Scope & Sequence

Building New Hire Curriculum

The starting point to building effective curriculum is identifying scope and sequence so curriculum remains focused and organized. Think about starting a new job: Legal requires compliance training, privacy training…the list goes on. Facilities needs to issues badges, laptops, workspaces, parking permits, and safety training. And HR requires tax documents, health care, emergency contacts, etc. Learning science shows the brain can only absorb so much information in a day—cognitive load. So my approach to foundational learning is to keep it simple. Below is my step-by-step thinking to building curriculum accompanied by a concrete example—a glidepath for a customer service new hire training program (all examples have been sanitized of identifying information):

What are the core competencies and capabilities the new hire needs to master to perform their role? This is the scope.

Now that I have scope and sequence, I can be more granular with the competencies.

Each competency is a course, so what modules (lessons) are needed to teach this competency? This is chunking out a competency into small, bite size pieces. Short and sweet is key.