This document discusses moving training from a focus solely on content delivery to improving performance and learning transfer. It notes that while many training programs aim to make content more engaging, traditional training still only leads to 37% learning transfer and only 25% of CEOs feel training is effective. The document advocates using a "journey model" for training that engages learners, diagnoses gaps, provides learning and opportunities for practice and application, assesses outcomes, and reinforces learning over time. It provides examples of using this model for developing new frontline leaders and information security training.
11. 76% of L&D Functions have redesigned
learning content to make it more enjoyable.
76%
CEB 2016 Head of L&D Digital Learner Survey
12. 67% of L&D Functions have increased the
number of learning channels they utilize.
67%
CEB 2016 Head of L&D Digital Learner Survey
13. I guess we’re doing something right, right?
So what are you doing to make content
more engaging?
14. And yet with all that effort, traditional training
still only creates 37% learning transfer back
on the job.
37%
CEB 2016 Head of L&D Digital Learner Survey
An Update on Learning Transfer
15. While only 25% of CEOs think that their
training programs are effective at
measurably improving performance.
25%
Building capabilities for performance: McKinsey Global Survey Results, September 2014
22. …instead of thinking of training or learning
design as merely the act of getting content
into people’s heads.
* This image depicts what is called a Keg Stand and involves getting a
LOT of beer into one’s head in a very short amount of time. This is NOT
recommended for either drinking OR training.
23. We need to shift from thinking solely
about the content to thinking about the
journey from current state to future state
and bridging the learning-doing gap.
25. How motivated were you? Did someone
need to convince you or were you all in?
26. Then there was that moment when you realized
“hey, maybe this isn’t so easy.” You realized you
had a gap.
27. You took the required Drivers’ Ed class and
learned.
28. You put in practice time on the road
(possibly with your Dad).
29. And finally you took the completely terrifying
road test (maybe more than once?!)
30. So now you’ve got the skills, but sometimes
you need to review the rules of the road…or
take a class because of all those speeding
tickets you seem to get…
31. The learning to drive journey really isn’t
all that different from any other learning
journey.
33. Engage
• How ready is your audience to move toward a
change?
• Do they need to be convinced?
• Do you need to capture their attention?
• Or do they already have the intrinsic motivation
to go on this journey?
34. Diagnose
• How aware is your audience of their current
performance and abilities?
• Do they have a solid understanding of their
strengths, weaknesses and gaps?
• Will users have a concrete and meaningful
goal for improvement?
35. Learn/Understand
• Will users need new explanations, models, or
other content?
• Is it a knowledge or skills gap, or does a
behavior need to change?
• What sort of learning solution is most
appropriate?
36. Apply (Deliberate Practice)
• How difficult will it be to apply the
knowledge or skill back on the job? How
much practice, help, and support is
appropriate?
• What’s the cost of failure on the job?
• Will users need job aids, references, or
other performance support when back on
the job?
37. Assess
• How will you determine if the desired outcome
was achieved?
• Will users need to demonstrate their
proficiency to earn a credential?
38. Reinforce
• Will the information, processes or technology
being used taught over time?
• How important is it to keep the content top-of-
mind?
• Will users need to keep current with changes
and advance their capabilities over time?
58. Discover how we’re shaping
the future of learning
Kineo helps the world’s leading businesses improve
performance through learning and technology.
We combine quality in learning with award-winning customer
service and innovation. We’re here to take on your learning and
performance challenges – and deliver results.
So, how can we help you?
• Consultancy and evaluation
• Bespoke digital learning
• Off the shelf learning content
• Learning management systems and platforms
Hinweis der Redaktion
CEB research
We design great classroom programs that teach core skills and provide opportunities to practice; we build exceptional self-paced online experiences that teach concepts and skills; we deliver blended programs that deliver content through multiple channels.
CEB 2016 Head of L&D Digital Learner Survey
CEB research
We design great classroom programs that teach core skills and provide opportunities to practice; we build exceptional self-paced online experiences that teach concepts and skills; we deliver blended programs that deliver content through multiple channels.
CEB 2016 Head of L&D Digital Learner Survey
How do you engage your learners? (Or what have you heard of/thought of doing to engage your learners?)
While this is all well and good – and absolutely needs to be part of the big picture – data shows a different story on which we should be focusing. In fact, helping people learn is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for improved performance. In other words, simply improving the learning experience so it’s more engaging, just isn’t enough if we really want to drive better results and improved performance in our organizations.
