know, we sometimes say, well, it’s a check the box training exercise. And I kind of want to remind myself in those cases, well, even a check the box training exercise happens for a reason. And that reason may be in the general counsel’s office to limit liability or some other reason, but there is generally a business, regulatory reason, risk management reason, whatever behind that check the box. So maybe, you know, Vanessa, in your example, maybe that that staff member did get a check the box training about how to, how to handle confidential information. But because by the time it filters down to the frontline employee, we’re so removed from that at that point. From the why.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Right.

Vanessa Alzate
Yep.

Scott Rutherford
It doesn’t hit the target, so you’ll never get to that level three or four, to invoke Kirkpatrick again.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yeah. One of the worst things as a designer you can see in a level one evaluation is, I don’t know why I had to take this training. In other words, you’ve missed the connection, that learner connection completely. That they will even put that on a survey, that they don’t know why they had to take this training. And it’s like you go, ugh, it’s like a gut punch. So, you know, old is new again. Everything’s coming back around.

Vanessa Alzate
Right.

Susan Nabonne Beck
I’m really hoping that those deeper discussions will become normalized again, instead of just start at the starting line in full sprint, like Vanessa mentioned, slower, start faster, finish.

Scott Rutherford
Right. And avoid having to do it twice.

Vanessa Alzate
Oh, gosh, that’s so hard.

Susan Nabonne Beck
The training, quite honestly, being a failure and all that time is wasted. Failure is a strong word, but it really can that next training they take, they’re going, oh, I don’t know why I even took that other one. I wonder what this one is all about. It becomes this cyclical problem if you don’t take the time to do the learning.

Vanessa Alzate
Well. Yeah.

Scott Rutherford
I mean, folks who are being served learning, there’s a reason that it has something of a negative connotation. People usually don’t show up for a required training, really excited because expectations have been set. And for that matter, it’s not just, you know, if we’re talking about, you know, training, you know, people in a department, the managers and leadership were not really thrilled about losing those, those person hours off the floor. So there is a cost to, to all of this. And, and I, you know, I think. I think, you know, we, in learning, lose sight of that at our own peril.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yeah.

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah. Or the cost from the business. Right. I think of my friends in a call center. Right. When really, you know, I know some call centers, they only let their people be off the phone for 90 seconds.

Scott Rutherford
Right.

Vanessa Alzate
How much learning can you get, you know, done in 90 seconds? Which is why I’m a big proponent of TikTok style videos. And you, when you are going to take them off of the phones, it has to be for a really good reason and really be worth it. And I think the same can be said for when you’re going to really go and pick pitch an in person experience, especially in today’s world, you know, if you really do it well and you build a really good purpose and you are very cognizant of people’s time capacity and designing a solution that is worth their time, and they feel they find that relevancy and they walk away feeling more confident that they’re able to apply what they’ve learned and you’ve given them that structure to actually perform the behaviors. That is where you will see that. I call it your L and D brand. Right? Your brand is a department, it’s your reputation, and that’s how those things are to change. So then they say, well, I took them off the phones for, let’s say, an hour, but I’m gaining—because you’re evaluating, I hope—but I’m gaining this much in productivity or decreased customer complaints and things like that. So that time is now more valuable. So when I come in and I request a 1 hour session with them, I’m more likely to get a yes because I’m able to prove I can provide that ROI back.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yep. Absolutely.

Scott Rutherford
So let me ask you and Susan, you sort of alluded to some of the tools that we have to work with these days, and the list just keeps getting longer, it seems. How do you to approach finding the right tool for the job? And I realize the answer may be it depends with some explanation behind, but it’s kind of a two part question. It’s how do you (A) stay current on what the tools are out there and what’s available, and then (B) how do you match those tools to particular projects?

What’s your mindset about that? I guess it’s probably the best way to approach that question because there are so many details buried in there.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Again, it’s really understanding and knowing not only the learner’s needs, but in a tool, recognition would be also the business need. You need to be able to understand whether the business will be responsible for updating courseware. For example, after the initial implementation, there’s lots of questions to ask. As far as the tool use. However, it’s funny enough, it all goes back to the learner.

As Vanessa mentioned, how long do they have to take this training? Do we need to make it in snackable pieces? The tool that would drive that would be a smaller section of what’s available.

