Instructional
Design Project

Explore my instructional design journey with Partners in Health, focusing on the design and development of a supplier vetting training program.

01. Background

Partners in Health

The mission of the non-profit organization Partners in Health (PIH) is to provide high quality healthcare in developing nations. They collaborate with the governments of eleven different countries to improve public health systems and provide services to people in need.

For PIH’s healthcare facilities, a critical and ongoing challenge is procuring medical supplies. PIH has recently updated their process for vetting suppliers and purchasing safe, ethical, and affordable materials. My team was tasked with creating staff training for current supplier vetting processes. This training is initially intended and designed for staff at the PIH Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone. Construction for this new teaching hospital began in 2021.

Our goal is for this training to empower individual staff with improved skills, knowledge, and confidence needed to navigate the complexities of supplier vetting. This aligns with the goals of Partners in Health to provide high quality and ethical care.

This challenge was particularly urgent because the Maternal Center of Excellence (MCOE) was founded in partnership with the Sierra Leone government, and has significant visibility from donors and stakeholders. PIH needed to demonstrate strict compliance and consistency across their procurement team. Without a training intervention, gaps in supplier vetting practices could lead to fines, problematic or inadequate supplies, or damage to the PIH reputation.

02. Goals

Before creating a lesson plan or training materials, it was critical for us to first understand the learners, the specific learning needs, and the environment. Through careful analysis via interviews with our client, we identified the following information, allowing us to create effective and customized content.

Who are the learners?

The learners are procurement staff living in Sierra Leone
They are hired locally from Sierra Leone and Rwanda
Most have a solid understanding of the general procurement process and have attended previous trainings
Most are relatively new to Partners in Health
They enjoy discussion and hands-on learning

What is the environment?

Trainings are generally conducted in-person in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with a small group of learners
Computers are available, but electricity and the internet can be unreliable

What is the task?

Supplier vetting is a high-stakes and complex process. Staff are tasked with purchasing operational and medical supplies, often urgently needed, from local vendors. In this process they must assess the safety, affordability, legality, and ethical compliance of each vendor. The task includes both procedural instructions as well as conceptual tasks, since staff are often required to weigh the risks and benefits of proceeding with a supplier.

What are the learning requirements?

An in-person training is appropriate due to the unstable availability of electricity and internet. Our training format will allow for presentation via computer, with options to facilitate the training without technology if needed. Learners will be given opportunities to review the procedural steps of supplier vetting, as well as discuss more nuanced, or "gray area", scenarios. A supplementary job aid will provide ongoing support after the training.

Instructional Objectives

Our design team’s goal was to help procurement staff confidently and consistently adhere to updated standards and policies. Specific goals included:

Staff will be able to locate and evaluate suppliers using standardized criteria from the government and PIH
Staff will use rubrics to practice grading suppliers as qualified, unqualified, or blacklisted
Staff will gain confidence in navigating complex decisions that require judgement (“gray areas”)
The procurement team will demonstrate consistency with vetting practices and documentation

These goals support PIH’s mission to ethically source high-quality supplies and to build sustainable relationships with vendors.

03. Approach

Instructional Principles

While designing our lesson plan, here are a few of the instructional principles we used:

Backward design
- In backward design, determining the performance goal is completed before the materials are developed. We started by interviewing our client and analyzing the task before outlining and creating the content of the training. This ensured that our deliverables effectively align with the tasks that learners must complete on the job, and helped us avoid unnecessary content.
Authentic practice
- Since this task includes following a procedure, the lesson includes opportunities to practice completing the steps of supplier vetting in an authentic way, as would be required on the job. Staff have the opportunity to review, interact with, and use authentic tools such as the supplier vetting criteria checklists.
Making decisions
- While supplier vetting is a procedure, the situations staff encounter are not always black and white. This requires them to make decisions and understand the nuanced concepts of risks and benefits associated with the compliance criteria. To support this we incorporated simulated situations into the lesson which provide learners the opportunity to make decisions based on their conceptual understanding of the vetting process.

Models

We applied several instructional models to strengthen our design choices:

Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction: Our lesson plan included opportunities for staff to practice and demonstrate their learning with real-world scenarios.
Knowles’ Adult Learning Principles: The training built upon staff’s previous experience and was relevant to their current roles in the procurement team.
Keller’s ARCS Model: We incorporated multiple motivational strategies including participation, learner confidence, useful skill application, and incentives.
LeaPS Instructional Model: We carefully included culturally appropriate and relevant elements (examples and images, low-tech lesson delivery options) and supported knowledge transfer with participant guides.

Systematic Process

Our Learner and Environmental Analysis (LEA), Task Analysis (TA), and Learning Requirements Analysis (LRA) determined the type of training and lesson components that would be most effective.

Systemic Design

We designed the training to fit into and support PIH's broader organizational needs. We provided options in case of internet or electricity failure, and ensured the instructional objectives supported PIH’s organizational mission.

Collaboration and Communication

Our instructional design team collaborated with each other and our client across four time zones. We balanced time differences and scheduling conflicts with a balance of asynchronous and synchronous work. Our SME had various scheduling and technical obstacles, which we navigated successfully through email, shared documents, and flexible meeting options

04. Solutions

Using the information from our analysis and the ID design frameworks, we created the following training materials:

Presentation:

Agenda and learning goals, aligned with PIH core values
In-depth supplier vetting process review
Discussion prompts: challenging scenarios

Facilitator Guide:

Overview and learning goals
Instructions for preparing training session
Materials list
Detailed agenda and action items

Job Aid:

Supplier vetting criteria checklist

Training Materials

Click on the images below to explore our finished training materials

Presentation

Facilitator Guide

Job Aid

05. Insights

Strategic Communication

A challenging aspect of this project was communicating with team members and SME's across different time zones, and navigating complex schedule needs. Working asynchronously added additional difficulty, and at times limited the timeliness and clarity of feedback we received from our clients. This experience reinforced the importance of adaptability, setting clear communication expectations with all team members and stakeholders, and the need for a centralized hub for project materials and discussion.

Broad Collaboration

This project has highlighted the immense benefits of working within a talented and committed team. By communicating frequently, dividing up tasks based on our unique strengths and interests, we not only worked more efficiently, but also created a more engaging and creative project than I had anticipated.

In addition, I am now acutely aware of the importance of confident collaboration with clients. Our project had a broad scope that proved difficult to initially define and narrow-down, in particular because we were unfamiliar with the process of supplier vetting. Asking for specific resources and feedback early and often is a critical task that will be a top priority in future projects.

Theory Application

Most importantly, this project improved my ability to apply adult learning theory to practice in an authentic, high-stakes project. I am increasingly confident in using models and frameworks to design training that is effective, culturally relevant, and supportive of broader organizational structure.

References

Keller, J. M. (1987). The systematic process of motivational design. Performance & Instruction, 26(9/10), 1-8.

Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research & Development, 50(3), 43-59.

Partners in health. (n.d.). Partners in Health. https://pih.org/

Instructional Design Project