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When people think of training, many things come to mind.  Some think of training as classroom instruction where learners enter a room to hear a lecture, watch some videos and discuss a topic with their peers.  Others think of training as hands-on such as learning on the job with a more experienced counterpart providing corrective feedback.  However you think of training it is important to understand where it comes from and how it is put together so it is effective and meets defined objectives.

The process of creating effective training is known as instructional design. It is a methodology of creating training that is objective, drawing upon many disciplines such as adult psychology, learning theory and communications (just to name a few) with the primary purpose of transferring knowledge targeted toward a specific audience to illicit performance.

In other words, the best way to describe instructional design, or effective training, is to borrow from one of my favorite books on the subject – Telling Ain't Training by Stolovitch and Keeps. Effective training is:

Learner-centered, performance-based.

It’s about who the learner is, how best they acquire new knowledge and how we as the instructor or designer want them to apply the new knowledge.

In addition to the Stolovitch and Keeps book, another book on instructional design I recommend is ISD From the Ground Up (2nd Ed): A No-Nonsense Approach to Instructional Design by Chuck Hodell.  If you would like to learn more about instructional design, visit our Training & Performance Support page and visit a Knol I created on Building Effective Training in Five Easy Steps based on the Stolovich and Keeps book.