5: TRAINING DESIGN: OBJECTIVES & CONTENT

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

On completion of this chapter, you should be able to:

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A Training & Development Scenario

The company is an engineering contractor. Your managing director states that the company really must do something about its estimating. After some research you discover three things:

You set up a working party of chief estimators, who decide that the only people who can train the replacements are the six people who will eventually be trained as senior estimators.

Estimators are rarely instructors: the last people who would willingly face an audience. However, the six chosen are all competent performers in different aspects of their occupation. They learned their skills on the job, with some coaching from senior colleagues. None of them have been on a formal training course with the company.

The estimating managers tell you they can spare all six estimators together for just one week.

Your task is to devise the outline of a week-long event that will turn the existing estimators into competent instructors.

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INTRODUCTION

We considered the training needs analysis process in Chapter Four. In this chapter, we move on from the needs analysis process to consider how these needs translate into learning objectives and learning content. We focus on two elements of the training design process in this chapter:

We also integrate key principles about how people learn as part of the design process. You can refer back to Chapter Three to refresh your memory on adult learning principles and theories.

The training design phase is concerned with preparing the blueprint for a training programme or intervention. In your real work experience, you will be asked to plan and design training activities that range from straightforward to highly complex – for example, the task could involve anything from the design of an on-the-job training activity to the design of a complex management development programme. The key decisions are essentially the same irrespective of the complexity involved. It is critical that you are clear about the key learning objectives, the content and structure of the training event that you propose to run.

COMPONENTS OF THE TRAINING DESIGN PROCESS

We suggest that the overall training design process can be represented in the following sequence of activities:

These activities fall within the systematic training model. Systematic training can be defined as “training specifically designed to meet defined needs”. It is planned and provided by people who know how to train and the impact of the training is carefully evaluated. A systematic model, however, is based on the premise that training and development is the appropriate course of action. Figure 5.1 presents an outline of the components of a systematic approach to training design.

FIGURE 5.1: COMPONENTS OF T&D PROCESS

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You should remember that the design of training activities is not an exact science, but involves judgement and intuition and a certain amount of “trial and error”. Figure 5.2 presents a checklist of questions that you should consider when designing a training event.

FIGURE 5.2: CHECKLIST FOR DESIGNING A TRAINING EVENT

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES: PURPOSES & CHARACTERISTICS

We have already emphasised that the process of setting learning objectives is an important part of training design.

Learning objectives serve three main purposes:

Learning objectives provide a critical link between the identification of learning needs and the actual design and delivery of learning. Well-written learning objectives should possess the following characteristics:

Most trainers agree on the value of setting learning objectives, although there are dissenting views. Some trainers find that rigorous objective setting makes the learning activity “too cold and clinical”, whereas others point to difficulties in composing objectives, especially those reflecting attitudinal learning outcomes.

Turning needs statements into learning objectives is not always an easy task. It is relatively simple to write tangible objectives from statements in the psychomotor (skills) areas, but much more difficult when you are focusing on knowledge, attitudes and longer-term training needs.

We summarise some of the benefits and difficulties associated with setting learning objectives in Figure 5.3.

FIGURE 5.3: ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES OF SETTING LEARNING OBJECTIVES

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COMPONENTS OF A LEARNING OBJECTIVE

There are three main components to a learning objective, which can be summarised as:

The following are examples of learning objectives that reflect the three components:

Knowledge Objectives

Skill Objectives

Affective Objectives
  • At the end of this two-day induction programme, you will be able to recall the main features of the organisation. You will be able to define the primary business objectives of the organisation
  • At the end of this one-day programme on employee selection, participants will be able to prepare a job description to a required format specified by the HR function
  • At the end of this week-long programme of customer service training, participants will recognise the importance of consistently delivering high quality customer service when interacting with customers
  • At the end of the two-day induction programme, participants will be able to recall / list the rules related to the use of email within this company and ensure their consistent application
  • At the end of this year-long diploma programme, you will be able to write a training policy statement that reflects the needs of the business and conforms with good practice, external training benchmarks and current laws
  • Participants, on completion of the two-day programme, will be continually conscious that they have ownership of quality issues when performing their duties on the assembly line
  • Participants, at the end of this two-day programme, will understand the rules to be followed when performing work in order to comply with the requirements of the FDA
  • At the end of this three-day job skills course, you will be able to conduct independently a change over on the screen-printer machine, following manufacturing instructions from one product to another during a production cycle
  • Participants will, on completion of this one-day programme on customer care, take full ownership of customer complaints and respond to them
 
