Perhaps you are an educator who has dabbled a bit with curriculum work. Or perhaps you are an instructional designer who develops curriculum professionally every day. Imagine that you have been lured into an exciting curriculum development project, for a learner group whose culture, environment, or educational history are different from your own. Perhaps very different.

Once you become aware of just how different this learner group could be, you might default to one of two knee-jerk approaches: you might a) feel so intimidated at the task before you that you bow out of the project altogether; or b) just move ahead with the project, utilizing your usual templates and checklists. But if you choose either approach, you might miss out on a wonderful opportunity for professional development. Developing great learning experiences -- especially for such unfamiliar situations -- is a complex, holistic undertaking, requiring as much intuition as it does skill and knowledge. What's the best way to begin your curriculum planning when faced with unfamiliar learners and/or unfamiliar learning environments?

Ask good questions, and lots of them.

This guide to planning a training curriculum is mostly just a series of questions. It is an attempt to organize for you a collection of good questions. Whenever your work pulls you into unfamiliar territory, ask all the questions you can, listen carefully, take notes, and – with the answers you get – you can move your project forward with greater confidence and on a firm foundation.

• Foreword
• Where do you start??
• Looking at the Learner:
  • Adult Learner Audiences
  • Learner Analysis
• Looking at the Environment:
  • Learning Environment Analysis
  • Trainer Profile
• Looking at the Content:
  • Training Strategies
  • Content and Curriculum
  • Resources
• Evaluation
• Building your Curriculum
• Afterword

Next page -->