Analyze needs

The first stage of The Training Cycle is called analyze in the ADDIE acronym. Generally, you need to conduct an assessment and analyze the data to identify specific needs. Here are the two main reasons for completing an assessment and analysis:

• Make sure there is a reason to conduct training. After conducting the analysis, you may discover that the relevant issue can be addressed by something other than training, such as through on-the-job coaching, online content that could be delivered asynchronously, or an article in the company newsletter that can alert employees to the information needed.
• If training is necessary, the analysis should tell you exactly what content and methodology to use. The analysis will also help determine your training objectives.

You have many ways to conduct assessments. You can use a formal instrument that measures a person’s skill or knowledge, or one that simply measures a person’s preference. You can use written questionnaires or personal interviews with employees or supervisors. Talk with those who need to learn the skill as well as those who are adept at using the skill. Finally, remember to learn how the knowledge or skill meets the organization’s needs and how you will be able to measure the results.

Your goal in collecting this data is to determine the gap between a job requirement and an individual’s actual skill or knowledge. The bottom line is to determine what is preventing the desired performance. You use this information in the next stage of the Training Cycle: design.

Design the training

After you have determined that there is a legitimate training need, your next step is to state exactly what you want the training to accomplish. You do this by writing objectives. There are two kinds of objectives from two perspectives used in training:

• The learning/performance objective: This is a statement of the performance (knowledge or skill) that is desired after the training has been conducted. Whether you call them learning or performance objectives doesn’t matter, as long as you realize that the purpose is to demonstrate what your participants have learned and can perform — what behavioral changes they made. You should base learning objectives on the information you discovered during the analysis step. An example of a training session’s learning objective is “Participants will be able to design participant-focused learning activities by the end of this session.”
• The training objective: This is a statement of what the instructor hopes to accomplish during the training session. This may be an outcome, or it may be a description of what the instructor plans to do in order to accomplish the learning objectives. For example, “This session will create a positive learning climate that encourages participants to get involved and to ask questions.”

Some trainers include both learning and training objectives in their design. Learning objectives are a required step in every good training design. Training objectives help the trainer to focus on designing and delivering a first-class training program by setting targets for the trainer to achieve.

Develop the program

After you determine the objectives of the training, you can begin to develop the program. This is the stage of the Training Cycle that I like best. You decide exactly what you’re going to do to accomplish the objectives you set. You have many things to consider when planning a training program. You decide how to deliver the program to achieve the best results through a virtual classroom; performance support tools; self-study; a combination of these and others in a blended learning solution; or, using the newest buzzword, through a hybrid model. Consider these questions to help you decide this aspect of your training program:

• How many participants will be in each course, and how many need new knowledge, skills or both
• The locations of participants
• When the training needs to take place and how much time it requires
• How much consistency between sessions is needed
• The level of trainer expertise required

You may also decide whether to design the content at all. Given that thousands of training-related products are available, you may decide instead to purchase predesigned content and customize it. Whether you design or customize, consider these issues: who your audience is; what the best training techniques are; how to provide opportunities to practice; what type of content will be meaningful to your participants; how your learners will implement learning in the real world; how the program will improve performance; how to add creativity to the program; and how to ensure that the program meets your learning objectives. You also need a process to evaluate the program’s effectiveness. Wow — that’s a lot to consider! I address each of these throughout the book.

Implement the design

This is the Training Cycle stage during which you actually conduct the program. A trainer completes a huge amount of preparation before the program. Even after an excellent job of preparing, you can’t guarantee that the program will go off without a hitch. That’s why some trainers pilot a program with a trial group of learners who provide feedback before the session is ready for prime time.

You use both presentation and facilitation skills in both a traditional and virtual classroom. I discuss the variations in skills throughout the book. As a trainer, you’re both a presenter and a facilitator:

• The presenter’s role is to provide information. If much of the information is new or technical, you may need to present. The preferred role, however, is as a facilitator.
• The facilitator serves as a catalyst to ensure learners’ participation. The term good trainer is often synonymous with the term facilitator.

Excellent delivery skills are required whether you’re facilitating a virtual or traditional classroom. While you’re conducting the training, you want to constantly watch for signs that you’re meeting your learners’ needs. If you see that an approach isn’t working, stop and try another. Don’t be afraid to stray from the agenda if you sense that the audience needs that. This is the stage at which platform experience and good facilitation skills are required.

