Chapter 6

Understanding the Foundations of Training Design

What’s in This Chapter

•  Introducing adult learning theory

•  Exploring multiple intelligences

•  Incorporating whole brain learning

•  Learning how theory enters into practice

Because this book provides a fully designed workshop, you don’t need to know all the details of designing a course—the design has already been done for you. However, understanding some of the principle design and learning theories that underpin this workshop is useful and helpful—especially if you are somewhat new to the field of workplace training and development. To effectively deliver training to learners requires a core understanding of how and why people learn. This gives you the flexibility to adapt a course to the unique learners in the room as needed.

When designing a leadership workshop, paying attention to content flow is especially important. While there is no one right way to flow leadership content, you must ensure that the topics build on one another and that you solidly connect the concepts and ideas together so you leverage the most of the learning opportunity. Great leadership skills require practice, so always include interactive practice sessions in the design of the workshop. Short but well-designed activities can have significant impact.

Basic Adult Learning Theory

The individual trainee addressed in these workshops is typically an adult with learning needs that differ in many (but not all) ways from children. Much has been documented about how adults learn best. A key figure in adult education is Malcolm Knowles, who is often regarded as the father of adult learning. Knowles made several contributions to the field but is best known for popularizing the term andragogy, which refers to the art and science of teaching adults. Here are six assumptions about adult learners noted in The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (1984):

•  Adults need to know why learning something is important before they learn it.

•  Adults have a concept of self and do not like others imposing their will on them.

•  Adults have a wealth of knowledge and experience and want that knowledge to be recognized.

•  Adults open up to learning when they think that the learning will help them with real problems.

•  Adults want to know how the learning will help them in their personal lives.

•  Adults respond to external motivations, such as the prospect of a promotion or an increase in salary.

Given these principles of adult learning, designing sessions that are highly interactive and engaging is critical (see sidebar on page 105 for more tips). Forcing anyone to learn anything is impossible, so the goal of effective training design is to provide every opportunity and encouragement to the potential learner. Involvement of the learner is the key. As an old Chinese proverb says, “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand.” The designs in this book use several methods to convey information and engage participants. By incorporating varied training media—such as presentation media, discussion sessions, small-group work, structured exercises, and self-assessments—these designs maximize active participant involvement and offer something for every learning style.

In addition to engaging the interest of the learner, interactive training allows you to tap into another source of learning content: the participants themselves. In a group-learning situation, a good learning environment encourages participants to share with others in the group so the entire group’s cumulative knowledge can be used.

More Theoretical Ideas Important to Learning

Research on how people learn and how the brain works occurs continuously. A few ideas that come up frequently in training design and delivery are multiple intelligences and whole brain learning.

Multiple Intelligences

Multiple intelligences reflect how people prefer to process information. Howard Gardner, from Harvard University, has been challenging the basic beliefs about intelligence since the early 1980s. Gardner initially described a list of seven intelligences. In 1987, he added three additional intelligences to his list, and he expects the list to continue to grow. The intelligences are

•  interpersonal: aptitude for working with others

•  logical/mathematical: aptitude for math, logic, deduction

•  spatial/visual: aptitude for picturing, seeing

•  musical: aptitude for musical expression

•  linguistic/verbal: aptitude for the written and spoken word

•  intrapersonal: aptitude for working alone

•  bodily kinesthetic: aptitude for being physical

•  emotional: aptitude for identifying emotion

•  naturalist: aptitude for being with nature

•  existential: aptitude for understanding one’s purpose.

How do multiple intelligences affect your learning? Gardner believes that most people are comfortable in three or four of these intelligences and avoid the others. For example, if you are not comfortable working with other people, doing group case studies may interfere with your ability to process new material. Video-based instruction will not be good for people with lower spatial/visual aptitudes. People with strong bodily/kinesthetic aptitudes prefer to move around while they are learning.

Allowing your learners to use their own strengths and weaknesses helps them process and learn. Here’s an example: Suppose you are debriefing one of the exercises in the material. The exercise has been highly interpersonal (team activity), linguistic (lots of talking), spatial/visual (the participants built an object), musical (music was playing), logical/mathematical (there were rules and structure), and kinesthetic (people moved around). You’ve honored all the processing styles except intrapersonal, so the people who process information in this manner probably need a return to their strength of working alone. Start the debriefing by asking people to quietly work on their own, writing down five observations of the activity. Then ask them to share as a group.

Whole Brain Learning

Ned Herrmann pioneered the concept of whole brain learning in the 1970s, developing the Herrmann Whole Brain Model, which divides the brain into four distinct types of thinking: analytical, sequential, interpersonal, and imaginative. Each individual tends to favor one type of thinking over another, and this thinking preference evolves continually throughout a person’s life. In fact, the brain changes all the time with new input and new ways of thinking—a feature that is known as plasticity.

Although each person has a preferred thinking style, he or she may prefer it to varying degrees. To identify a person’s thinking preference, Herrmann developed the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument in 1979. Learning about your own thinking and learning preferences can motivate you to learn new ways to learn and think. For trainers and facilitators, learning about your own preferences can help you identify where you may be neglecting other styles or preferences in your training design and delivery. As Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, daughter of Ned Herrmann and researcher in her own right, notes in the ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals, “Effective learning is whole brained—designing, delivering, and evaluating the learning to best meet the varying needs of diverse learners” (2008, p. 215).

Herrmann-Nehdi continues, “Our knowledge of the brain and its inherent uniqueness shows that each individual is a unique learner with learning experiences, preferences, and avoidances that will be different from those of other learners. This means that learning designs must somehow factor in the uniqueness of the individual learner” (2008, p. 221). That is to say that effective facilitation must provide a blend of learning activities that addresses various thinking processes from analytical to sequential to interpersonal to imaginative. Because each individual has a unique combination of varying preferences for different types of learning, such a blend can engage most learners even when they are not directly learning in their preferred style. Engaging varied thinking styles ensures whole brain learning, rather than a narrow focus on one or two thinking styles.