  • At the end of this two-day team-building programme, participants will be able to make proposals during regular team meetings for change in a positive and non-threatening way
  • At the end of this weeklong induction programme, participants will accept responsibility for safe working within the plant and implement safe working practices when performing their duties

Figure 5.4 identifies a number of questions that you should consider to guide your analysis of a learning objective to determine its level of acceptability. A No answer to any question will pinpoint a characteristic that is missing or ambiguously stated. Clarity is judged by whether or not another person’s restatement of the objectives is consistent with your intent.

FIGURE 5.4: QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER WHEN SETTING LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1.Is it clear WHO will be performing the action?
It is not always necessary to state the “who” explicitly (the learner, the student, the trainee), unless there is potential for confusion about who is performing the action. Objectives should be written in terms of the performance outcomes you expect of the learner.

2.Is it clear WHAT the learner will be doing? Is the behaviour observable and/or measurable?

3.Is it clear UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS the learner will be performing?
There are two dimensions to this characteristic:
a) it may be appropriate to specify what the learner will be provided with during the learning event
b) it may be appropriate to describe the situation in which you expect the behaviour to occur (when conducting a CAA board meeting …; when confronted by an irate customer ...; when preparing to submit a proposal).

4.Is it clear WHAT LEVEL OF PROFICIENCY OR COMPETENCY is expected?
This may be stated in such terms as a number of percentage of correct test items, a change in score on an attitude inventory, execution of a process according to a prescribed sequence or other criteria. If time is a factor in successful performance, that may be specified as well.

5.Is it clear WHEN this behaviour is expected to be demonstrated?
This characteristic is usually stated in terms of the length of the instructional experience (at the end of a session, at the end of a week, after a certain number of practice sessions).

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: CLASSIFICATIONS & TYPOLOGIES

We will consider three models or frameworks that you can use when preparing training objectives. These hypotheses are theoretical, although they have useful application to the training area.

Bloom’s Typology of Learning

Bloom (1976) developed a categorisation of cognitive or knowledge capacities that is of considerable value to a trainer. This model has a number of benefits; in particular, it suggests a hierarchy that can be relatively easily applied to a range of training situations that you are likely to encounter.

Bloom makes three major divisions of learning objective, each called a “domain”:

The Cognitive Domain (Knowledge)

This domain is based on a hierarchy ranging from mere knowledge of facts to the intellectual process of evaluation. Each category within the domain is assumed to include behaviour at the lower levels:

The Affective Domain (Attitudes and Values)

This domain is “attitudinal” in focus and ranges very widely, from heeding the simple reception of stimuli to the complex ability to characterise or value concepts. Many training activities that you will be asked to design focus on changing attitudes. Examples include developing positive attitudes to customer service, quality and health and safety. Bloom suggests that there are five major categories of attitude objectives:

The Psychomotor Domain (Skills)

Bloom also indicated a skill category, although it is very narrowly-focused on the development of motor skills:

Some researchers have built on Bloom’s ideas and put forward more development-type categorisation – for example, Simpson proposes an alternative classification of psychomotor objectives. He suggests that there are seven categories of psychomotor objective:

Rackham and Morgan (1997) provide a very useful classification of interpersonal skills that can be used by the trainer to write interpersonal skill learning objectives:

THE CRAMP MODEL

Stammers and Patrick (1995) suggest a model of learning objectives, which they call the CRAMP model. They identify five components to the model:

CRAMP is a very useful model, because it specifies the methods that are most appropriate for each type of objective. For example, if the objective is comprehension, then it is appropriate to use projects, written materials, talks, manuals, discussion and argument. If the objective relates to attitudes, then the trainer should use role-plays, psychological simulations, group exercises, case incidents, scenarios and role models. Figure 5.5 provides an illustration of this matching process.

FIGURE 5.5: THE CRAMP MODEL & LEARNING METHODS

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BOYDELL’S MODEL OF LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Boydell (1997) takes an alternative approach, suggesting that the trainer needs to consider both the type of learning and the level of learning.

