The Fastest Way to Find Out What Your Course Is Missing

I once got hired by a financial institution to build training for loan officers. The first thing I asked for was to meet with the loan officers themselves. I wanted to understand how they actually did the job and what decisions they made around the content that was going to be in the course.

Senior management told me no. They said that the loan officers didn’t have time to meet with me, and that it would be a waste anyway since the organization already knew what needed to be taught. My job was to build the content, not talk to people who had no say in what that content was.

You can guess how it turned out. We ended up with a long, information-heavy course that checked every compliance box and missed a lot of what the loan officers actually needed. The organization called it a win because it satisfied the regulations. But I felt it was a missed chance to build something that would’ve actually helped the people taking the course.

Understand your training objectives

Before you involve learners, you need to know what kind of course you’re building. Compliance courses with no real performance goal can get away with a straightforward information delivery. Courses designed to change behavior can’t.

Knowing which type you’re building shapes everything. It tells you how much effort to put in and whether learner input will meaningfully change your approach.

A second set of eyes always helps

We all develop blind spots when we’re deep in the content and building courses. This is true if you’re building the same type of course over and over again. Someone who hasn’t been staring at the material for weeks will spot things you’ve missed. This is true whether you’re looking for visual issues, unclear instructions, or content that doesn’t hang together.

When prototyping a course, get someone to look it over and give feedback. They’ll often catch ways to tighten the design and suggest angles on the content you hadn’t considered. You don’t have to use every suggestion. But that outside view usually surfaces something worth thinking about.

Pull learners into the process early. Mix recent hires with experienced staff to get a range of perspectives. Don’t wait for a finished course.

Your learners probably don’t care about e-learning

Most learners find e-learning irrelevant because it usually is. Much of what they’re required to complete has nothing to do with their actual performance goals. That’s a low bar to clear. You can do better.

Here are some practical ways to bring the learner perspective into your development process:

• Ask learners to review the content and describe what it means in their world. What decisions do they have to make? What situations come up? Let those examples shape your scenarios.
• Don’t rely only on subject matter experts. SMEs know the content but often lose sight of how they learned it. Recent learners can tell you what matched reality and what didn’t.
• Recruit someone who knows nothing about the topic to go through the course. Watch how they navigate it. You don’t need a formal usability study. One honest observer is worth more than none.
• Test early. Many developers wait until the course is nearly finished before checking in with anyone. That leaves no room to make real changes. Build a prototype and test it first.

Key takeaways

Connecting with learners isn’t a luxury for big budgets or long timelines. It’s one of the fastest ways to find out whether your course reflects what people actually need to do. Start with a simple conversation, test a prototype with real learners, and let that feedback shape what you build.