This point is amplified by research from the Conference Board (CEB) that tells us traditional training only creates 37 % learning transfer.
Let’s unpack this a bit so you can see the number in stark relief: 37% learning transfer means only 37% of the people we train actually go on to apply what they’ve learned when they complete the training event and go back to the workplace. If application, knowledge transfer, and performance improvement is the point of what we do, then we’re falling way short.
Myungweon Choi and Wendy E.A. Ruona, University of Georgia, An Update on Learning Transfer https://archive.org/stream/ERIC_ED501613/ERIC_ED501613_djvu.txt
That’s a pretty bad track record. But what can we do about it?
To architect effective solutions that achieve knowledge transfer, we can’t focus on knowledge delivery alone. We need a more robust model.
Today, let’s take a look at the big picture. Not just the training event itself, but the BEFORE and the AFTER.
While we tend to focus on the delivery of content, there is a significant body of research that the transfer of learning is much more dependent on what happens before and after the formal learning event. Robert Brinkerhoff’s Courageous Training Model (shown below) provides a framework for creating learning solutions with high transfer.
Courage Training: Bold Action for New Results (2008)
It’s courageous because it’s a call to action for trainers – to move away from the traditional and try something different.
Create motivation, focus, alignment, and intentionality
Purpose/goal of the training
Preparation of case, re ection assignment, article, interview with colleague/client
Mobilization of managers and including them in the design phase through impact map/learning contracts
Provide quality learning interventions and tools
Incorporation of adult learning practices into the design of the workshop
Skills focus - feedback
Case-specific training
Design of training for easy transfer
(This is where ”WE” have traditionally spent all of our energy, right? Designing The During. The Event itself. The elearning, the ILT…
Support performance improvement and implementation
Follow-up and home assignments, participate in a colleague meeting, supervision, and feedback, learning groups, systems to capture and share learning
Review of impact map/learning contract with Manager
The trainer should be the 'conductor' controlling the entire process before, during, and after the training program and getting all stakeholders to interact in perfect harmony.
Today, most organizations view design as an aesthetic. Too many learning designers only think about how to get the content into people’s heads. They focus on what a solution will look like and the bells and whistles that they think will “engage” the user. While these elements certainly create an enjoyable experience and may add to the credibility of the content itself, it’s important to think about design in broader terms.
Let’s start by defining the future state we want to achieve and then consider all of the points of engagement and their purpose that are required to get there. This means shifting our focus from the “content” we want to get into people’s heads to understanding the gap between current state and future state. From there we can then design a broader experience to support the change journey on which, we’d like to lead the individual.
This idea of a change journey may sound mystical, but we’ve all been through them. Remember when you learned to drive? It was a process – a journey, in fact.
It started with your excitement about getting your driver’s permit, and it carried you through a number of steps until you proved your proficiency on the road
with an examiner and finally got to take a horrible picture to be printed on that coveted license.
So let’s break that journey down a bit…
Motivation probably wasn't a big issue for you. You had friends or older siblings who were already driving, and you were ready to go. (You had high intrinsic motivation, unlike many compliance training courses!)
Watching your parents drive while they were throwing snacks to the kids in the back seat and drinking a cup of coffee sure made driving look easy. But after that rst time behind the wheel in a parking lot when the car seemed to have mind
of it's own, you quickly realized this was going to be harder than it looked and that your skills needed some work.
You attended Driver's Ed, where you watched videos, read rules of the road, talked through different scenarios, and
occasionally got behind the wheel.
You then spent countless hours behind the wheel – probably with a parent or driver's instructor – and refined your skills. And you probably made more than a handful of mistakes along the way until you felt confident enough to head over to the DMV and take your road test.
At the DMV, you took a formal assessment of your knowledge and demonstrated your driving skills.
Now every three years you go back and in some states take a written exam, and you may not want to admit it – you need to brush up on your skills to get ready
Or you realize you forgot that rule…or you get into a fender bender etc.
It’s a a six step process for a change journey: engage, diagnose, learn, apply, assess, reinforce.
Let’s break the journey down to better understand what was really involved. (It looks a lot easier than it really is!) s you begin to architect and design a new learning solution, consider applying this six-step process. You’ll want to consider some key questions about each step that will help you determine how much emphasis to place on that step and what types of experiences will work best to support that step in the journey. You may even find that some steps may not be needed.
How ready is your audience to move toward a change? Do they need to be convinced? Do you need to capture their attention? Or do they already have the intrinsic motivation to go on this journey?