Types of Learning

Learning About Things

Learning about things is broadly speaking about “knowing”. This covers a broad spectrum of knowledge and understanding, including memorising or being aware of basic information, data, facts, existing explanations, rules and standard procedures. At a deeper level of learning about things, it encompasses the following:

Deeper still is the ability to understand whole fields of ideas and the way these are interrelated, by having a holistic overview of the way different sets of information or ideas are connected together. A specific example here is the ability to see how the various functions and departments of your organisation are part of a larger whole, and how are they all interdependent.

Learning to Do Things

“Learning to do things” is concerned with skills and techniques that can be used to facilitate management, control processes, enhance productivity and quality and thus improve customer satisfaction and increase profitability or value for money when using public funds.

This type of learning involves dealing with relatively standard, routine “programmed” tasks, by selecting and applying the appropriate technique. All organisations have many standard processes that are often written down in various procedure manuals.

However, “doing things” gets more complex when tackling “problems”. Faced with a variety of techniques, you have to know which are appropriate for your particular situation, and to what extent it or they will need modifying to suit your own unique circumstances. This involves, for example, decision-making, processing information, evaluating alternatives, choosing solutions and allocating responsibility for implementation. Doing these sorts of things requires initiative and the courage to step into the unknown and to take risks when the outcomes are uncertain. This is very different from simply following standard procedures.

A further level of complexity arises when you need to weave whole sets of techniques together, so that they become interconnected and co-ordinated, thus creating new processes, products and services. Doing this requires competencies such as organising, co-ordinating, mental resilience and the ability to cope with uncertainty, to balance the requirements of competing alternatives, to see things in terms of “both this and that”, rather than the relatively simple terms of “either this or that”. For example, a successful manager has to be able to learn both to lead and to hold themselves in the background, both to be dynamic and be reflective, both to be confident and to be humble, both to be able to keep a close relationship with their staff and to keep a suitable distance.

Learning to Become Yourself

As well as “learning to do things”, managing requires us to “learn to be”. It can be described as becoming yourself, to develop your own unique style of managing and to achieve your full potential. It is therefore important to develop the ability to assess yourself, so that you can identify your strengths and under-utilised opportunities, as well as aspects that need to be strengthened and developed further. A basic requirement is to learn to accept feedback from others and to see how this can form the basis of a personal development plan.

As you develop further, you don’t just wait for feedback but seek it actively and consciously, both from others and by reflecting on your own behaviour, thoughts, feelings and your intentions. From this, you can prepare your own development plan.

Gradually, this will increase your self-confidence, your awareness and your realistic appreciation of your own abilities. This will also enable you to re-examine critically your value system and draw conclusion(s) for yourself, to judge critically your own motivation, work habits and ethical values. Once we become conscious of our own deep values, beliefs and assumptions, we can also become aware of what we really want to achieve in life. We get a feeling for what our sense of purpose is and do something worthwhile not only for ourselves but also for our organisation, profession, community or society.

Learning to Achieve Things with Others

The fourth type of learning is “learning to achieve things with others”, which is where outcomes cannot be fully measured in terms of what individuals “take away”, but rather by what is created together. Team-working is a good example here, as carrying out your excepted role within a team requires teamwork and co-operation with other team members. It also requires using your best abilities in meetings, workshops and so on.

As well as team-working, another example is managers who, with increasing experience, need to be able to help other members perform to the best of their ability, thus showing leadership by inspiring and leading others. This way of working calls for the ability to work with diversity – working with people whose backgrounds, values, beliefs, skills, attitudes, language, customs, norms are different from ours. Therefore, learners need tolerance and respect for different personalities, cultures and opinions, and the ability to cohabit and co-operate in heterogeneous national, ethnic and cultural environments.

In fact this can be quite difficult – for example, engineers see personnel specialists as soft and out of touch with “real” issues. Personnel specialists on the other hand, see engineers as narrow-minded and mechanistic. Whether we are in finance, marketing, sales, public relations, research and development, we tend to see ourselves as “normal” and to have negative stereotypes about others.

Levels of Learning

Each of the four types of learning progresses through three levels, starting from being relatively simple and gradually deepening and becoming more complex. We call these Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 learning, or simply Levels L1, L2 and L3.