Evaluate the results

When it’s over, it’s not over. The evaluation stage is an important part of the Training Cycle for three reasons:

• The evaluation tells you whether the objectives of the program were accomplished.
• You can feed information from the evaluation stage into the assess-and-analyze stage to improve the training program should it be conducted again. (This evaluation is why this model is circular.)
• Evaluation information serves as the basis for determining needs for future programs or other changes an organization may need to make.

You will be evaluating during every step of ADDIE, from what the analysis revealed to the effectiveness of the training solution. Evaluation completes the Training Cycle. I examine each of the five stages in depth starting in Chapter 4.

If you want to achieve a goal, start with the end in mind. In this case, it means that you start with the evaluation stage. What do you want to accomplish? What does your stakeholder expect? How will what is learned enhance the organization’s goals? What will success look like? Your evaluation must be a part of the thought process as you begin the design at the analysis stage.

Add a touch of design thinking

Start with ADDIE and then add some elements from other design processes. For example, you can incorporate design thinking. These steps are natural and practical. Don’t be held back by “rules.” Make the instructional design process work for you, your learners, and your organization. Design thinking is a human-centered process that provides a means for defining problems from multiple perspectives. It focuses on the spot where business needs, user needs, and technology or environmental constraints meet. You can add these elements to the basic ADDIE model without adding more time. Incorporate these actions into your plan:

• Empathize with users — for instance, with those affected by a situation or in need. Add this step to the analysis stage. I always interview my customers and the ultimate learners of any training effort to gain their perspective. It helps me understand what they need.
• Define the problem to be solved by framing it as, “How might we …”
• Ideate with your target learners to come up with possible solutions. Think in terms of the entire learning journey, not just one event.
• Craft prototypes and try your assumptions. Try a few quick prototypes of potential solutions. Starting earlier in the process leads to trying ideas before you get too far down the line. This saves time and money.
• Test, iterate, and refine the prototypes based on testing outcomes.

Design thinking offers several unique tools that you may want to research and try. Two include experience mapping and empathy mapping. Most of the tools are equally effective in-person or when using virtual collaboration tools such as Miro, Mural, or even a whiteboard in Microsoft Teams. If you do it right, you’ll build Agile into your product because you are delivering value that benefits both the learners and the business.

Learning and the Training Cycle

The Training Cycle is so orderly and straightforward, it seems like it would be impossible to miss anything important. That’s true, but keep in mind that training is really about the learner and how they learn.

Adults learn differently than children. In Chapter 2, I briefly mention several bright minds who have arrived at various models for learning preferences. Although they don’t agree on any one measure or model, they do agree that learners have different preferences for recognizing and processing information. If the experts can’t arrive at one model for how people learn, how can you be expected to train people with vastly different learning preferences in the same group? You can! Keep reading for ideas.

Variety and flexibility

You can successfully get in touch with all learning preferences in your group if you remember two things:

• Add variety. Lots! Research suggests that varying your delivery methods and using different training methods enhances learning for everyone. In fact, most recent research goes even further to say that training that affects more than one preference actually has a greater impact than focusing on the one preference for each specific learner (as if you could do that, anyway!) Providing lots of variety has a greater payoff. Therefore, you should also vary the delivery itself, changing pace, control, complexity, and timing.

• Be flexible. Just as your learners have a preference for learning, you also have a preference for training. You may prefer small-group activities or informal discussion or even brainstorming. You may tend to be more people focused or content focused. You may prefer to be entertaining or professorial, coaching, or directing. Whatever your preference, be flexible. Move outside your comfort zone at times to improve learner comprehension and retention.

Conditions of learning

Before leaving this discussion about incorporating learning into the Training Cycle, I must mention Robert Gagne and his Conditions of Learning. He identified nine instructional events. Applying these events to your training helps to ensure that learning occurs. Here are Gagne’s Instructional Events:

• Gain the learners’ attention.
• Share the objectives of the session.
• Ask learners to recall prior learning.
• Deliver the content.
• Use methods to enhance understanding — for example, case studies, examples, and graphs.
• Provide an opportunity to practice.
• Provide feedback.
• Assess performance.
• Provide job aids or references to ensure transfer to the job.

If you’ve been around the training field for a while, you know that these events are commonplace and are assumed to be a part of any effective training program.

As a trainer, you’re responsible for doing everything you can to ensure that learning takes place: Use a theory-based design model like the Training Cycle presented in this chapter, adapt to learners’ preferences, and incorporate conditions of learning. Yet remember these words from Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), an Italian astronomer and physicist: “You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.”