CHAPTER 9
CLICS in Design and Development
Because the overall goal of CLICS is to maximize sustained individual learning in an organizational context, the process of design and development is a natural extension of analysis. When initially examining the learning challenge during the needs analysis, the application of CLICS centers around clarifying the requirements of the request, while taking into account specific needs and characteristics of the target learner population and the environment in which they work.
The early stages of discussion are about defining the what of the solution—the scope and scale. The purpose of analysis is to press your stakeholders on what they are really looking to accomplish with their request and who is really necessary to achieving it. The intent is to zero in on those elements that are essential, not exhaustive—what is absolutely necessary to achieve the desired outcomes while accounting for what learners need to learn.
After defining an accurate scale of the desired solution, you are ready to apply the same considerations of CLICS to design a solution that achieves your stakeholder objectives while also serving the learner. Discovering how to close the gap between the reality of the stakeholder requirements and the needs of the learners is what makes CLICS a learner-centered framework grounded in design thinking.
The principles of CLICS hold true regardless of the particular instructional systems design (ISD) methodology your organization may use, such as:
• ADDIE
• Agile/Successive Approximation Model (SAM)
• ARCS
• ASSURE
• Owens-Kadakia Learning Cluster Design (OK-LCD)
The key is applying your understanding of the learner and their environment through the lens of your stakeholders’ desired outcomes. In the next sections, we examine how the domains of CLICS—Capacity, Layering, Intrinsic enablers, Coherence, and Social connections—can influence and shape your solution design.
How to Integrate Capacity When Designing Solutions
The Capacity domain of CLICS focuses on the cognitive capacity and resources needed to meaningfully process information. When we are confronted with too much at one time, our brain’s ability to process the input ceases because it is overloaded. Additionally, we do not tend to learn new information in a single encounter.
During the analysis phase, you likely landed on a certain volume of information that learners will need to process as part of the potential solution. The challenge in the next phase of solution development is to consider that body of information and how best to present it to the learners so it will set them up for success. A strong design will avoid overloading learners’ cognitive capacity and maximize the likelihood that they will process and remember what you’re asking them to learn.
To this end, try using these techniques when designing your solution:
• Chunking and spacing
• Mnemonic devices
• Operations calendar timing
Chunking and Spacing
Chunking and spacing techniques focus on how to best structure the content of the learning solution to account for learners’ needs. Chunking refers to combining relevant information into blocks that are easier to absorb.
For example, you could design some microlearning content that takes no more than 10–15 minutes to introduce a concept, contextualize it in practice, and offer instructions for applying it on the job. You could also include activities, such as reflection periods, where learners are presented with a concept and an application activity, followed by a period where they are asked to reflect on the outcome or to identify situations that parallel the new behavior in their day-to-day life.
Mnemonic Devices
Mnemonic devices aid in the retention and retrieval of information from memory and can include such things as acronyms, models, images, infographics, and rhyming devices. In designing your solutions, look for sticky, memorable, visual ways to represent your content. Mnemonic devices support Capacity as they reduce the cognitive load needed by the learner to process and recall the relevant content.
Operations Calendar
The operations calendar is less of a direct design device than it is a planning device when thinking through the scheduling and launch of your solutions. Regarding Capacity, it is critical to take into account the other enterprise and role-specific activities your learners may be facing when you want to deploy your learning programs. For example, launching sales training at the end of a sales period is likely to result in no one completing the activities, or doing so with a minimum of attention while they are focused on doing their jobs. Taking things like this into account when planning can go a long way to successful learning solution design when thinking through structural components and timing of design elements in complex and extended learning journeys.
How to Integrate Layering When Designing Solutions
The Layering domain of CLICS focuses on the necessary sequencing of the concepts contained within the solution and how that solution then conceptually builds from and to other learning elements the learners need to know as part of a longer learning journey. This requires becoming familiar with the learners’ job roles, learning paths, or curricula. Ultimately, it comes down to integrating any broader constructs that will help you determine how building blocks will come together and how the flow of information will be presented so the learners can make sense of the new information.
Layering analysis often results in a recommended list of topics or objectives that surround the new behaviors and skills for the learner needs. It typically reveals role-specific behaviors and skills learners either already have or will need to learn in the future. This list then would be sequenced into a logical and necessary order such that each concept builds on the ones before and lays the groundwork for those that come after.
To this end, these are two techniques to employ when designing the solution:
• Context mapping
• Deliberate practice and repetitious exposure
Context Mapping
The context mapping technique shows up in the design of the learning solution as a concept flow that identifies the dependencies between concepts. This mapping usually shows up in high-level and detailed design documents as a means of keeping the necessary sequencing of learning objectives and associated concepts. Additionally, high-level designs should identify other learning elements aligned to relevant learner populations, which are in turn used to place the solution where appropriate in that broader path or curriculum for learners.
Deliberate Practice and Repetitious Exposure
Deliberate practice and repetitious exposure address the challenge that learning does not happen through single exposure to concepts. Learning happens over time as learners have opportunities to practice and fail, reflect, practice and get it right, reflect, and repeat. This technique tends to show up in design as the intentional inclusion of repeated opportunities for application of the relevant behaviors, opportunities for feedback, and access to role models to envision the desired behaviors.
How to Integrate Intrinsic Enablers When Designing Solutions
The Intrinsic enablers domain of CLICS focuses on understanding what about the requested solution will appeal to the learners. This requires understanding the learners’ current state versus future state and how closing that gap might be appealing to them. Additionally, the workplace considerations for this domain require connecting the learner value proposition to an understanding of what must exist in the environment to support and reinforce the solution.
