Action Mapping in Action

Probably about a year ago, someone directed me to have a look at Cathy Moore's "Action Mapping" concept, and it was like a huge lightbulb turned on over my head!

I immediately wanted to re-design everything I'd ever developed as an instructional designer & make sure that I followed this plan - of course, that wasn't feasible - but I was able to implement it in my next project.  That project has been done for a while now, and I'm now working on other things, but I thought I might share our process with you while it's still at least somewhat fresh in my mind (since I'm still trying to do it in all my projects!).

If you're not familiar with the action mapping concept, please go check it out, I'll be here when you get back! 


Cathy Moore's "Action Mapping"





Alright, now that you know what I'm talking about, let's walk through how we implemented it!

First, we had to determine what our goal was:
Effective da Vinci First Assistants: patient-side assistants for da Vinci surgery who positively contribute to the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the procedure (measurable with procedure metrics already collected).  This should hopefully lead to better patient outcomes & experience, which is our overall company goal.






Here comes the good part:

Next, we had to figure out what effect da Vinci First Assistants actually do!  Not what they "need to know."  This of course required some SMEs.  Our customer training team works with first assistants and surgeons all the time, and one of them used to be a first assistant, so along with our surgeon consultants, we could get what we needed.  We had to really distill things down with them to come up with activities/actions, not just information.  I think we ended up with good stuff.


For each of those actions/activities, we tried come up with a practice activity.  Now, limitations of the tools and timeframe could impact this step, so here's a tip: focus on the highest priority activities!  



We knew where our materials would fit into the training pathway that da Vinci First Assistants go through, and that we didn't have time to fit it into other pieces of that pathway, so out of our available delivery methods, we decided we'd deliver via our online community as an online module.  

My team member & I designed some interactions where the learners would make similar decisions to those they make in real situations, and provided lots of "pull" opportunities for more information about how to make those decisions.

Since this was sort of an introduction to the role, there was a lot of information to share, but we focused on pointing out what was specifically relevant to the da Vinci First Assistant, and added links to additional information.

Where it seemed helpful, we provided video clips of completing the action or decision in a real situation.














We got good reviews from our testers and pilot users - now to see if we can eek out some evaluation time... ;) And on to the next project, where we try to integrate this philosophy even more fully!


Please let me know if you have any questions, and thanks @CatMoore for pointing us in the right direction! :)