Many learning organizations offer similar courses, yet their students report remarkably different experiences and outcomes. How can that be, if the content is identical? The reality is that your course content is just a part of the learning equation. A large component has to do with how the content is framed, contextualized, and then applied. Each ties to the primary mission and vision of your organization.

As your organization decides what it wants to be in the world, and how it wants to make an impact, it must devise its primary mission, that is, the how we will do it component to the overarching what our ideal world looks like question. If you think this sounds a bit utopian, you are right. It does; it is. The best learning organizations want to create a better world, even if that utopia will never actually exist in the real world, and, to get there, they need to determine action steps, which translate to a mission implemented by strategy and tactics, and can be implemented as follows:

• Framework: Think of the framework as the pillars that hold up your mission and vision. Define them. Then, as you do, they will help you create structures and categories of your organization's offerings.
• Contexts: Who do you identify as your main student body? What is your main target? Who are your learners? Where are they? What are their main strengths, abilities, and cultural backgrounds? You will need to define your audience as well as your instructors if you want to have an effective learning organization. You'll also need to have a sense of your learners, the learning environment, and the limiting/enabling technologies in order to sequence your courses, and ensure that they are at the correct level and presented in the right order.
• Application: Engaged students are the ones who are actively working with the content. They are the ones who are focused on being able to do more than simply memorize facts, answer questions, and then forget it all. Application involves invoking experiential learning and connecting to real-world situations and problems. So, as you create your courses and classify them, be sure to think about how it will be possible for your learners to put learning blocks together across the curriculum and prepare themselves to be completely autonomous.

You may think that frameworks, contexts, and application is too much to think about right now. After all, aren't you just putting together a list of courses? Yes and no. The list cannot be properly categorized if you do not know its ultimate purpose, its level, and what you want your students to do with the knowledge. This is particularly the case as you start thinking about ways to build on knowledge and have your students develop knowledge that will have real-world implications.