NO COOKIE CUTTER TRAINING
February 3, 2016
Higher education has its place in preparing our next generation of trainers and instructional designers. Theoretical understanding is important.
However, when it comes to teaching “templates of learning design,” higher education seriously misdirects the student.
Cookie-cutter solutions are never the answer.
Every training challenge undertaken has specific — not, generic — solutions. Templating (either by the organization itself or by the purchase of a vendor’s templated courseware) will not work. You may create, or purchase, such a course — but, you will not provide a solution.
Why?
Because each training initiative you undertake must be tailored to the specific skills necessary to adequately perform a specific task!
And, that means knowing your workforce demographics; the specific jobs assigned; and, the specific skills required to perform those jobs.
Bottom line: It is critical to focus training where it will have the greatest effect on performance.
You can identify the opportunities for improving performance by analyzing needs assessment and task analysis data.
Rich on-line skills assessment tests are readily available that can help you specifically target the “learning gaps” within your employee population, making it possible for you to design specific solutions while, at the same time, eliminating much of the waste in traditional training regimen (“the ‘cookie cutter’ approach”).
One size does NOT fit all!
Rather, in order to be successful a training initiative must become a specific solution that can be successfully implemented within the existing challenges of your organization.
Design your training initiatives from the ground up. And that will include a skills gap analysis plus both a task analysis and the skills analysis necessary to perform those tasks.
That’s the way to do it right!
More on Monday – – –
— Bill Walton, co-Founder, ITC Learning
www.itclearning.com/blog/ (Mondays & Wednesdays)