5 Stages to Create Interesting and Relevant Learning
How often have you sat in training thinking this is not worth my time? Here is a way to ensure your training is and stays relevant to the learners.
Often when we are building our training, we deliver what we think the delegates want to hear, getting feedback on the session straight after delivering it, when everyone is all smiley and looking forward to going home.
However, is this really efficient use of your delegates time or the cost of running the training? Let’s go through a five-stage approach to building a relevant and agile learning programme.
I learned about the systems approach to learning whilst serving in the British military and have condensed it for use in businesses. When I started the Lean Academy, I used this approach to review the training already in place and to develop more packages to ensure all the relevant delegate groups were covered. The example I will use is a Lean programme, but it can be used for any learning experience design, even one-off training packages, though you might want to shorten the stages for these.
Stage 1: Learning Needs Analysis (LNA)
In this step, we are looking at what value the learning needs to deliver to its customers, which, of course, means that we need to identify the customers. The customers fall into three categories:
- The people who will be going through the learning (the delegate)
- The bosses of those delegates and
- The organisation as a whole.
Understanding what each of these customers needs is the key to an efficient, and therefore successful learning experience. In general terms the delegate wants the knowledge and practice to basically function in the role that the learning is supposed to support, you are not there to make them expert, this can only come from doing the work and in trying to make them expert you will be giving them way more information than they could handle at once.
Looking at the boss, in general, they want a staff member who can be productive as soon as possible. The organisation wants the person to perform their role in as low cost as possible whilst delivering the right quality but also in a way that compliments, the way everyone else works. Having a person being very mechanical in their role might not sit well in a creative company, similarly, a manufacturer is unlikely to want someone making their product a different way every time.
So, with these general requirements in the back of our minds, we need to dissect the organisation into the groups that need to be supported by the learning, in my Lean Academy case I created a tree that progressively split the organisation into more and more detailed groups. Initially General staff and Lean “People” (people who were to be seen to have an amount of Lean Expertise). The General staff was broken down into Leaders of various levels, and others, either office-based or site/factory based.
I then formed a team of experts drawn from across the business, which was part of the change management and also more viewpoints to get it right. We went through each group, brainstorming what we felt they needed to know to perform in a way that would make the most of Lean for the business. Note if you are looking at a role that is high-risk or very complex, such as a maintenance technician on an aircraft, an exhaustive list would need to be created, and feedback sought from the people doing and managing the job and a DIF Analysis (Difficulty, Importance, Frequency) performed on each listed item. But for our purposes, the brainstorm was enough.
In our Lean Academy example for each delegate group, we produced a Learning Requirements Card that included:
- What the value the person would need to provide,
- Aims of the learning,
- Appropriate methods for imparting the learning,
- The standard a trainer or coach would need to have to be credible, and
- Potential barriers to their learning.
As part of the LNA, we also thought about how to assess the learning and this depended upon the method. Examples are On-the-Job learning specific tasks signed off by a coach or supervisor, for an online package a multiple-choice test, for an exercise-based experience trainer observation and feedback.
Stage 2: Learning Experience Design
Once all the requirements cards were completed, we grouped them by affinity, which of them felt like they should be trained together. The list was: Information All staff needed, Lean Navigators (Coaches of individual Projects), Change Agent (Coaches of Lean Navigators and Lean coaches to Departmental Managers), Lean Expert (coaches of Change Agents and advisors to Executive Leaders), Senior Leaders, and Supervisors. We also planned for specialist learning e.g., Agile-Scrum, 8D, Maturity Assessment etc. these could be provided as standalone or as part of a personal development plan, for instance, the Head of Software Development might receive the Senior Leader Learning as well as the Agile-Scrum overview package.
For each of these groups we created a Learning Definition Card that included:
- Target delegate groups,
- the content the learning experience was supposed to cover,
- who would deliver training or provide the coaching,
- how their knowledge would be assessed (pass/try again),
- what was the base knowledge required before entering the learning and
- what development the trainer needed before they could lead a learning experience.
As you will see, the requirements cards in the LNA were effectively the questions and the Learning Definition Cards were the answers.
As you will have noticed I have not used the terms training or course, these are just one way to impart or support learning, others might be on-the-job with a coach or supervisor, they could be directed self-study, online learning package or doing tasks aligned to a workbook, even answering questions can be a form of learning.
So, we selected the most appropriate blends of learning experience for the delegate groups, e.g., Directed-Self Study, Exercise-based discussion groups for senior leaders were selected, (at the instigation of the COO we added an online package with an exam).
From the Learning Definition Cards, we produced the materials, which included PowerPoint Slides with presenter notes, Exercise kits and instructions, exams, coach feedback sheets, workbooks and even Personal Development Plan Templates.
Stage 3: Learning Experience Delivery
In this stage the learning experience is delivered, this is likely, of course, to include classrooms sessions, but may also include assessment within the workplace, for instance, a supervisor asking a delegate to perform a task based on their workbook and signing it off as being completed to a satisfactory standard. In our Lean Academy example, the Change Agents would go through their 4 day “Silver Belt” classroom training and run three sessions with a qualified Change Agent having a feedback session after each.
Stage 4: Doing the Work
This stage is where the delegates are performing their tasks in earnest, i.e., with the normal amount of supervision. This, incidentally, is where their journey to true mastery really begins, where they will make mistakes and need to correct them. Something their formal learning needs to prepare them for is how to recognise when something isn’t right.
Stage 5: Validation
Validation is really where the Systems approach is differentiated. Validation is about making the learning experience better, it is split into two, Internal Validation and External Validation. Internal validation is your normal feedback questionnaire, it is used to improve the delivery stage (Stage 3) and might be used to tweak the design of the learning experiences (Stage 2). The improvements can be done quickly, perhaps ready for the next session.
External validation is longer-term, it feeds into the LNA stage (Stage 1), this is where the effectiveness of the learning where the training is discussed with the delegates after they have had time to settle into their role (perhaps 3 months) and with their line manager, the aim of this is to see if the learning provided to the delegate actually reflected the needs of the role they were preparing to do. These are usually done less frequently than internal validations, depending on the risk, the frequency of delivery and the type of learning. The interval between external validations might be as short as six months but might be over a couple of years, the results of the validation will go into the next full review of the package, which might require a full redesign of the learning.
Validation is the step that most organisations forget, or feel is less important to divert funds to but it is the way that courses are kept fresh and relevant. In our Lean academy example, the external validation of the training for all staff was changed from a 4-hour instructor-led training (ILT) to a 30min online package as the value of the package had changed from a lever for culture change to an introduction to the culture.
The Quality Assurance minded readers will have noticed that the Systems Approach to training is ISO 9001 compliant with its quality review and continual improvement cycles. But on top of that, the Lean minded amongst you will have seen that it is also Lean: Learning Needs Analysis ensures the service is based upon the customers’ needs (Value). 5 Stage process is a value stream (Value Stream) that flows (Flow) the customer value and only the value that is required is delivered (Pull), and with the validation cycles, the service is continuously improved (Perfection).
Darren Clyde has spent 25 years creating and delivering learning experiences in various organisations in all sectors around the globe, Private, Public and Non-profit. He is also a qualified college lecturer and tutor.
Reference:
UK MOD (2017): JSP 822: Defence Direction and Guidance for Training and Education, Part 2: Guidance accessed: 08 Jan 2021