Do they need to consume it on a cell phone versus their laptop? Do they need to consume it offline? So there’s, it all goes back to analysis of who’s the learner? How are they going to be digesting the information and then what does the business need to support it going beyond, for example, in AXIOM’s case, once AXIOM hands off the course to them, what happens then? Do they need to be able to use it internally? And maybe they only use a few systems. So you are absolutely right. It does depend. Do we, as instructional design and development professionals suggest? Absolutely, we will. We have our favorites. We’re not going to lie.

But just to tie that in to how do you keep up with all of it? It is a personal endeavor to keep current on all of the tools. There are leaders in the industry. We know there’s the big two, right. But it’s a personal endeavor to find out what’s new, what’s working, what’s not working, what to avoid, and then bring that to your client.

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah. I think the hardest thing is to keep up with current research, current tools and technologies that are out there, especially, let’s research in this instance. But with technology, you want to play with it a little bit, right, and see what it’s capable because they’re going to sell you the Maserati on the website. But when you get into it, you might say, oh, maybe I got a little bit of a lemon, or there are just some things that, you know, just don’t work for me and my, my work style. Right.

And so you really have to make a cognizant effort to make the time to play around and to learn and keep up. And that’s what I think the value of a community is so important. You know, that’s where Susan and I first met through a slack community. And in there, we’re always, you know, what’s, you know, what are you using for this? Which are you using for that? And that’s been great where I haven’t felt like I’ve needed to try everything, but I trust the people that are in this community that if they’ve tried and they’ve had some recommendations, like maybe some not so great experiences or really great experiences, that’s going to sway me more, whether or not I’m going to actually take the time, which none of us have a lot of time, to actually go and play with the tool.

And look, especially in the advent of AI, I go out and I talk about AI now, I’m always going to get beat out when I get to the slide, I’m like, what tool are you using? Well, are you using this? Are you using that? A new tool pops up almost every minute, so it’s going to be hard and just saying, you know, I’m not going to have all of the answers, but at least I know where to go and look, and I’m going to try a few things. And if you’ve tried something, you let me know. So I think just making that time and knowing that you’re not going to be an expert in every single solution, and that’s okay.

Scott Rutherford
Right. And it also relates to something which it’s almost a physician heal yourself type of moment for people in learning, which is, you know, and I find this commonly across the profession is that we don’t always take the time to do our own learning because we’re busy delivering or doing our, doing our job and taking that extra time, whatever. It should be five or 10% to investigate the tools to practice, to try and fail when it’s not on a billable assignment or whatever the case is. It’s difficult but necessary. Right.

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah, but it’s the only way you can make really good recommendations. And so I think that’s where, not that I’m promoting that you should be working on your own time because I think family time is critically important. And I think that there’s just some people that will take that time. So, you know, I’m just going to take an hour to go, you know, instead of scrolling on social media endlessly on TikTok, I’m just, I’m going to go to the community. I’m going to go on LinkedIn and see what’s new or play around and take that time to do that. But that’s something that you have to want to do. And I think I. But it’s vitally important.

I mean, that’s why, you know, we have a new Kirkpatrick model. A lot of people don’t know it for a lot of reasons, not just because people have not taken the time to learn, but that’s part of it. You know, they’re not giving the freedom or the capacity to learn because they’re not given that budget or that time and resources are not limitless. There are finite number of resources, especially with time and capital.

Scott Rutherford
Well, and you mentioned, I mean, I think this is natural. People do tend to use what they’re familiar with. So if there’s a change to a model, you mentioned Kirkpatrick, it takes extra effort to educate yourself on the latest version. It takes extra effort to learn a new tool. So, yeah, I think those are related dynamics for certain.

Vanessa Alzate
Part of the reason I think Captivate still has a little bit of a hold on the community is because certain people have used it or they only have access to it. Right? So there’s that piece of it, but they’ve used it for so many years, that’s go and learn something new that’s difficult. Or that’s why there’s other tools out there that you can do similar, if not better things than Articulate Storyline. Although that’s typically my first go to. And yet I have to get used to a new interface. Like I kind of get shocked for a moment and it’s hard to get used to that. It’s like why you’ll never see me switch off of an iPhone to a Samsung. No way, Jose. My habits are iPhone. And that’s where we’re sticking.

Scott Rutherford
Behavior change is difficult, even for us.

