Imagine two onboarding courses for new sales reps.
The first walks learners through 180 PowerPoint slides covering products, pricing, company history, and competitive differentiators. By the end, learners can probably pass a multiple-choice quiz on product features.
The second looks very different.
From day one, learners are placed in realistic customer conversations. They need to identify customer needs, recommend solutions, respond to objections, and make decisions based on incomplete information. They're not just learning about the product - they're practising what they'll actually do on the job.
Which course better prepares someone for their first sales call?
Most instructional designers would choose the second.
Yet many eLearning experiences still look a lot like the first.
The Content Coverage Trap
One of the biggest challenges in workplace learning is that we're often handed content, not performance problems.
A subject matter expert shares a slide deck. A compliance team provides a policy document. A business leader asks for training on a new process.
The natural instinct is to ask:
How do we turn this into a course?
But that's often the wrong starting point.
When we begin with content, we tend to optimize for coverage. We worry about whether every policy, process step, or product feature has been included. Success becomes measured by whether learners have been exposed to the information.
The problem is that exposure doesn't guarantee performance.
Most jobs don't require people to recall information in isolation. They require people to make decisions, solve problems, navigate ambiguity, and take action.
That's why high-performing eLearning starts somewhere else entirely.
It starts with the desired performance.
Start With the End in Mind
This idea isn't new.
In their influential work on Backward Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe argued that learning experiences should begin with the outcomes learners are expected to achieve, not the content educators want to cover.
For workplace learning, that means identifying the behaviours that matter.
Not:
- Understand the cybersecurity policy
- Know the product portfolio
- Learn the customer service process
But:
- Recognise and report phishing attempts
- Recommend the right solution to a customer
- Resolve customer issues according to company standards
The difference may seem subtle, but it fundamentally changes how a learning experience is designed.
Once you define the behaviour, you can work backwards.
What decisions will learners need to make?
What situations will they encounter?
What mistakes are most likely?
What practice opportunities should they have before they're expected to perform on their own?
What the Research Says
Research continues to support this approach.
A 2024 review of constructive scaffolding - the principle that learning objectives, activities, and assessments should be aligned and build on each other - found strong evidence that alignment improves learning outcomes. When learners practise the same kinds of thinking and actions they'll be assessed on, learning becomes more meaningful and more transferable.
While the paper focuses on educational settings, the implications for workplace learning are clear: when objectives, practice, and assessment all point toward the same performance outcome, learners are more likely to apply what they've learned.
This aligns with decades of research on transfer. People learn more effectively when training mirrors the situations in which knowledge will eventually be used.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Let's go back to our sales onboarding example.
A content-first approach might include:
- Product specifications
- Pricing tables
- Competitive comparisons
- Company history
- Feature lists
A performance-first approach asks a different question:
What does a successful sales rep actually do?
The answer probably looks something like this:
- Diagnoses customer needs
- Asks effective questions
- Connects product capabilities to business problems
- Handles objections confidently
- Recommends appropriate solutions
Those become the foundation of the learning experience.
Product knowledge still matters. But it's taught in service of performance rather than as an end in itself.
The goal isn't to create a learner who can recite information.
It's to create a learner who can use it.
A Better Design Question
Before you write a learning objective, storyboard a scenario, or open your authoring tool, pause and ask:
What decision should learners make differently tomorrow?
It's a deceptively simple question.
But it shifts the focus from content to performance - and that's where high-performing eLearning begins.
Principle 2: Manage Cognitive Load So Learners Can Think
