Improve your training with practice and feedback

Have you ever attend­ed a course or train­ing ses­sion that missed its mark?

Most of the cours­es that I have tak­en haven’t met my expec­ta­tions for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. In uni­ver­si­ty, there was the pro­fes­sor who’d lec­ture for an hour, lulling stu­dents to sleep. There was the work­place train­er who focused on how the soft­ware worked but not the tasks that stu­dents (or learn­ers) required. There was the employ­ee who was threat­ened about shar­ing too much for fear of los­ing her job so she with­held knowl­edge, ren­der­ing the train­ing almost use­less. I could go on.

In my expe­ri­ence, senior man­age­ment holds the belief that any­one can train. But few peo­ple do it well.

Too often train­ing is just a “pletho­ra of regur­gi­tat­ed knowl­edge,” said Jim Tall­man, pres­i­dent of North Pacif­ic Train­ing & Per­for­mance Inc. Tall­man spoke at the Cana­da West Chap­ter of the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion for a pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment ses­sion on Sep­tem­ber 13^th.

Train­ing that focus­es on rehash­ing knowl­edge doesn’t help learn­ers per­form their jobs bet­ter and pro­vides incon­sis­tent results, he said.  Some exam­ples of inef­fec­tive train­ing include:

• The cur­ricu­lum fol­lows the­o­ry, not skills or tasks that one per­forms on the job.
• Con­tent fol­lows course design, not a task analysis.
• Exam­ples focus on sys­tem fea­tures, not work­place processes.
• The course high­lights the knowl­edge of the sys­tem, not improved performance.
• The instruc­tor nev­er stops talking.

A better way to train

An alter­na­tive method of train­ing focus­es on improv­ing the learn­ers’ skills. Some ele­ments of effec­tive training:

• Task analy­sis dri­ves course design.
• Cur­ricu­lum reflects the job.
• Con­tent is prac­tice-based and learn­er paced.
• Course results in improved job performance.

He said: “This is the pre­ferred way…that train­ing should be designed to give learn­ers what they need and clients their money’s worth. Instruc­tion is based on how learn­ers learn and not on how much the train­er can demo his or her prowess in the field.”

Train­ing should be ide­al­ly 30 per­cent pre­sen­ta­tion or lec­ture and 60 per­cent hands-on (such as exer­cis­es or activ­i­ties), said Tall­man. The final 10 per­cent of the course should be allo­cat­ed on feed­back so that learn­ers can improve. Most tra­di­tion­al train­ing is reversed with the instruc­tor talk­ing most of the time and learn­ers’ eyes glaz­ing over after 20 min­utes of lec­ture, he said.

In addi­tion, effec­tive train­ing should be also mean­ing­ful, mem­o­rable, moti­va­tion­al, and mea­sur­able, Tall­man said.

• Mean­ing­ful: Train­ing should be rel­e­vant for learn­ers so they can per­form key tasks rel­e­vant to their jobs.
• Mem­o­rable: Learn­ers need to remem­ber their train­ing after the course. Job aids, hand­outs, and quick ref­er­ence cards may be able to assist.
• Moti­va­tion­al: Train­ing should moti­vate learn­ers in the class­room so that they want to apply the new skills.
• Mea­sur­able: Effec­tive train­ing teach­es new skills that can be observed. “Good learn­ing events stress observ­able behav­iors, give learn­ers suf­fi­cient prac­tice over time, and pro­vide per­for­mance feedback.”

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Tall­man’s train­ing focused on prac­tice and feed­back so that learn­ers could improve. This was an excel­lent presentation!