A Baker's Dozen (+1) Design Disasters

For a training professional, it always helps to read over and over again about what can go wrong while designing, developing, and delivering training courses.

Becky Pluth, in a recent article in Bob Pike's Training and Development e-Zine, lists the following as a baker's dozen (+1) training design disasters.

1. Using language that belittles participants or puts on airs
2. Designing the training first and then writing the terminal and enabling objectives
3. Spending too much time on the nice-to-know versus the need-to-know
4. Chunking the content into unmanageable learning portions
5. Stating objectives of the session and then not meeting them
6. Not providing a roadmap of where the session is going
7. Telling stories that don’t match the message but are your “favourite” and everyone “loves” them
8. Telling participants what to do versus showing them and allowing them to DO
9. Not building activities that teach your content into the training
10. Creating job aids that are conceptual instead of behavioural
11. Using a PowerPoint deck as your handout
12. Not reviewing or revisiting content throughout the session
13. Using the same activity multiple times
14. Overusing one form of media (DVDs, gaming, books, etc.)

For elaboration on the above points, read Becky's full article.