A practical guide to creating learning tutorials: part 3

Practical guidesIn part 1 of this Practical Guide, we examined the history, characteristics and benefits of the digital learning tutorial. In the second part, we explored some strategies you can use to design tutorials that impart important knowledge. In this third and final part, we look at how tutorials can be used to teach procedures.

Engage the learner

As we discussed in the previous part of this guide, you cannot simply assume that the learner will come to your tutorial full of enthusiasm for the topic. Your task is to convey the importance of the topic and its relevance to the learner’s job. The simplest way to do this is just to explain, but you can achieve a more powerful effect through some form of introductory activity.

Engaging the learner
This activity opens a tutorial on greeting a customer on the telephone. It demonstrates why the opening is so important.

Engaging the learner
This activity, in a module that teaches how to use styles in Microsoft Word, aims to establish relevance of the topic.

Engaging the learner
The next step in the module is to demonstrate just how much time can be saved by using Word styles.

Explain and demonstrate
Your next step is to provide a quick overview of the steps in the procedure. It will help the learner if you present the big picture before going into detail.
Then explain or demonstrate the procedure step-by-step, explaining any special rules that need to be followed at each step.
Demonstrating 1
Here the five steps in the procedure are presented one at a time using simple animations and text. This is followed by a simple tabular summary, which could also serve as a job aid.

Demonstrating 2
In this example, screencasts are used to present each step. Again, the key points are also summarised in simple tablular form.

Provide an opportunity for safe practice

It’s one thing to understand a procedure. It’s quite another to be able to put it into practice. It takes time to turn knowledge into skill and it’s unlikely that your tutorial will do much more than kick-start this process. It’s your job to provide the learner with the opportunity to take their first step, with a simple yet challenging activity which mirrors the real world as closely as possible.
With a complex procedure, you may want to provide a practice activity at each step. In this case, it’s likely that you’ll cover each step in a separate tutorial. Don’t forget to bring the whole procedure together at the end, as in real life steps are not carried out in isolation.

Providing an opportunity for practice
This drag and drop activity requires the learner to place the steps in the procedure into sequence. This is still not checking for the ability to apply the skill, so another activity will be needed which has the learner carry out a task using this knowledge.

One of the ways that you can provide practice opportunities is using learning scenarios. For more information, see Onlignment’s Practical guide to creating learning scenarios.

Point to the next step

A how-to tutorial is the first step in learning a new skill. In many cases the learner will be able to take things on from there on their own, but where the skills require a great deal more safe practice before they are applied on-the-job, you may find you have to organise further practice opportunities using simulations, role plays and workshop activities.
That concludes this Practical Guide. It is now also available as a PDF download.
Next up: A practical guide to creating quizzes.