Instructional Design With Learning Battle Cards

Knowing the cards for what they were, I set out to give them a try. As it happened, from October last year I have been conducting Instructional Design classes at two colleges. That presented an opportunity for an acid test of the cards with two distinct groups of students: Full-time language students and postgraduate students during a weekend session.

The cards, along with an eBook laying out a recommended methodology, worked miracles. Grouped into small teams, the students were able to propose the whole training process, selecting appropriate methods of analysis, delivery, and, finally, evaluation. The whole process appeared very natural, and parameters available on the cards made it possible for every team to estimate the cost of a training program, its time frame, and even setting up a reasonable schedule.

I was listening attentively to all the discussions taking place. What struck me was how the students would compare parameters on the cards and use those parameters as arguments in discussions leading to the selection of the most effective training method. From my point of view, this constitutes an immense value of the cards as a training tool, but it has to be noted that the cards are not to be used in their entirety (108 items) with beginner groups and without a thorough discussion of the methods outlined on them.

In the case of beginner groups the sheer wealth of the cards might raise a multitude of questions about all the respective methods. This could be pre-empted by discussing each and every card, but such a class would be dead boring in my opinion. Another way would be to preselect cards and use only those that would be self-explanatory to students. This is what I am going to do next time.

Another observation I made was that using the cards definitely requires the trainer to build an explicit scenario as merely looking at and talking about them will not yield much effect.