Here are some tips for incorporating whole brain learning into your facilitation:

•  Identify your own thinking preferences to avoid getting too one-sided in your presentation. Deliberately include styles you don’t typically prefer.

•  Recognize that your learners have unique brains that have continually changed as a result of a lifetime of experiences, learning, and ways of thinking.

•  Address those variations in learning and thinking preferences by learning different ways to deliver learning, including facts, case studies, metaphors, brainstorming, simulations, quizzes, outlines, procedures, group learning, role plays, and so on to engage their whole brains.

•  Avoid diminishing learners’ motivation to learn.

•  Avoid overwhelming the brain or causing stress. Stick to need-to-know rather than nice-to-know.

Theory into Practice

These theories (and more that are not addressed here) affect the way the content of the workshop is put together. Some examples of training features that derive from these theories include handouts, research references, and presentation media to read; quiet time to write notes and reflect; opportunities for listening and talking; and exercises for practicing skills. The workshop activities and materials for the programs in this book have taken these theories to heart in their design, providing content, activities, and tools that will appeal to and engage many learning and thinking styles. Additional ways to translate learning and design theory into practice include the following:

Establishing a Framework

For learners to understand the goals of training and how material relates to real work situations, a framework can be helpful. When presenting the training in the context of a framework, trainers should provide an overview of why the organization has decided to undertake the training and why it is important. This explanation should also highlight what the trainer hopes to accomplish and how the skills learned in this training will be useful back on the job.

Objectives and goals of the programs and learning activities are described in this workbook; share those objectives with the learners when discussing the purposes of specific exercises. Handouts will also help provide a framework for participants.

Identifying Behaviors

Within any training goal are many behaviors. For example, listening and giving clear directions are necessary behaviors for good customer service. Customer service does not improve simply because employees are told to do so—participants need to understand the reasons and see the relevant parts of the equation. For these reasons, facilitators should identify and discuss relevant behaviors throughout the program.

Training helps people identify the behaviors that are important, so that those behaviors can be targeted for improvement. Learning activities enable participants to analyze different skills and behaviors and to separate the parts from the whole. The learning activities in this book, with their clearly stated objectives, have been carefully crafted to take these considerations into account.

Practicing

Practice is crucial for learning because learning takes place by doing and by seeing. In the training designs included in this workbook, practice occurs in written exercises, verbal exercises, and role playing. Role playing helps participants actually practice the behaviors that are being addressed. Role-play exercises bring skills and behaviors to life for those acting out particular roles and for those observing the scenarios.

Learning a new skill takes a lot of practice. Some participants learn skills more quickly than others. Some people’s attitudes might prevent them from being open to trying new behaviors. Your job is to facilitate the session to the best of your ability, taking different learning styles into account. The rest is up to the participants.

Providing Feedback

A key aspect of training is the feedback trainers give to participants. If delivered in a supportive and constructive manner, feedback helps learners develop a deeper understanding of the content you are presenting and the behaviors they are practicing. Feedback in role plays is especially powerful because this is where “the rubber hits the road.” In role plays, observers can see if people are able to practice the behaviors that have been discussed, or whether habitual responses will prevail.

Making It Relevant

Throughout the program you will discuss how to use skills and new behaviors on the job. These discussions will help answer the question “So what?” Exercises and action plans help participants bring new skills back to actual work situations. This is also important in addressing the adult need for relevancy in learning.

The Bare Minimum

•  Keep the focus on self-reflection. Be purposeful in designing content that encourages participants to analyze their own behaviors instead of what others do wrong.

•  Build practice into the design. As with many skills, communication improves with practice. Provide your participants with hands-on, engaging opportunities to practice the correct skills.

Key Points

•  Adults have specific learning needs that must be addressed in training to make it successful.

•  People also have different intelligences; that is, different areas in which they are more comfortable and competent. Addressing different intelligences in the workshop keeps more people engaged in more ways.

•  People take in new information in different ways; so addressing a variety of different thinking styles can help everyone learn more effectively.

•  Some important ways of bringing theory into practice are creating a framework, identifying behaviors, practicing, providing feedback, and making the learning relevant.

What to Do Next

•  Look through the training materials to identify how they address the learning theories presented in this book. If you make modifications to the material, consider whether those modifications leave out an intelligence or a thinking style. Can you address more intelligences without making the material cumbersome?

•  Read the next chapter to identify how to incorporate technology into the workshop to make it more effective.

Additional Resources

Biech, E., ed. (2008). ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.

Biech, E., ed. (2014). ASTD Handbook: The Definitive Reference for Training & Development, 2nd edition. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.

Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2011). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Herrmann, N. (1988). Creative Brain. Lake Lure, NC: Brain Books.

Herrmann, N. (1996). Whole Brain Business Book. San Francisco: McGraw-Hill.

Herrmann-Nehdi, A. (2008). “The Learner: What We Need to Know.” In E. Biech, ed., ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals, 2nd edition. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.

Jones, J.E., W.L. Bearley, and D.C. Watsabaugh. (1996). The New Fieldbook for Trainers: Tips, Tools, and Techniques. Amherst, MA: HRD Press.

Knowles, M.S. (1984). The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing.

Russell, L. (1999). The Accelerated Learning Fieldbook: Making the Instructional Process Fast, Flexible, and Fun. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.

Sites, R., and A. Green. (2014). Leaving ADDIE for SAM Field Guide. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press.