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.

P A F

Presentation, Application, and Feedback (PAF). These are the three elements of FKA’s learning model in the systematic learning process. This is a simple yet effective model that can help instructional designers develop training that works.

In the Presentation phase, new knowledge and skills are presented to the learner. But before the information is passed on, the motive for the information transfer is established. The motive answers the learner’s question: what’s in it for me? (WIIFM). The presentation phase also includes a test for understanding to ensure that learning has indeed happened.

In the Application phase, the learner is given an opportunity to practice or use the skills and knowledge just presented. This phase is important because people learn by doing.

In the Feedback phase, the learner is given constructive feedback to reinforce the skills and knowledge just used. The learner is also offered suggestions for improvement.

Not surprisingly, the PAF model roughly aligns with the nine instructional events from Robert Gagne’s Conditions of Learning. The nine events are gain attention, inform learners of objectives, stimulate recall of prior learning, present the content, provide learning guidance, elicit performance, provide feedback, assess performance, and enhance retention and transfer.

FKA also recommends that the presentation phase should take
30-40% of the learner’s time, whereas the application and feedback phases should take up the rest of the time (60-70%). Adhering to this time allocation guideline is extremely important in developing effective training programmes.

Many training programs do not allot sufficient time for the application and feedback phases of the systematic learning process. This could be a major reason for the overabundance of inadequate and ineffective training courses that we see around us.