Susan Nabonne Beck
We really hit on something. Many of the more advanced developers you’re locked in with, most likely Storyline or Captivate, those are the top two. There’s no hiding that in the industry.

But something that I encourage my junior developers is thinking about Storyline and what it can do, but also understanding realistically what it can’t do or what it should not do. So looking at other tools that will fulfill that, such as maybe Vyond for short videos or hey, your phone for taking a quick little how to of 30 seconds or even just a check in, you know, there’s a lot of things that Storyline can do, but should it do? And ask those tough questions and get out of your comfort zone and just go try the other tools?

Scott Rutherford
Yeah, and I wanted to bridge over into sort of the delivery modality side of this too, because it relates to the tool choice, but wanted to get your thoughts on how do you, uh, assemble the. I mean, I understand that some, sometimes a client will come to you and say, I want a video. And try to be prescriptive, but I think how do, how do you recommend the right blend of delivery modalities, whether it’s e-learning, whether that’s TikTok or, or short video bytes, or on the other side of the spectrum, you know, a, a day in front of a live instructor for an ILT.

How do you navigate then recommend, you know, between all of the, you know, and again, it’s a growing list of potential delivery options.

Vanessa Alzate
The analysis has to be the heart and the core of that conversation. And I think we say analysis and people assume it’s going to be like a whole 14 week analysis process. Sometimes analysis, I can not prescribe, prescribe, but I can give a general sense as to where I think I’m going to land just from having a conversation with a stakeholder. You know, I typically know where we’re going to end up unless they are absolutely unaware of their people and their learners. Right. And so that, for me, is where that conversation starts, knowing that and knowing what’s best for the content at hand.

So if we’re talking about a course on empathetic interview skills, I’m not going to just recommend a video, right. Because I know you have to practice, you have to do the conversations, and you have to build a lot of, you know, with this and DEI courses, a lot of psychological safety, so people can have that same time to say, okay, I, number one, don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not really good at this. And let them “fail” (air quotes) safely because you’d rather have them fail at the really important things in a safe, kind of like a. What do you call this? Like a sandbox. Right. In a sandbox than in a crucial moment where it’s, we might, you know, that conversation, we can lose an employee, you know, or really cause harm in a conversation.

And so I think that there’s knowing truly what it takes to create that behavior change and really knowing how, like, the brain works and things like that will help you build that, have that conversation about the modality. And again, I love to relate it back to them. I asked them, well, how did you learn it? Well, I practiced it a bunch of times. Okay, well, a video is probably not going to work, don’t you think? You know, and I joke with them a little bit. And you have to have. You have to build up that trust to have that for. But that’s really crucial is building that trust.

Scott Rutherford
And that’s sustainment and reinforcement, as you alluded to. You know, very, very rarely will a single video do the job, let alone if it’s something that is. That’s perhaps a little bit more sensitive, such as teaching people how to think differently of others in the organization. So you need practice, you need reinforcement, and so sustainment over time. Right.

Susan Nabonne Beck
And meeting a client where they are is an important issue as well, if they want a video. Okay, great. Yeah, let’s do a video as a demonstration. But, hey, let’s now also give them a scenario. Ask them some questions about how they may navigate a tool or even a simulation. Even better, that the learner, after the video, can then apply what they’ve learned directly in the sandbox that Vanessa was talking about. And I use the same terminology. I call it failing forward, meaning if they get it wrong, tell them what they got wrong, and allow them to try it again and move on in that safe zone.

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah, it’s so crucial to have that safe zone.

Scott Rutherford
So Susan, you alluded earlier to accessibility, and I had that on my list of things I really wanted to, to dig into with both of you because you’re far more knowledgeable on these topics than I am. But can we do sort of a little bit of a crash course into designing for accessibility?

People will hear of section 508 and there’s the web accessibility guidelines. There are some structures that you can go out and research and I’ll put links to some of that in the episode notes for this episode. But maybe, Susan, I’ll let you take a first stab at sort of what do we need to be aware of when designing instructional content? And then let’s dig into how do we do it.

Susan Nabonne Beck
So what we need to be aware of is the learner. Once again it goes back to learner centric. Who are the learners? What are potential needs that they may have, but educating the client on what the possibilities are. For example, something as basic as color contrast. So we many companies have these beautiful branding colors, right? But they don’t work as far as meeting color contrast guidelines for WCAG and educating them like, okay, why is this important? Yes, your logo is beautiful, light green and light gray. Gorgeous. However, if I am someone who maybe is not blind or has a lot of sight loss, I still may not be able to see that color. So how can we adjust your branding guidelines to fit these more robust guidelines for accessibility?

