TIM WOODLearning technologist
Portfolio  /  Safety qualification redesign
CourseWork sample · instructional design · client anonymized

Every objective in it started with identify or outline.

The mandatory safety qualification for field service engineers at a medical device manufacturer. Lethal current, ionizing radiation, stored energy, chemicals in hospitals. Nobody who passed it had ever been asked to make a decision.

5 of 5objectives asked only to identify
10 of 12exam questions tested recall
83%score after missing every behaviour item
83%, and qualified.
01 / What was wrongthe objectives

A qualification that could not tell a safe technician from a careful reader.

A performance objective needs three things. The condition you are in, an action somebody can watch you do, and the standard it has to meet. All five opened with identify or outline, and not one named a condition.

Nothing asked for execution, so nobody taking it ever made a safety decision. Rewriting the verbs would not have fixed that. The objectives were an accurate description of a course that certifies you were shown some information, and the qualification exists to certify something else.

What an objective needs
A condition
An action you can watch
A standard to meet All five: identify or outline
02 / The prooftwelve questions, pass mark 70%

So I scored the live exam.

Arguing from objectives gets you a conversation about what somebody intended, and you lose it. Twelve questions, pass mark seventy percent.

THE 12 SCORED QUESTIONS 10 × recall or symbol recognition 2 × behaviour MISS BOTH BEHAVIOUR QUESTIONS 10 of 12 correct · 83% 70% PASS MARK PASS
A technician could miss every question that tested a behaviour and still qualify, comfortably. The exam was not broken. It measured exactly what the objectives asked for, which is why fixing the exam alone would not have worked.
03 / See the differencetwo playable screens

Two screens. Same facts, same five minutes.

Built from scratch for this page, in a different hazard domain. The first asks whether you read the table. The second puts you in a service call where somebody qualified has already isolated the circuit, his lock is on the breaker, and the line has been down two hours.

Pick the answer that sounds right and find out what it costs. Three of the four options contain true statements about lockout. The one most people choose is the one a recall exam would have marked correct.

The after: a service call work order, with an expired energized work permit shown for four seconds. The after. Read the last line.
04 / The argument that moves itBloom vs Kirkpatrick

Two ways to say what is wrong. Only one gets funded.

Bloom · the verb

Identify sits at the bottom

Remember and understand, where identify and outline live. Deciding under conditions sits up at apply. Put it this way and somebody hands you the cheap fix: rewrite the verbs, leave the assessment alone.

Kirkpatrick · the claim

A Level 3 promise on Level 2 evidence

The exam reaches Level 2, meaning somebody acquired knowledge. The qualification exists to put people onto live equipment, which is a claim about what they do on the job. The gap between those is what gets called certification.

A verb problem sounds like editing. A promise the assessment cannot support is a governance problem, and in regulated work that is the difference between a note in a review and a budget.

Underneath both is the part recall cannot reach. Every fact in that course is true. What is missing is knowing when a rule applies, which is not the same as knowing the rule.

05 / What I changedthree legs

Keep the record. Move the passing to decisions.

Compliance needs a record that training was presented and passed. Arguing with that wastes the meeting, so the redesign keeps it.

Leg 1

A slim rules module

Seven screens, five tracked minutes, required first. Every rule in one grammar: when this is true, do this, to this standard. Wording taken verbatim from approved content, so nothing new needs legal review.

Leg 2

A scenario gateway

One continuous service call. Six decisions inside the pressure of a workday, each followed by a policy check. Twelve scored items, same length as the old exam. Pass is 12 of 12.

Leg 3

A field reference card

The part that was never a training problem. A mobile checklist for what people look up on site, held as a controlled document rather than taught and forgotten.

Nothing is telegraphedIncidents arrive already rationalized by somebody else, because that is how rules actually get missed. A planted test item teaches people to spot test items.
Scenarios stay inside the ruleAnywhere the written rule leaves something undefined, that becomes a question for a subject matter expert rather than an assumption I made quietly.
Every screen is traceableEach carries a reference to the legacy content it replaces, which answers the question that always comes: you removed content, prove you did not remove coverage.
Where it got toThree clickable prototypes, a storyboard and a traceability map, ready to walk into a meeting with. Eight questions were still open for a subject matter expert and I held authoring until they came back. It did not get delivered before the role ended.

← Back to the portfolio Client and product details anonymized. The analysis and the redesign are the work.

Knowing when a rule applies is not the same as knowing the rule.