Summary: There have been a number of frameworks, learning methodologies and instructional strategies that have been developed by experts in the L&D field in the past decades, with only a few surviving the test of time and remaining relevant. One such framework/methodology that supports every type of Instructional Design is action mapping.
Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping: How Does It Motivate Learners?
Understanding and implementing action mapping will let digital learning designers actually create courses that motivate learners through realistic activities that let them practice learned skills instead of simple presentations that throw information in their faces. But first, let us have a look at the history of action mapping and what it is.
What Is Action Mapping?
Action mapping is a framework/method/process that helps Instructional Designers design business training. It was developed in 2008 by Cathy Moore. It is quite effective in analyzing performance problems, identifying solutions and designing activities that challenge learners and help them practice learned knowledge. It should be understood that action mapping isn’t a framework that lets Instructional Designers design a digital learning course, it is a far broader framework which can, however, let Instructional Designers design activities in their courses that will help learners change habits or learn complex skills. The main goal of action mapping is to let the L&D team of an organization design activities which increase the absorption and retention of knowledge be it in any training format, including digital learning courses. Let us now have a look at how action mapping can motivate learners.
According to Cathy Moore herself, learners are motivated when they feel autonomy, competence as well as relatedness in their training. If Instructional Designers use action mapping effectively, they’ll automatically create training activities that instill all these feelings inside a learner. But in case they don’t know how to, let us explain how.
1. Autonomy
Autonomy is a simple enough concept and is defined as the freedom to choose things out of one’s own volition without any external pressure. What designers need to bring to their courses is not exactly autonomy, but the “feeling” of autonomy. Make the learner feel that they are making the choices and not that someone is telling them what to do or think. This can be done using scenarios with authentic choices in your digital learning course, showing them the consequences of their choices whether good or bad using branching scenarios, offering learners resources for further studying on subjects and skills being taught and providing learners with clear goals in every interactivity, microlearning module or module you give them.
2. Competence
Learners need to feel that they are competent enough in order to be motivated to complete their digital learning courses (or training). A course or activity that is too easy or too hard will result in them feeling over-competent or incompetent, both of which are bad. This can be easily remedied by starting with easy activities at the beginning of your course, and then slowly increasing the difficulty level as it happens in games (yes, this is a gamification strategy). Secondly, don’t shame learners for making wrong choices and offer constructive feedback even when they make mistakes. As mentioned before, don’t offer too obvious choices in quizzes, assessments, knowledge checks, or scenarios, they make learners feel like they are wasting their time.
3. Relatedness
Learners need to relate to the content in the digital learning courses in order to feel motivated to complete them. Digital learning courses are getting more and more learner-centric these days in order to engage learners and make them relate to the learning content. Some things designers can do to help learners do that include creating avatars/characters in digital learning courses that can be named and customized according to the learner’s choice, use environments and situations that are similar to their real-life environments and situations at their workplace (but not too much, add an element of imagination too), create activities where learners have to collaborate with their team members to accomplish a goal, as well as writing realistic dialogues and offering realistic choices in the course.
Action mapping will help you perform flawless needs analyses as well as design your training courses in the most effective way possible, leading to highly-motivated, knowledgeable, and productive employees. Make sure your organization’s Instructional Designers and L&D team learn this model as soon as they can.
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FAQs
If you follow every step, the model does all the work, from helping you identify learning roadblocks to motivating learners. Action mapping takes your Instructional Design process from generic to focused, addressing only what needs to be learned and aiming to provide purposeful and impactful knowledge.
What are the advantages of action mapping? ›
Action Mapping offers many advantages for instructional designers and learners alike. It can reduce cognitive overload by eliminating unnecessary content and focusing on actions and challenges. Additionally, it can increase learner motivation and engagement by designing activities that simulate real-world situations.
What are the objectives of action mapping learning? ›
Action mapping encourages a lean approach to training, avoiding unnecessary content and instead prioritizing practical, job-relevant activities and resources that facilitate real-world application (doing) and improved performance results.
What is action mapping? ›
What is action mapping? Action mapping is a streamlined process to design training in the business world. Its goal is to help designers: Commit to measurably improving the performance of the business. Identify the best solution to the performance problem.
Is action mapping an instructional design model? ›
Action Mapping is a streamlined approach to business training developed by Cathy Moore. It's my go-to approach for instructional design projects, and this is mainly because it brings the focus to performance (what people need to do) instead of information (what people "need" to know).
What are the benefits of outcome mapping? ›
Benefits of outcome mapping in project management
- Improved visibility and clarity. ...
- Increased efficiency. ...
- More efficient use of resources. ...
- Better collaboration. ...
- Enhanced adaptability.
The advantage of the mapping method is that it provides a clear visual representation of complex ideas, facilitating easier understanding and retention. The disadvantage is that it can be time-consuming and may not be suitable for information that doesn't lend itself well to hierarchical or graphical representation.
What is the main objective of mapping? ›
The main aim of maps is to show the spatial distribution of natural and cultural features, be they rivers and mountains or cities, political borders, oil spills, and even wilderness areas and language groups. It seems that any phenomenon can be mapped if it can be placed unequivocally in space.
What is the difference between Addie and action mapping? ›
For instance, action mapping has elements that would occur during ADDIE's Analysis stage (i.e. business goals and job behaviors), while other elements would fall under the Design stage (i.e. activities and information).
How do you use action mapping? ›
Action mapping workflow at a glance
- What's your goal? How will the organization benefit?
- What do they need to DO? List & prioritize actions people must take on the job to reach the goal.
- What makes it difficult? Environment? Knowledge? Skill? Motivation?
- What changes will help? Brainstorm all changes, not just training.
Well, if you're new to instructional design or eLearning development, action mapping is a backwards design process created and written about by Cathy Moore in her best-selling book, Map It, as a way to identify specific behaviors your learners need to perform in order to achieve a specific and measurable goal.
What is mapping controls? ›
Control mapping is identifying, documenting, and evaluating the controls in place within an organization to address specific risks or objectives. It involves creating a map or diagram that illustrates the relationships between the various controls and how they work together to achieve the desired outcome.
What is visual mapping technique? ›
What is visual mapping? Visual mapping is an image of an idea — a network of suggestions and options that spreads out from an original word or phrase. Using a main idea and then branching out into smaller, related topics allows people to see complex information in a better, more comprehensive way.
Is concept mapping an active learning strategy? ›
Concept maps are a cross disicplinary active learning technique that help students manage concepts into sub-concepts, synthesize information, see a larger picture and develop higher-order thinking skills and strategies (Lee et al, 2013).
What type of learning is concept mapping? ›
Concept maps have their origin in the learning movement called constructivism. Concept maps identify the way we think, the way we see relationships between knowledge. The teacher who constructs concept maps for classes is interested in students understanding relationships between facts, not just "knowing" the facts.
What is process mapping and what are the advantages of using it? ›
Process mapping creates your business blueprint
Making process more visible across the business. Identifying places for automation and process improvement. Improving communication between departments. Consistency over the way you do things. Removing redundancies and irrelevant process steps.
What are the advantages of image mapping? ›
There are many varied uses for image maps. These maps support creating links in a variety of shapes, so their use can get quite creative; from simply creating actionable links over simple button shapes to more intricate uses, like making the boundaries of different regions on a map into clickable elements.