How aware is your audience of their current performance and abilities? Do they have a solid understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and gaps?
Will users have a concrete and meaningful goal for improvement?
How conscious will users be about their current capabilities and their gaps? To what extent will level of capability vary between different users?
What sort of learning solution is most appropriate? Is it a knowledge or skills gap, or does a behavior need to change?
Will users need new explanations, models, or other content?
Beyond what users already know, what new knowledge will they require?
How difficult will it be to apply the knowledge or skill back on the job? How much practice, help, and support is appropriate?
Will users need practice to succeed back on the job?
Is practice anywhere needed? Will users get it anyway back on the job? If so, will they receive meaningful feedback? What’s the cost of failure on the job?
Will users need job aids, references, or other performance support when back on the job?
Will users need detailed step-by-step guidance? Quick cards? Common issues and how to tackle them?
How will you determine if the desired outcome was achieved?
Will users need to demonstrate their proficiency to earn a credential?
How will what you be taught change over time? How important is it to keep the content top-of-mind?
Will users need to keep current with changes and advance their capabilities over time?
Will the situations that users face change over time? Will the processes or technology they use? Do they already have ways of keeping current?
Crafting Your Journey
In other contexts—say, learning how to give better feedback to an employee or learning how to complete the correct process in order to execute a customer’s transaction—the mix or blend of the six steps in the journey may differ in emphasis and execution from learning how to drive a car. But the essential structure generally remains the same.
So as you think about how to architect an overall learning solution that will really improve performance and be applied back on the job, it’s helpful to use these six steps as a guide. Bersin describes this approach as “continuous learning.”
Example 1:
Developing Front-line Managers
Business Need: The transition from individual performer to front-line manager is one of the most difficult transitions people have to make. As a new manager, your first priority shifts from getting the work done yourself to building a team and enabling them to succeed. It’s a set of skills that may be completely new to you. And even if they aren’t completely new, you probably have limited experience putting them to use.
So what’s the mix?
DIAGNOSE
While new managers will often feel overwhelmed, they typically don’t have the experience to understand their specific skills gaps and challenges. An upfront diagnostic made up of self-assessment and team feedback is used to de ne needs and set priorities.
APPLY
Most of the skills need by front-line managers, e.g. coaching, feedback, delegating, etc. can be introduced with simple models, but putting them into practice is much more dif cult. Structured practice with feedback from a manager turns out to be the most critical part of the program. So in this example, we would make sure to build in a lot of real-word practice activities into our overall solution design.
Business Need: In the shadow of a major information security breach in the industry, this entertainment company had a strong need to introduce information security best practices and keep them top-of-mind as people went about their day-to-day work.
ENGAGE
Let’s face it: Most information security training gets a cursory look at best, but in this case, due to potentially signi cant consequences of a violation, getting all employees engaged was critical. To meet the need, the company implemented a broad campaign infused with a bit of humor. The goal was to really help people understand WHY this mattered. They needed to get them engaged and truly understand the consequences of not complying with their policies. To do this, they created a highly visible, viral campaign that included short videos (two bumbling characters out to create the greatest movie ever made on information security), posters from well-known movies with our bumbling characters superimposed along with clever taglines, messaging and theming of cafeteria menus on Info Sec awareness days, and more.
REINFORCE
Of course cyber security threats aren’t a one-time event – they are constant – so after the “learning” phase (achieved through a series of short eLearning modules), key messages and best practices were reinforced with ongoing emails to keep content top of mind. Individuals were also given a desktop best “decoder” or practice wheel to help them quickly determine the right response to different situations.
Time permitting – have participants work in a small group to consider their own learning journey challenge. What’s the mix.
Handout provided for this task, which includes the Learning Experience Goals and a Key Solution Components – 6 Step Mixer.
Hope Isn't a Method
Today, too many of us develop training that begins and ends with the delivery of content. We then hope it will have the desired result. We hope learners are engaged and motivated to take the course. We cross our fingers and hope they apply what they learned back on the job. We hope we achieve the desired outcome we set out to target.
Given this approach, it’s no surprise that only 25% of CEOs think that their training programs are effective at measurably improving performance. For L&D to take a step forward, we need to work with our business partners to own the change journey from beginning to end. We need to think beyond the event itself and architect solutions that will drive the types of tangible results your business needs.
(25% source: Building capabilities for performance: McKinsey Global Survey Results, September 2014
)