8/8/2019 Ten Exciting Ways to Waste Your Training Dollars

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ten-exciting-ways-to-waste-your-training-dollars 1/3

http://thiagi.com/pfp/IE4H/january2010.html#InstructionalDesign30 Dec 2009 Stephen Downes

Instructional Design

Ten Exciting Ways To Waste Your Training Dollars

In the late 1970s, I signed checks for a total amount of $10 million when I directed a USAID project totrain thousands of elementary school teachers in Liberia. Our training efforts slowed down when my localcounterparts were decapitated. We hung around for several more months, spending more and more moneyuntil the coups and countercoups forced us to evacuate.From this experiential episode, I learned that belief in training as an activity that is isolated from socialupheavals is a dangerous myth. I learned that I should bring a total system approach to my training projects.Fortunately, I did not experience disasters of this magnitude later in my training career. But I can think of several other ways in which I (and my colleagues) wasted training budgets with assumptions based onconventional wisdom.Here's a list of ways in which effective training is derailed—along with recommendations on how to handlethem.

1. Analysis and Planning

Conventional wisdom: Invest resources in thoroughly analyzing all factors related to the training situation before beginning the design activity. Conduct a needs analysis, task analysis, concept analysis, contentanalysis, learner analysis, systems analysis, and other appropriate analyses. Come up with a detailed planthat includes objectives, methods, and design specifications. Stick to this plan as you progress throughdesign activities.Reality: Excessive analysis contributes to dysfunctional paralysis. Eighty percent of your analysis has amere 20 percent utility. Depending on which specific media and methods you are using, much of the initialanalyses become irrelevant. You cannot conduct a meaningful analysis unless you know what media andmethods you will be using.Recommendation: Begin your design activity as soon as possible. Implement rapid prototyping strategies.Conduct just-in-time and just-enough analyses while you are actually designing the training program.Incorporate all analysis information immediately in the design process.

2. The Finish Line

Conventional wisdom: Focus on the training event. Emphasize learning objectives and training topics.Your job is to make sure that all learners understand and recall all key concepts and issues related to thetraining topic.Reality: As my friend Cal Wick points out, the finish line for training is reached not when the clock shows5:00 pm on the last day of the workshop but when learners produce business results. The most importantrequirement for effective training is the transfer and application of the new skills to the workplace.Recommendation: Focus on business results. Align the training goal with these results. Make sure that alltraining content and activities are aligned to the business results. Provide suitable follow-up activities (suchas coaching, networking, and online forums that support communities of practice) to ensure transfer andapplication.

3. Content is NOT king

Conventional wisdom: Focus on creating and disseminating significant amounts of content. Come up with

more content, the most up-to-date content, and the most authoritative content. Modify the content to makesure that it is relevant to your specific situation. If the original training does not stick or if it does not produce business results, give your learners more content.Reality: More content does not produce more competencies. Information overload produces confusion,anxiety, and indecision. Most of the content that the learners need is available on the job in various forms.Recommendation: Avoid the data-dump approach of presenting an enormous amount of content. Present afew important evidence-based pieces of content and spend training time to ensure that participants can process the information and apply them to real-world situations.

8/8/2019 Ten Exciting Ways to Waste Your Training Dollars

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ten-exciting-ways-to-waste-your-training-dollars 2/3

4. Information Please!

Conventional wisdom: Focus on presenting information. Deliver the information in an attractive andattention-getting fashion.Reality: As my friend Harold Stolovitch says, “Telling ain't training.” Being subjected to death byPowerpoint can be hazardous to learning.Recommendation: Design activities that require processing of need-to-know information.

5. Multimedia Spectacular

Conventional wisdom: Invest time and money in producing slick media materials. Participants are used towatching TV shows and animated computer graphics and reading five-color printed materials. They havehigh expectations for production quality. So use the latest technology and the most attractive layout for your training package.Reality: As my friend Richard Clark points out, it is not the production quality but the instructional designquality that contributes to effective instruction. For example, a fancy television documentary may not resultin more effective learning than an inexpensive handout. Also, most non-print media take a longer time to produce and much longer time to revise than paper and pencil approaches. And as my friend Ruth Clark 

 points out, sophisticated graphics and animation may actually distract people from learning.Recommendation: Use the least expensive and most portable medium for training. In most cases this turnsout to be paper and pencil.

6. Passive Learning

Conventional wisdom: Avoid all activities. Adult learners don't like silly games and interactive exercises.They don't want to waste time in discussions with other participants who are as ignorant as they are. Just present them all the important facts and they will figure out how to use them.Reality: People learn only when they actively process and apply the information they receive. Reallearning requires interaction with the content, with each other, with the facilitator, and the real world.Recommendation: Spend your training dollar on designing activities rather than on designing content.

7. Activity Abuse

Conventional wisdom: Use a lot of activities. Load your training program with fun activities. Interspersean activity during every 20 minutes of your training. As long as they keep the participants engaged andmoving around, it does not matter if the activities are of questionable relevance. Spice up your training withicebreakers and energizers.Reality: Activities are useless unless they are directly related to the training content and objectives.Irrelevant activities may actually distract participants from important learning points.Recommendation: Align activities with the training content and objectives. Make sure that all the contentthat you present is applied to relevant training activities. Present just-in-time and just-enough contentimmediately before an activity (as a briefing presentation) or immediately after an activity (as a debriefingdiscussion).

8. Testing, Testing

Conventional wisdom: Ignore assessment activities. Don't waste the participants' time by testing their 

mastery. Adult learners can evaluate their own progress. There is no need to embarrass them with frequenttests.Reality: Testing should be an integral part of the training process. Participants need continuous andobjective feedback about their progress.Recommendation: Incorporate frequent tests throughout the training activity. Conclude your trainingsession with a final performance test. Provide strategies for participants to assess their own ability to applythe new knowledge and skills to the workplace.

8/8/2019 Ten Exciting Ways to Waste Your Training Dollars

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ten-exciting-ways-to-waste-your-training-dollars 3/3

9. Follow the Script

Conventional wisdom: Deliver the training program in a reliable and consistent fashion. Structure all presentations around a set of slides and all activities around a list of steps and rules. Train your trainers notto deviate from the standard script.Reality: Each group of adult learners is different from every other group. Adults bring different types andamounts of previous experience. They also have different needs and learning styles.Recommendation: Train and encourage your trainers to flexibly modify all training content and activitiesto suit the needs and preferences of each group of participants. Select trainers for their facilitation andimprovisation skills. Make use of these skills in your training delivery.

10. Beyond Smile Sheets

Conventional wisdom: Focus on Level I evaluation. Make sure that participants enjoy the training sessionenough to give the instructor a high rating on the smile sheet.Reality: Anything that is less than Level IV evaluation (that measures business results due to training) ishypocrisy. In some cases, there is no correlation between Level I evaluation and Level IV evaluation.Worse still, there is a negative correlation indicating that courses that make participants happy do not

necessarily make them more competent or productive. The only evidence of effective training is whether  participants produce desirable and measurable business results.Recommendation: Plan a level IV evaluation of your training course from the very beginning. Let thisevaluation dictate the scope and sequence of your training design. Even if you are not able to conduct thisevaluation because of time and cost restraints, behave as if some third party is going to evaluate the returnon investment of your training program.