Operations Head at G&H Management Services

24 articles

This is the second and final part of an article on Professional Training Material Design; which is intended to stimulate thought and debate among L&D professionals. The author bases this piece on 30 years’ experience in designing Leadership and Soft Skills training material for MNCs mostly in Asia.

Previously we explored the first steps in Training Material Design, those steps being: 

1.      Organizational Culture  The design of the material must strongly reflect the leaning culture of the organization……….

2.      Audience Assessment You will need to identify critical information on the audience…….

3.      Method of Learning  Blended or conventional ……….

4.      Expected Outcomes Based on the Kirkpatrick model ……

For more details on these steps, please refer to the first part of the article. 

We are now ready to begin the actual design of the material; however before we do so it is important to consider that Training Material Design is not a linear process, the designer is constantly moving backwards and forwards, revisiting / revising the outcomes of the various steps.

5.      Resource Research and Gathering Information

Needless to say, for most people this means Google. I’m lucky, I have and extensive resource library of both books and eBooks, as well as a wealth of personally developed material to call upon.

There is one piece of common sense advise that I’d like to offer; much of the resource material available is Western Centric and written by academics. As this article is written for L&D specialists based in Asia, a word of caution is offered, what works in New York, might not be applicable for Danang.   

Involving as many stakeholders as possible in providing information / examples in theory is a good idea, in practice it is time consuming and often does not produce the desired results. Common sense advise, only solicit information from those who are “able and willing” to help.        

6.      Determine Methodology and Begin Design

In step 3, it has been determined what the overall learning approach will be, now is the time to actually finalize what activities will be used. Assuming the program is one day in duration, and that the number of participants permits discovery learning; a typical training sequence would look something like this:

7.      Pilot and Program Evaluation 

This can be as simple, or as complicated as you would like to make it. Firstly select a facilitator who is comfortable following a lesson plan;  you need to pilot the program, not the creativity of the facilitator.

Secondly you need 3 program assessment tools, one for the participants, another for the trainer, and finally one for the training assessor. Ideally the training assessor will be a third party L&D specialist.  Once the feedback has been complied, conclusions need to be drawn and changes made.

8.      Ongoing Monitoring 

If in step 4, the expected outcomes included an “at work application”, the designer is responsible for not only following up on the in-classroom success but the transference.

Final note

I’ve tried to keep this article as concise as possible; the challenge is Professional Training Material Design is not a simple process, I wish you success on your journey. A slide presentation to support this article will be released on April 1, 2019, if you’d like to pre-order please contact your nearest G&H representative.

Garry Howell March 4, 2019