The needs analysis should yield information about the pertinent learner population and what they will potentially find motivating and valuable. Creating a successful solution then becomes a design exercise that focuses the learners on the value of learning the new behaviors and skills. Learners will feel intrinsically motivated when something makes them feel more competent and connected, or offers a greater sense of autonomy. Think of it as flipping the switch so that learners want to learn (they are pulled) rather than feel like they have to learn (they are pushed); it is finding out how to ignite the learners’ engagement or passion.
To this end, some design techniques to employ include leveraging intrinsic and extrinsic motivational approaches through:
• Communications
• Points or rewards
• Experiential activities
These techniques can be leveraged both in the formal content and the marketing and rollout of the new solution.
Communications
While communications are not usually a part of the formal learning content, they can serve as a powerful tool to drive learner engagement and motivation when used appropriately. Expanding on traditional logistical communications, this technique is all about the thoughtful inclusion of messaging and positioning of essential points intended to nudge, encourage, explain, position, and highlight the motivating factors that will appeal to the learner.
Points or Rewards
Points or rewards can be used as reinforcements to motivate learners. These typically surface as badges or leaderboards, providing a sense of confidence and competence when they are completed, as well as bursts of motivation on learning journeys to stay on the path to completion. They can be either public or private.
Experiential Activities
Using experiential activities can build in complexity and enable small successes to grow to large successes, helping learners develop greater confidence in their competence and drive their intrinsic motivation to see the learning experience through to the end. An example of experiential learning would be interactive role-playing with feedback or a collaborative simulation where behaviors and knowledge are applied in action as a practice activity. Both provide an opportunity to actively apply concepts while getting a sense of what works and what doesn’t.
How to Integrate Coherence When Designing Solutions
The Coherence domain of CLICS focuses on understanding if the solution’s concepts make sense with each other, and how and if the solution as a whole fits with existing behaviors and within the current operating environment.
The needs analysis of Coherence helps to define just how large a cognitive or behavioral gap the learner will need to close to successfully learn and adopt the behaviors and understanding defined as part of the solution.
Here are some techniques to employ when designing a coherent solution:
• Draw parallels to existing understanding
• Promote cognitive and visual fluency
Draw Parallels to Existing Understanding
Drawing parallels in a learning solution design creates a cognitive contextual map that learners can use to build the associated networks necessary to integrate new information. This directly connects concepts that the learner already understands to the new behaviors. Additionally, this technique, when employed properly in your learning designs, can also aid the Capacity domain by minimizing the cognitive load requirements on learners to assimilate the introduced concepts.
For example, when you are introducing new behaviors or concepts in your design, be sure to include examples of how the behavior compares to current behaviors. With new concepts, you can explain how that concept is related to, builds on, or extends some information learners already know. This is particularly useful in software application training, where you may be teaching a new procedure. When explaining how that procedure works, relate it to a procedure the learner is likely to know from past learning interventions, or even earlier in the current learning.
Promote Cognitive and Visual Fluency
Cognitive and visual fluency serves double duty, aiding both Coherence and Capacity requirements. It has to do specifically with how simply and attractively you can convey concepts and behavioral goals and objectives (minimize cognitive dissonance) while also minimizing the amount of cognitive load on your learners.
An example of cognitive and visual fluency would be laying out very technical details and statistics in an attractively designed infographic that tells the learner a visual story. This presentation is likely to make much more sense, and be far more memorable, than a table of raw data. It’s the difference between a text filled with numbers versus an attractive looking pie chart or scatter plot with key points highlighted to show the learner where to focus.
How to Integrate Social Connections When Designing Solutions
The Social connections domain of CLICS focuses on how new behaviors will be supported and reinforced by others in the environment surrounding the learners.
The needs analysis considerations for this domain should provide a solid understanding of what good performance looks like. A useful analysis should also identify what support will exist within the environment to provide feedback and reinforcement. This might include peers, experts, or managers and leaders equipped to act as both role models and coaches to reinforce the learning of the solution.
To this end, some techniques to employ when designing the solution include activating or tapping into the social network of behavioral learning via:
• Feedback and modeling
• Performance support
Each of these can show up in the learning design of a solution as tangible learning activities or resources.
Feedback and Modeling
With the feedback and modeling technique, the goal is to incorporate identified networks of learners, role models, and experts into the design of your learning solution, alongside the practice and repetition activities (from the Layering domain). The desired outcome is that learners will have access to feedback from others who can observe their demonstration of the relevant behaviors in action to understand if they are getting it or not. Additionally, being able to observe role models can provide valuable context and examples of what good looks like to guide the learners’ own demonstration of the behaviors at the relevant points.
Performance Support
In addition to the formal learning experience that you design around requested learning solutions, we now understand how equally important access to support information is in the flow of work. This will typically show up in learning designs as microlearning practice activities or knowledge nuggets assigned at regular intervals following a more formal learning program. These microbursts of learning are aimed at sustaining the desired behaviors and skills. Another support resource would be videos of relevant behaviors being performed depending on what the behaviors might be.
Looking Ahead
CLICS is applicable no matter what approach your organization chooses to use in serving your learners. The popular instructional design methodologies in use today, such as ADDIE, SAM, and Agile, focus on the design methods rather than the content that should be included in the solution. While there are steps and tasks related to creating learning objectives, they do not tell you how to define learning objectives. The power of design thinking, and by extension CLICS, enables a more human-centered approach to learning.
Specifically, these are the key principles of strong analysis that lead to strong design and development:
• Focusing on the learner first
• Leveraging behavioral science insights to shape how we approach learning
• Guiding business leaders to make more human-centric decisions and plans
• Increasing the likelihood of learning that lasts through science-based analysis