Also educating them on the possibilities, what does it mean? Okay, well, we could have focus order if we’re talking about e learning. Focus order within a course. So that if I am someone who has carpal tunnel and I’m not using a mouse, I’m only using my keyboard, I can use the keyboard to take the e-learning. And someone goes, well, carpal tunnel isn’t accessibility. Yes, it is. It’s thinking about the learner and what they need to successfully complete the course without having to give up anything that a quote-unquote normal, that’s not really the word I was looking for, but someone who does not have any need for accessibility, we need to match that for someone who has any need for accessibility. And that’s the tough part in educating their client that you have to think of the one, not the many.

In a lot of instances, something as simple as using audio as well as closed captioning or transcript. That is a big part of accessibility thinking. I am not someone who can read rapidly or I may have a sight problem, then we are using audio to supplement it. And that is a beautiful way to do it without the learner thinking, oh, well, now I have to go look at this PDF away from my course and I’m coming out of the course because I have a need beyond the course. Nope, let’s pull it into the course. What can we do to help all the needs of the learner?

Vanessa Alzate
It’s helping people feel like they belong. Right. And I think a lot of reasons for accessibility are not visible, right. And I think, and I think it’s reminding folks that there are your stakeholders that there are things that accommodations that people need that you’re not going to think about or know about and where I think as an industry we get it wrong is that we only think of accessibility in terms of e-learning and on screen using a computer. It’s a much bigger conversation. It’s like saying the issue with belonging is all around diversity and diversity is only about race. It’s not, it’s more than that. It’s helping folks that are neurodivergent to be able to understand the content in which you’re sharing. Right. Metaphors don’t work for them. My nephew is neurodivergent. If I tell him that, if I tell him that something is, you know, if I’m talking about like a bridge or whatever, the mountain metaphor, he’s looking for the mountain.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Right.

Vanessa Alzate
You know, and so thinking about, thinking through those things, right. And think about how you’re going to have to explain it is very literal. Very, yeah, and, and, and I think it’s knowing that also in the, in the classroom sort of place. So like I like to have a little swag in the classroom but I want to make it a fidget sort of situation because even for me, like I like sometimes I’ll just grab my airpods. I’m walking door right now because it’ll mess up my airpods but I’ll just like open it back and forth to say like the sensation I have one of our fidget cubes in the other room.

But I like to give something so people can fidget, which by the way, when 30 people are using a pop up like those pop its, the classroom becomes a little bit loud but they enjoy it and that’s why stress balls can become so popular, right? Because people are doing something with their hands.

And so thinking about that, thinking about providing expectations before someone walks into a classroom, right, like you send, hey, this is what you’re going to expect. This is what we’re going to do. You’re sending an agenda. And by the way, here are some things that you want to think about, right? You may not be able to regulate. You know, we are not able to control the temperature. I know that may be of a concern for you. Bring a sweater. Be cognizant of any perfumes or strongly scented lotions you may be using, because that’s distracting to someone else. And for some people that are so distracting, they will not pay attention. It’s the only thing they could focus on and allowing people to show up as they need to.

You know, I’ve even seen classrooms where someone just says, I need to sit in the back. I need to have headphones, you know, on all the extra noises are a little distracting. It’s not that I’m not paying attention to you. This is just what I need, so I can focus and not be distracted by the other things. Fine. That’s fine with me. And sometimes, often times, they’re the best ones in the class. You know, they’re picking up and they’re. And they’re doing what they need. So I think it’s about thinking about accessibility from all the constructs, right. Not just the 508 compliance, which I would have said if you started with me. We’ll start with Susan. That’s my accessibility girl who knows, who keeps up with all the regulations and then gives me the briefing, but, you know, and then. And then on top of it, you know, we were talking about earlier with the tools and keeping up. That’s another thing we have to keep up with, because those guidelines and things, they change.

