We are pleased to tell you about some significant changes we’ve made to the VISION Basic workshop.

As you may know, the current course, like all other VISION courses, is presented in the “instructor led” (synchronous) format, either in person or virtually. The objectives for the first several hours of the course address mostly basic, conceptual information presented with PowerPoint slides. The remainder of course is mostly hands-on, oriented around a set of exercises that collectively address the core VISION functions in the A-D-D-I-E sequence. The exercises are “cookbook” style, embedding the sample content to be entered in VISION into explicit, step-by-step instructions.

The goal behind the changes we made was to utilize a more blended learning approach to maximize the use of the instructor and raise the level of the terminal objective to one that more closely corresponds to the VISION user’s real word environment.

Here’s what we did:

We converted to first several hours of conceptual content from instructor led to CBT. Participants will receive the CBT well ahead to the core, instructor led section and complete it on their own. This includes a short test for students to check their work and gain entrance to the remainder of the course.

This approach saves about 2 hours of classroom/instructor time.

The hands on exercise part of the course is essentially the same as now. Participants complete the exercises on their own as part of the course, with occasional instructor interventions (to present supporting objectives at the appropriate points) and assistance as needed.

We’ve added an entire additional exercise to complete during the last two hours of the course. But this exercise is different in that the material to be entered is provided in more realistic forms, as if by or with a SME, rather than in the context of a step-by-step guide. The idea is to challenge the participants to apply what they learned in the step-by-step exercises to enter content and produce outcomes in a setting more like the setting they encounter on the job.

The new and more realistic exercise may be set for each student to perform on his/her own, or to be completed on small teams. The approach will depend on the class size and other factors. But either way, we’re pretty sure that this course will be more effective, and may even be of value for users who have already completed the original version of VISION Basic.