Level 1 (L1) is about getting things “right”, according to currently accepted ideas, procedures, norms, etc. At its best, this level enables you to perform, to do things well, and to meet current accepted standards. These standards usually come from outside, from someone else other than yourself, such as your boss or an expert, or already accepted procedures.

At Level 2 (L2), you are now thinking and acting for yourself. This requires a much more independent form of learning than L1. Being taught (the essence of L1 learning) is not appropriate here. We need to use processes that involve you, the learner, in thinking for yourself, making your own meaning from your own experiences, of the situations you find yourself in, or the puzzles with which you are grappling. Therefore, learning is less off-the-job and more on-the-job, using the very issues that you are concerned with as the vehicles for learning.

Level L2 moves us on from implementing into improving and pushing out the frontiers of what we do already. It is an incremental approach, involving a wide range of gradual, partial and incremental changes. Where more radical changes are involved, we need a third type of learning: (Level 3 – L3).

FIGURE 5.6: LEVELS OF LEARNING

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Large-scale change, by its very nature, involves large numbers of people such as a wide range of stakeholders who, as the word indicates, have a “stake” or interest in the organisation and its changes. Levels L1 and L2 learning cannot on their own handle this type of situation. It is not possible to manage large-scale change through using a standard formula or recipe (L1). Such situations are far too complex for simplistic approaches. Neither will the continuous improvement approaches of L2 be adequate here. The essence of this level of learning is to make incremental improvements to what already exists, rather than creating something new, which is what L3 is about. We therefore sometimes refer to this third level as innovating. In this way, we go from learning to do things better (L2) to learning to do better things (L3).

Level L3 is often also called integrating, because you need to be able to connect together different sets of ideas, perspectives, processes and people. You are moving from the somewhat individualistic stance of independence in L2 to one of interdependence and of being mutually connected and supportive. This level of learning therefore needs to go beyond “thinking for myself” to ways of working together and “thinking with each other”.

Figure 5.7 provides a summary of the types and levels of learning.

FIGURE 5.7: DOMAINS & LEVELS OF LEARNING

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WRITING LEARNING OBJECTIVES

In order for learning objectives to be effective, they must satisfy certain criteria. In particular, they should:

DEVELOPING TRAINING CONTENT

The learning objectives you set determine the content you will include in your training programme. The trainer can often identify content that is related to the learning objective but not essential to it. Content should be assessed in terms of what must be learned to achieve the objective. The trainer needs to prioritise and determine what should be included and what could be included.

Working Out Content

In the absence of a job analysis and information on training needs, there are two techniques that can help the trainer to work out course content. Both are equally useful and it is usually a question of using the technique that feels most comfortable. However, we point out that a proper and systematic training needs analysis is a core component of the systematic training process.

Learning Maps

Learning maps (sometimes referred to as “mind-maps”) are an effective and easy way to assemble information about a subject. The difficulty in trying to collect information is that we tend to try and put it all down in a logical step-by-step format but continually have to revise it as new elements and ideas spring to mind. Learning maps recognise that learners do not think in logical steps, that there is often a constant stream of unconnected bits of information flowing from learners’ minds and that the trainer should capture it in that format. This can be facilitated in the following way:

You may want to re-draw the map later; this is okay and helps it lodge in your memory. The map should represent the sum of knowledge, thoughts and ideas about the subject and can be added to or developed at a later stage without any difficulty. Because of the visual nature of the map, it is much easier to see connections between ideas or spot areas that are in need of development.

Horizontal Plan

As the name suggests, this process seeks to lay out the content of the training in a highly visual manner but with a potential flow built-in. The idea is to identify the headings and sub-headings of the subject and build the content around this plan. This process again makes use of the random thought patterns that occur when developing training material. One very simple and practical way of doing this is:

Again, this is quite a visual way of representing the sum total of information on a subject. It is also flexible and adaptable.

Sequence and Timing of Training Content

Once you have decided on the content that is appropriate to achieving your learning objectives, the next decisions you have to make are:

Training content is usually sequenced in a logical order to reflect the training needs. Learning order is an important issue. Learning one task may be impossible or difficult until another is learned. Learning one task before another, even though not required, may facilitate learning the second task. Learning two tasks or content areas together may be feasible.

