Overview

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I designed, developed, and scripted a blended learning environment to help Delta Airlines transition their onboarding program from an in-person live training to an online format. This training reduced the onboarding time for Delta’s reservation specialists from six weeks to two and a half weeks while maintaining quality of new hire performance as assessed by Delta’s internal metrics.

Define

What is the business need?

Delta wished to transition into an online format to reduce the risk of COVID among new hires and to expedite the amount of onboarding time needed if possible.

Who are the learners?

Newly hired reservation specialists at Delta.

What are the learning gaps?

The learners are not familiar with the software, customer service best practices, or company and DOT policies that affect their jobs.

How will we evaluate success?

We determined the success of the training by Delta’s internal metrics for job performance and compared those results to the outcomes of the in-person facilitations it replaced.

Design

Design Challenge

The main challenge we focused on was maintaining the quality of engagement in a virtual environment. To address this, we opted for a blended environment where the training still had the benefit of high engagement with a live facilitator as well as the flexibility of a self-paced web-based training.

Design Thinking Behind the Deliverables

Theories and models I found helpful in designing these courses:

• ADDIE
  • I don’t typically think of ADDIE as a model, but more of a dictionary that’s good to reference to make sure I didn’t miss anything important.
• Kirkpatrick’s Levels
  • I’ve always found this model useful for setting up evaluation.
• Cognitivism
  • Cognitivism is one of the most important aspects to consider with virtual trainings because it’s much more difficult to maintain engagement in a remote environment. This helped us parse out the information into small, manageable pieces that allowed the learner to have an easier time approaching the content.
• Micro-Learning
  • I find this concept especially important in the online space, since learners face a great deal more opportunity for distraction.

Develop

Deliverables

• Blended Learning Environment
  • To combine the flexibility of a self-paced, virtual environment with the engagement of an instructor-led training, we opted for a blended learning environment comprised of a Virtual Instructor-Led Training (vILT) and a web-based training (WBT).

  Tools Used

  • DesignLab: Proprietary tool used to create the web-based trainings
  • PowerPoint: Used to create the presentation materials for the instructors.
  • Word: Used to create the job aids and study materials.

Deliver

Business Impact

The course has reduced Delta’s onboarding time for their reservation specialists by +50% and created a virtual learning experience to fight the battle against COVID. Due to a dedicated and highly collaborative team effort, we were able to deliver this project on-time while using less than 70% of the budget.