The Key to Outstanding Learning Outcomes: Design Learning Processes

Designing training programs can be an arduous process if you take on the responsibility for designing all the content yourself. You can lighten your load and also achieve a much greater learning outcome by designing learning processes rather than learning content.

In this article we will share three ways to design learning processes.

1. Use real work.

Learners prefer to accomplish real work while they are in the learning process. So rather than create a contrived situation or a case study scenario that is “representative” of real life, instead have the learners work on real work tasks. For instance, a financial services firm wanted to teach its sales people to read financial statements in order to find cross-selling opportunities in their current client-base. Rather than teach the sales people how to read “generic” financial statements and then leave them to transfer that knowledge and skill to their own client's financial statements, the learning session required them to bring the annual report from two of their current clients. While they learned to read a financial statement (such as a cash flow statement or a profit and loss statement) the learners were working and reviewing the actual financial statements of their own clients. This not only resulted in a better understanding of the learning but it also resulted in the learners being able to have actionable findings be the end of the training class.

2. Create the learning in real time.

Rather than teach your learners a new concept or skill in a large block of time and then expect them to be able to transfer all of that information to their real work responsibilities, break the training up into smaller, actionable learning objectives and on-the-job tasks. That will allow them to implement their new knowledge and skills in smaller chunks and result in more successful implementation on the job.

For example, a sales organization was training their sales people to listen for cues from prospects to better gauge if they could ask for an appointment or not. After a period of time  in the classroom, in which the sales people/learners learned the 5 types of responses which would either open a door for them or not, they were then given an hour to return to their desks and make up to 10 phone calls from their personal prospect list; making notes about types of conversations they had and whether they were able to secure an appointment or not. This approach not only allowed the salespeople to accomplish some real work during the training process, but also created a rich discussion upon returning to the training room because they each had real-world experience implementing their new skills and were able to compare and contrast their outcomes and ask additional questions of the instructor.

If they had simply completed the training and then returned to the job to (attempt to) implement what they had learned, when would they have ever had those rich discussions that serve to cement the learning for adults?

3. Have the learners contribute the content.

A third sales organization wanted to teach overcoming objections in relation to a very complex product that their sales people sold. Rather than try to anticipate all the objections and give the sales people pat answers in reply, the training was designed to first solicit the “5 toughest objection you've encountered when attempting to sell xyz” and then a game was created, dividing the larger group into 3 teams and giving each team the opportunity to craft an appropriate rebuttal to the objection.

The learning process went like this

Team A stated an objection to Team B~Team B had a period of time to craft an appropriate response~Team C had the opportunity to challenge Team B's response~Team A chose what they thought to be the best response and awarded a point to either Team B or Team C accordingly.

This learning process continued in a round-robin style, with Team B next sharing an objection, Team C getting the first opportunity to reply, and Team A being given the opportunity to “challenge” team C’s response, until all of the 15 toughest objections in regard to that topic had been addressed.

This process allowed the learners to share their real-world problems and to get the best and the brightest to assist them with being better prepared the next time they heard that objection.

The next time you are attempting to design learning content take a step back and see if instead you are able to design a learning process that better assists the learners in working with and assimilating that content.

Learning processes can often lead to greater learning outcomes because the learners are more engaged with the content, identify with it more clearly, and have less trouble transferring what they learned in the classroom to what they do on the job. An added bonus, from a logistical standpoint, is that designing a learning process requires much less updating in the future should the content itself change.