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Learning Design Patterns

Design training that changes what people do.

Methods for designing training and onboarding that actually change how people work, for trainers, learning designers and managers who teach. The cards start by checking whether training is the right fix, then cover objectives, explaining without overload, effortful practice, spacing and retrieval, feedback, choosing formats and evaluating results. Every card rests on findings from cognitive and educational psychology.

56 cards · 8 suits · 5 recipes · 2 missions

What's inside

• Diagnose7Is training really the fix here?
• Objectives7Can you say what people will be able to do?
• Explain7Are you explaining without overloading the mind?
• Practice7Do learners practise the real thing, with effort?
• Remember7Will they still remember it next month?
• Feedback7Does feedback show learners what to do next?
• Formats7Have you chosen a format that fits the job?
• Transfer and Evaluate7Has the work actually changed afterwards?

A few cards

Diagnose

Is It A Training Problem

Train only when people can't do it, not when something stops them.

Explain

Working Memory Limits

Introduce only a few new elements at a time, because novices can hold very little at once.

Remember

Spaced Repetition

Return to the material across growing gaps, because one dose fades fast.

One card in full

Formats

Blended Journey

Combine self-paced, live and on-the-job learning over several weeks, each used for what it does best.

"Blended" often means a live session plus some optional videos nobody watches. A real blend assigns each part of the learning to the format that suits it: self-paced for information and early practice, live for discussion and feedback, and the job itself for applying the skill. The parts are sequenced, not stacked.

How to use it

1. List the objectives and, for each, the activity that will build it.
2. Assign each activity a home: self-paced (reading, worked examples, quizzes), live (discussion, role play, feedback) or on the job (real tasks with support).
3. Sequence them over several weeks so each live session follows self-paced prep and is followed by on-the-job practice.
4. Link the parts explicitly: each live session starts from what people did on the job.
5. Give one person ownership of the whole journey, not just the sessions.

Example

A hypothetical retailer trains new store managers over six weeks: short online modules on rota rules, a weekly video call to work through real rota problems, and a task each week to build part of their own store's rota with a mentor's check.

Watch out

• Treating blending as delivery logistics. Each format needs a job only it does well.
• Overloading self-paced parts. If it takes hours, people skip it.

Live parts often run as a Flipped Session; the whole fits a Cohort Programme and should end with Manager Follow-Through.

Recipes

• Beat The Forgetting: Make recall the default activity, come back to it over growing gaps, mix similar problem types, keep prompting after the course and show learners why rereading fools them.
• Ninety-Day Onboarding: Map the jobs a newcomer must do, sequence them over ninety days, spread the learning in short doses, mix self-paced, live and real work, involve the manager and check what they can do.
• One Session, Built Right: Write an objective you can observe, prime attention with questions, teach by showing solved examples, hand over the steps gradually, make people recall and explain every answer.
• Prove It Changed The Work: Decide the evidence before the activities, plan evaluation from results down, ask learners useful questions, plan how the skill reaches the job, check behaviour later and test small before rolling out.
• Training Or Not: Check whether people truly cannot do the task, describe the gap in behaviour, try a checklist first, map the actions that matter and keep in the course only what must be known by heart.

Missions

• Rescue a course that changes nothing: from a slide-heavy course with good ratings and no change at work to a redesign that swaps content for practice, adds spaced follow-up and a manager hand-off, and measures behaviour.
• Turn a training request into a design: from "we need a course on X" to a one-page design with the performance gap, observable objectives, a practice and spacing plan, the format and how you'll evaluate it.

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