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We've all been there before, that moment during a course when you think, "Why do I need to know this?" Or worse still, "Why am I here?" (The last one is especially bad when you're the one facilitating the session!). So what has gone so badly wrong that we find ourselves at this point? In the course, not in our lives. There could be myriad complex answers to the latter which are beyond the scope of my analytical abilities.

What's likely to have happened is at some point during the course design process, the person designing the course forgot about one crucial part of learning, the learner! This may sound ridiculous to some, but it is both an easy and common trap to fall in to. As the design process progresses it's so easy to get caught up in the various topics and themes that you could cover. You may have brainstormed all the different, incredible activities that you could incorporate in to the learner' s experience. You may want to explore some new digital enhancements to learning and collaboration. It might be that you've got one go-to activity which always works and always sets you up for success, your ace in your pocket. You could be experiencing interference and pressure from your manager, or even higher up, telling you what you need to include from a business perspective regardless of how disjointed and irrelevant this might be for this particular course.

But somewhere amongst all of this we forget the learner. We forget to ask what they are here to learn, what they need to know, and even more importantly, what they need to be able to do as a result of attending. What is the purpose of this learning? What is the learning need we've established that we need to address with this course?

So what can we do to combat this loss of focus on the learner?

One way to tackle this is through establishing a clear, pedagogically sound, learner journey. The learner journey can be pictorally represented as a map of the course showing the learner not only where they are going and where they've already been, but also clearly demonstrating how what they are learning now fits in to the big picture, the holistic view of the course. The map should be aligned with the learning objectives and outcomes, with these clearly signposted and referenced throughout. From here they can track their progress through the course, understanding the relevance of everything they are asked to do and how the course flows.

Every course should have a flow to it, a gradual natural progression where concepts, skills and behaviours are introduced and then further elaborated on before being applied to practical situations and scenarios and then revisited and reinforced.

The learner journey is a critical element of purely digital learning as learners often aren't able to interact immediately with the facilitator to ask why this is relevant, and often if they don't get it, or it feels disjointed and out of place they will just ignore it, or stop all together.

But just because the learner is sat in the same room doesn't necessarily mean that they know any more than their online counterparts when it comes to the flow of the course or why they should be learning something.

The creation of a clear learner journey and map of the course which incorporates the learners path through any skill building and knowledge acquisition and which is aligned with and signposts the learning objectives and outcomes is a great tool to make sure your course design stays true and relevant to the needs of your business and your learners. Once the design is complete and you share the materials with your learners, the learner journey and course map will provide them with a clear overview of their own journey of exploration and discovery as they progress through your course.