In my line of work, which deals with remotely-delivered, self-paced, simulation-based cybersecurity training, this stage is arguably the most difficult. Our simulations are actually authentic computers running in the cloud, incorporating a variety of different pieces of software, and it can be immensely difficult to track learner activity in these environments. We often settle for a "flag" - a unique value that the learner would only encounter if they correctly complete all of the required steps - or some other piece of information that the learner would only know if they completed the task. These methods are serviceable, but as a learning designer, I often feel like we are settling for proxies to the genuine evidence of proficiency that we actually want to track and measure against.

Intentionality is, in a sense, the whole point of learning design - a necessary counterweight to the longstanding tradition of putting a subject matter expert in a room and letting them talk for hours.

I'm actually a little bit surprised that this was a revolutionary idea - or that it had to be intentionally staked out as a new school of thought in learning design, where the roles of the learning objective and assessment are so foundational. I suppose tradition and inertia play a role here - certain topics have always been taught using specific instructional activities, and those learning activities are treated as a given by instructors and designers, even if they do not always lend themselves to observable and measurable assessments. I think of the role of the essay in humanities courses - where essays are treated as the established learning activity because of academic traditions, when we may find there are more effective ways to teach and assess a topic if we worked backwards from the learning objectives to find the best way for learners to demonstrate mastery. (I suspect the essay still wins out in many cases, but it's still worth interrogating).