Thinking of Redesigning Your Course? Start With These Questions
David (Stakeholder):
“Please change the e-learnings from our LMS. They are redundant.”
John (Head of Learning Design):
“Sure, let me take a look.”
[Later that week…]
John:
“Hi David, I went through the e-learnings. You’re right, they're a bit outdated, and the visuals could use a refresh. I’ll pull a team together to start redesigning them”
David: “Perfect, thank you!”
This is a fictional story. However, if you’ve worked in Learning Experience Design (LXD) long enough, you’ve probably seen something like it.
At first glance, it seems like everything went right, doesn’t it?
✅ The stakeholder raised a concern.
✅ The head of design heard.
✅ Action was taken. Everyone’s happy.
But let me ask you this:
👉 Is there another way John could have approached the situation?
👉 Do you notice anything missing?
👉 Does the solution actually solve the right problem?
Sometimes, in our eagerness to be responsive or win business, we jump straight into execution without fully understanding the real problem.
But...
🤔 What if the issue isn’t the visuals?
🤔 What if the course looks outdated yet achieves its objectives?
🤔 What if it looks great but fails to drive any meaningful behaviour change?
If I were leading the response to that stakeholder's request, I wouldn’t jump straight into redesigning. I would pause and ask:
🔎 What is the business goal behind this learning experience?
🔎 What behaviour are we trying to change or reinforce?
🔎 What are the actual learning objectives?
🔎 How did learners react to the course (did they find it useful, engaging, or just… boring)?
These questions aren’t just good practice. They’re part of a robust evaluation strategy known as the Kirkpatrick Model.
This four-level framework helps instructional designers and learning professionals evaluate and improve training programs in a meaningful way.
Guided by these questions, I would:
💡 Go to the LMS to check course data:
Completion rates
Quiz results
Time spent on modules
Feedback comments
💡 Review the course objectives:
Were they clear, relevant, and measurable?
💡 Speak to managers and team leads:
Have they observed any performance change?
Are learners applying what they’ve learned?
💡 Observe the workplace (if possible):
Are behaviors aligned with what the course intended to teach?
💡 Check whether the business goal has been met:
If the goal was to reduce errors, did error rates drop?
If it was to improve safety, has incident reporting changed?
Only after collecting and interpreting this data would I go back to the stakeholder:
“You're right, the course seems outdated. I used the Kirkpatrick Model to evaluate it across four levels: reaction, learning, behavior, and results. Here's what I found…”
✅ Reactions were positive (learners found it engaging.)
✅ Knowledge retention was decent (based on quiz scores.)
❎ But behavior change didn’t occur (the on-the-job application was lacking.)
❎ Business goals weren’t met (despite high satisfaction scores.)
This insight shifts the conversation from “Let’s redesign this because it looks old” to:
“Let’s redesign this so it actually works.”
🚘 Redesigning for aesthetics alone is like repainting a car that won’t start.
🧑💼 As instructional designers, our job isn’t just to make content “better looking”, it’s to make it effective.
📊 Using the Kirkpatrick Model ensures we’re not just reacting to surface-level feedback, but making decisions grounded in data, aligned with business outcomes, and focused on real impact.
So the next time someone says, “This course feels redundant,” ask yourself:
Is it really? Or is there something deeper we need to understand first?
