Author: Leigh Dudley

Evaluation – not everyone’s favorite topic but it is a necessary “evil” especially if we as trainers are running our programs like a business. What do I mean by this? Well with this lovely economic environment we are currently in, we all know that soft-skills training departments are the first to make cuts or lay offs (IT trainers not so much, they have the “techies” and updates to help)…I regress… Managers and CEO’s as we all know look at the bottom-line and if training departments do not produce results then bye bye training department.

We all know about Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels of evaluation right! Well let’s add one more level RETURN ON INVESTMENT or ROI this part of an evaluation program is often left out, not thought of as important or just not done because training departments don’t know how or it’s time consuming – but for what ever reason training departments often leave this critical piece of evaluation out. We should always do an ROI – then when the big guys come and look at our evaluation of training then we can show them that the rate of return was high enough to justify our program. CEO’s and managers understand ROI and can easily see how effective the program is or isn’t and if the ROI is high enough then it the TD is usually safe. Doing the 5 levels rather than 4 levels shows that we as trainers are accountable for a profit or at least a high rate of return on the companies investment. It shows we care to run our departments like a business. We are setting a good example of being responsible for our programs.

Friday I will give some tips on calculating ROI and show how simple it can be…

Remember comments, concerns and questions are always welcome.

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

We as trainers have a responsibility to both the organizations we are working for and to the clients we are training to be effective and interesting. I realize that the topic for tonight was suppose to be on task analysis and andragogy, but I was in a classroom setting recently and the trainers simply were not effective. There were several reasons for this, so I want to stress the importance of classroom training that will work and that will not.

There are several items that make a classroom setting effective:

• Relevance to the problem or situation at hand
• Gearing your training to the population you are training (even though the 25th quartile holds true – we have to adjust for the 75th quartile also)
• Gearing our training sessions to the adult learner
• Group work
• Activities
• Making sure we are not lecturing for hours on end, but instead letting our clients come up ideas and solutions — if they need guidance, then let’s guide them
• Avoiding lecturing as if the clients are children
• Challenging our clients
• Asking our clients questions and then listening to their answers
• Being enthusiastic and asking the client what they feel the problem(s) and solution(s) might be
• Allowing for short breaks and not saving all the Q&A for the end — instead, mixing it up

What we don’t want to do is pedagogical training; we want our clients to be self-directed and independent thinkers — participation is key to good classroom training. Our training needs to be effective and interesting.

Remember that after we leave, the clients should feel that they have had a hand in the training and were helped by their own participation. We don’t want them falling asleep because the training was boring, irrelevant or tedious. They should walk away with new knowledge, of course (or why train?), but we have to keep it interesting and smart.

Ideas, comments and guest writers are strongly encouraged.

Happy Training!

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

As training professionals we all are aware of the real differences between the two learning styles. But do we really apply our knowledge of the effectiveness of andragogy in our programs? Malcomb Knowles, a predominant authority in the adult learning world, stresses the use of Andragogical style in adult learning programs.

This of course is important to trainers because we are predominately working with adults. It’s important in training to lead and direct a training, but let the group come up with their solutions and their own and keeping the training relevant to the problem we are trying to solve.

How many times as trainers do we put up a Powerpoint slide show, pass out some material and then start a lecture — pedagogical learning to the hilt.

Rather than this type of approach, lets get our folks into groups, present the current problem for that day and see what solutions or ideas they can come up with? This might be a little more time consuming but it’s so much more effective.

The principle difference in Pedagogy V Andragogy is that in Pedagogical style the teacher or instructor assumes full responsibility for what is taught and how it’s learned, and the teacher/instructor evaluates learning. In the Andragogical style: the learner is self-directed, the learner is responsible for his/her own learning and self-evaluation is characteristic of this approach. In the Andragogy style, the learner is the beneficiary, making the learning process much more fun, exciting and challenging. This in turn helps the training stick — and isn’t this why we train in the first place?

I am just pointing to the benefits of andragogy in adult learners. There are several more benefits and differences. For more information and an easy look at the differences between these two styles follow this link. http://www.floridatechnet.org/inservice/abe/abestudent/andravsped.pdf – it’s a nice chart showing the differences.

Comments to this post are welcome.

Next Topic will also be on adult learning and task analysis.

Any thoughts on topics you’d like to see here are welcome also.

Happy Training!

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.