Designing SOPs for learners
Click to enlarge image.
My colleague Keltie Cameron-Choi and I wanted to design a Standard Operating Procedure that fosters learning, specifically retention (remembering the steps) and transfer (applying the steps in new situations). The premise is that learners who understand SOPs are better equipped to apply the instructions appropriately and find new opportunities for improvement. We dove into the cognitive science literature, looked for practical, evidence-based solutions and re-emerged with an SOP redesign that looks completely different from the ones most of us use. Our redesign is stripped of familiar conventions like a table of contents, or a list of reagents, or notes and subnotes throughout the document, which often interfere with learning the procedure. But it does have pictures. Pictures combined with words do support learning. And, in case you are wondering, the SOP redesign still complies with good documentation practices.
This poster, which depicts a before and after SOP, and the list of evidence-based cognitive principles that informed the redesign, was presented this month at the AABB Annual Meeting and sums up our findings so far. But we ran out of handouts! So, we are making them available here in the hopes that they will help you design better SOPs.
This work is synthesized from studies by Richard E. Mayer, Jeroen J. G. von Merrienboer, John Sweller, Ruth Colvin Clark and many other cognitive researchers and practitioners exploring how people learn from words and pictures. Any errors in interpretation are ours alone. Kristina Vanderwoude drew the cartoons. (One of the benefits of projects like this is discovering the latent talents of your co-workers.) Finally, do note that the SOPs depicted in the poster are purely fictitious and are not implemented in any workplace, including our own.
Staff are trained to follow SOPs. Why not help them do so as efficiently and effectively as possible? Do let us know how your SOPs turn out.
Download
Designing SOPs for Learners poster (pdf, letter-size, 2.06 MB)
Cognitive Principles Checklst (pdf, postcard-size, front and back, 3.15 MB)
31 Oct 2007