Sequencing is a necessary activity. Some tasks may have to be scheduled in a particular order. Others may prove helpful if scheduled in a particular order. Other areas of content may be scheduled in any order without consequence to themselves or to remaining tasks/content areas. You will be guided in making sequencing decisions from the results of your training needs and task analysis outputs.

You may find a number of patterns:

Figure 5.8 summarises a number of guidelines and principles that you should follow when sequencing training content.

FIGURE 5.8: GUIDELINES FOR SEQUENCING THE CONTENT OF YOUR TRAINING PROGRAMME

The second issue you need to consider when sequencing content is the time you should allocate to each component of content. This activity can be undertaken in the form of a daily session plan. Figure 5.9 provides an example of such a plan.

We identify four key components that you should consider.

FIGURE 5.9: A DAILY SESSION PLAN

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COMMON ERRORS IN TRAINING PROGRAMME DESIGN

We conclude this chapter with some pointers on the main errors that are made when designing training programmes. It is a frequent, but not advisable, situation that you may not know what your learners need to achieve. As a result, you may design a “know what” learning event when you should be designing a “know how” event. At worst, the learning event may be counter-productive. Equally, you may not make the objectives clear to the participants at the outset.

Training not Aimed at the Target Audience

Unless you have clearly analysed your training needs and considered the characteristics of your learners, the training you design may be inappropriate. It may be:

Wrong Medium of Presentation

Inexperience may lead you to rely too much on one method or make an inappropriate selection given you learning objective. For example, you may use:

Poor Organisation and Presentation

A whole host of problems may arise here. The main errors include:

Insufficient Preparation

An experienced trainer may get away with a few notes. A person making a presentation, however, needs to be word perfect. A trainer whose audience can see that he is improvising loses credibility. Here are some of the more common problems:

Poor Pacing

A very common fault is that trainers insist on presenting too much material for learners to absorb. Learners learn at their own pace, which can be fairly slow. Pressing on regardless will leave the audience reflecting on the last two points made, and eventually opting out altogether. Trainers may then have the choice of reaching some of their objectives fully or all of their objectives incompletely.

Bad Timing of the Learning Event

People will not appreciate an earlier start to the day than they would normally have. Likewise, if a trainer organises a training event on Friday afternoon, participants will be thinking of their weekend instead of the subject.

The Belief that Telling or Exhortation Alone Will Change Behaviour

It is very difficult to persuade employees to adopt safe practices. For example, it requires a law, or at least an enforceable rule, to make them wear hard hats or safety glasses. Managing directors who tell staff that they must all work harder if the company is to survive will have little effect, but presented with the hard facts of impending closure, the employees are likely to respond to the threat to their jobs.

BEST PRACTICE INDICATORS

Some of the best practice issues that you should consider related to the contents of this chapter are as:

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Reflections on the Training & Development Scenario

The following represents a possible solution to the training design problem.

Objectives: At the end of the programme, learners will be able to instruct newcomers to the company to reach their own level of competence in estimating.

Criteria: The participants will have prepared and presented two lessons, the second of which will be clearly understood by their colleagues and they will have designed the practical exercises that will enable their learners to consolidate their knowledge.

Timetable

Day 1

  • Introductions
  • Ice Breaker, Objectives and Overview
  • Encouragement; you know your subject and can learn to teach it. The aim is learners ‘learning by doing’; get them started and coach them when necessary.
  • Learning about objectives, criterion tests and lesson design.
  • Learners start to prepare their first lessons.

Day 2

  • Half day; learners finish preparing their own lessons
  • Half day; half the learner’s present lessons, which are recorded on CCTV and then appraised by both the other learners and the tutor.

Day 3

  • Half day; the remainder of the learners present their lessons.
  • Discussion on the results to date. Note that each student learned from his predecessor.
  • Half-day presentation on visual aids. Test the visual aids presentation: even the best of lectures is only moderately effective.
  • Review the lessons of the presentation on visual aids.
  • Discuss the implications for future lessons.

Day 4

  • Learners prepare their second lesson and practical work.

Day 5

  • Learners present their second lessons in reverse order, ideally with at least one of the estimating managers present.
  • Final summing up and review.
  • Evaluation.