5 Ways to Ruin Your Training Program

Since we’ve been spending so much time discussing what makes good training, we should take a look at the alternative and examine what makes for bad training.  Knowing what to avoid will help in creating a training program that is learner-centered and performance-based.

Here are some of the common mistakes I’ve found in training:

• Building training without a clear objective. Don’t just create training for the sake of training. If you want your learners to change their behavior, learn a new skill or acquire new knowledge, make sure a core set of measurable objectives are incorporated throughout the training.
• Taking your audience for granted. Not everybody learns equally.  Some people are very visual learners and prefer to learn through experience.  Create your training so it exploits your learners’ preferred learning style. In order to identify your audience’s preferred learning style, this will require some up-front analysis, observation and interviewing of your audience members.
• Distributing your training through a fire hose. Some developers of training feel compelled to overload their courses with too much content.  Most content on a training topic is not relevant to the training that is needed. It’s best to focus specifically on what the learner needs to know in context to the training need in order to meet the defined training objective(s).
• Too much focus on the means, too little focus on the ends. This happens often with training on how to operate software or web applications. Far too much focus is placed on how to use an application, but very little attention is placed on how the tool will make the learner’s tasks easier. Make your training relevant to your audience.
• Overloading course content with media. Just because you have access to cool animations and effects, doesn’t necessarily mean you should use it. Too much media can be overwhelming to the learner. Make your media choices carefully and make sure what you present is relevant and supportive of the objectives.

There are many more ways training can be developed yet miss the mark on its original intent. What are some you have identified or experienced yourself?

Further Reading

For more information on this topic, please see the following:

• Three Things You Should Know About Training
• Defining Training
• What Instructional Design Means to PinPoint Performance Solutions