Scott Rutherford
And I like what you were saying, though, about when you’re making those, call them accommodations or adjustments to the delivery of content with accessibility in mind, it strikes me that when you’re paying that attention to whether it’s the physical classroom for instructor led training or the highlight order for content in e-learning, those changes improve the learner experience for everybody else, too, I think.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And funny enough, as Vanessa just mentioned, keeping up with all of these guidelines standards is difficult enough, but there is no learning guidelines. So let’s take e-learning, for example. We are trying to adapt Web (guidelines) for e-learning. So there’s no. There’s no compliance or regulatory guidelines for what we do. So we’re just saying, okay, if on the web you have to do tab order, then we’ll do tab order. If web guidelines point to, um, tool tips, then we’ll do tool tips. So I think that that actually is a big gap in our industry. Um, and I know why, because they are ever changing. So someone would have to be keeping up on these.

But taking it back to, you know, bettering yourself as a designer-developer, it would be to familiarize yourself with these guidelines and really decide, what can I implement, no matter what, for everyone, all the time. If I’m creating an e-learning, I’m creating a PowerPoint for a presentation. What can I implement regardless of whether my learners even have the need? Let’s just implement it so that if a new learner joins, that wasn’t part of the original analysis, we’ve got it covered.

Vanessa Alzate
Yeah, yeah. And then just remembering sometimes some of these recommendations, like, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Right. You could develop carpal tunnel, and now you’re going from being a mouse user to being a keyboard user. Or you could be, like me, aging, and my eyesight seems to be going a little bit, little by little, so you have to squint a little bit, you know? And it’s not an accommodation that I need, but it feels really good that I don’t feel like I have to look at something and, like, really squint or just sometimes not even an eyesight thing. I think to Susan’s point earlier about, like, the, the inability to read the color contrast, like, sometimes it just, like, hurts my eyes.

Susan Nabonne Beck
It’s thoughtful.

Vanessa Alzate
I think it’s, it’s just being thoughtful. Right.

Scott Rutherford
Yeah. But I almost want to take it, like, from, from the, from the psychology of the learner experience perspective, because what I think what you’re doing, even though you’re not using these words, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to bridge here, which is you’re taking what we’ve developed as best practices in user interface design. User experience design. This is some stuff that, you know, folks in the, in the world of software spent a lot of money and entire careers focused on. But what you’re essentially doing is saying, you know, what we’re going to do is transfer what the learner expects to have, the way they, the learner expects to have things work this way because they see this on other websites. This is how the rest of the world works. We’re going to transfer that over into learning. And in so doing, you have the opportunity to make it intuitive.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Right, right.

Scott Rutherford
And that’s huge.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yes, absolutely.

Vanessa Alzate
And we shouldn’t get a pass. If it’s, if it’s good for your customer experience, it’s probably good for your employer learner experience.

And we need to be utilizing those same principles and so there’s a lot to, there’s a lot to learn there. And I think where maybe we’re falling short. I think it’s great that we’re finding things like the web accessibility guidelines and we’re saying we really need to be applying them ourselves and fill in that gap. So that way we’re not waiting and we’re starting so far behind.

Susan Nabonne Beck
And educating. I think that that’s the other thing. Even if your client, stakeholder, whomever it is, doesn’t ask for accessible, educate them on accessibility to ensure that they’ve taken it in consideration.

Vanessa Alzate
Yes. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s crucial because oftentimes stakeholders will think about their own preferences. Ok. So they’ll, you know, just say, oh, I would like a video. Okay, cool. You like a video. But does any mean everybody like a video, you know, name or. I can see that. Yeah, I think that’s cool. I don’t think that’s cool. Cool. And so I think it’s about thinking of having to think of the greater whole as opposed to just your own lane, and then educating on the why and the how and how you can still have that same experience and think of others.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Yep.

Scott Rutherford
Vanessa Alzate and Susan Beck, thanks for your thoughts. I’ve enjoyed the conversation and thanks for coming on the podcast.

Vanessa Alzate
Thank you for having me.

Susan Nabonne Beck
Thanks so much.

Scott Rutherford
This has been the AXIOM Insights Learning and Development podcast. This podcast is a production of AXIOM Learning Solutions. AXIOM is a learning and development services firm with a network of learning professionals in the US and worldwide, supporting Learning and Development (L&D) teams with learning staff augmentation and project support for instructional design, content management, content creation and more, including training, delivery and facilitation both in person and virtually. To learn more about how AXIOM can help you and your team achieve your learning goals, visit axiomlearningsolutions.com. and thanks again for listening to the AXIOM Insights podcast.