Here’s a rule I use (and train others to use) in designing training packages in a faster and cheaper fashion to produce more effective learning and application:
Design your training while delivering it.
A Naïve Beginning
When I started my training career, I conducted most of my training design in a vacuum, isolated at my desk. I carefully performed analysis, design, evaluation, and re-design activities. Then I delivered my training, only to be painfully surprised because it did not work the way it is supposed to.
An Emergency Epiphany
The lightning bolt struck me when I was in Somalia working with the UNHCR, training local volunteers to process refugees crossing the border. We did not have the luxury of using the traditional instructional design approach. We did not have the time or the budget. All we had were eager volunteers and half-a-dozen practitioners (not SMEs with theory but field workers with experience.)
This is what we did: We asked the experienced practitioners to tutor a volunteer on the knowledge and skills required for interviewing refugees and categorizing them for the appropriate intervention. We asked the practitioner-tutors (PTs) to do this in a one-on-one, face-to-face situation. We encouraged the PTs to use their judgement on how best to tutor the volunteer. During the tutoring session, we created an audio recording of the conversation. (Alas, this all happened before video recorders or smart phones.)
After the tutoring session, we (the training designers) debriefed the volunteers to discover the confusing and satisfying parts of what they learned and how they learned it. We thanked the volunteers and sent them to work. Then we brainstormed with the PT to list ideas for improving the tutoring session (mostly by talking less and encouraging the trainees to talk more).
We transcribed the audio recording, edited it, and re-recorded it. We prepared a checklist to help the volunteer during the intake interview. We asked another volunteer to master the task by using these materials. We asked the PT to observe this learning process and assist the volunteer only if it became absolutely necessary. After the session and after a discussion with the volunteer, we worked with the PT to clean up the audio recording and edit the checklist. We re-used these improved materials with other volunteers. In the later sessions, we had small groups of volunteers (instead of individuals) go through the learning process.
We tracked the newly trained volunteers in the field and interviewed them about the challenges they faced and the workarounds they improvised. We incorporated their best practices in our training package.
Lessons Learned
It has been a long time since those days, but the design lessons we learned have stayed with us. We use the appropriate ideas in all the training we design today:
Design the training while delivering it.
Every time someone delivers training, you have valuable information to improve it.
Combine analysis, design, implementation, evaluation, and redesign, all as a concurrent activity.
Involve the learners as part of the design team from the very beginning--and forever.
Base your training on conversational audio recordings and job aids.
Let the training design emerge from the interaction between the trainer and the trainee.
We explain that our instructional design process as building airplanes while flying them. If anyone shudders, we explain that this is a brand-new technique in design thinking called in-situ prototyping.