The 10 drill design principles

Are you convinced that the Drillster method will help your organization or learning program take the next step? We will help you design perfect drills to ensure the best possible learning performance from students or employees!

10 drill design principles

Making good instructional drill questions is certainly not rocket science. With our 10 drill design principles, we will help you get started designing perfect drills. These tips and tricks will have you making the best possible questions, based on educational design principles, and achieving an effective learning process and solidly anchored knowledge. Click the tiles below for further details and examples for each design principle.

Cut learning material up into short drills

Cut your learning material up into small chunks. Microlearning is effective and motivates learners →

Limit drills to crucial need-to-know information

Focus on information that people really need to remember. Use drills to anchor crucial knowledge →

Engage the learner by using a story

Add a story to your drill. This will allow you to contextualize the sets of questions and give people relevant information →

Process one learning element per question

Limit each question to one piece of information that people need to remember. Especially for adaptive learning, short and relevant questions are the most effective →

Incorporate the information to remember into the answer

Drills are assessment-based: learning by answering questions and remembering feedback. Incorporate the message people need to remember in the answers →

Use positive feedback: explain which answer is correct

Use the feedback option to explain answers. This will help people grasp and remember the material quickly →

Alternate question styles and answer styles

Use different types of questions and answers, such as open-ended, multiple-choice, hotspot and sequence questions. Also use images, videos and audio clips →

Use question variants to optimize the learning effect

When you ask about one and the same learning element in different ways, you will make sure the information is processed actively and, therefore, remembered better →

Keep drills challenging

Set learning goals for drills and courses to make sure people brush up on time. Also add the latest information to keep your drills up to date. Check below to find out how it’s done →

Communicate and motivate

Optimize learners' commitment by keeping them motivated. Communicate why drills are so important →

You are now ready to design your own drills! With these ten tips in mind, you can create the best drills in no time! Want to become a next-level instructional drill designer? Then check out how to achieve the ‘Certified by Drillster’ quality mark!

Need support?

Don’t have the time or resources to make good drills yourself? Find out how we can help!

  • Training: training your employees to become Certified Instructional Drill Designers.
  • Drill design: you can also opt to outsource parts of the drill design process to us.
  • Drill review: one of our educational specialists will help you by reviewing your drill content.
  • Bulk input: entering large volumes of content.
  • Communications: we would be happy to help you with internal communications on implementing the Drillster method.
  • Customization: integration into an LMS or learning portal: “Drillster inside” your trusted environment.

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