Training Design with Adults in Mind

There are a few techniques you can use to make learning easier on your workplace learners:

Structure - helps learners to keep track of detail; give them an agenda to follow-along

• Known to unknown - Flying a plane to flying a helicopter

• Easy to difficult - Painting with a brush to painting with a roller to painting with a power painter

• Problem to solution - Getting lost to learning to read a map or compass

• Frequent to infrequent - Running weekly payroll to running monthly invoices to running yearly W-2's*

• Overview to detail - This is how government works to this is how an election is conducted

• Theoretical to practical (big picture to doing your job) - The importance of eating right to planning menus

• Order of importance or performance - Checking safety of machinery before operating it

• Steps in a sequence (chronological) - Filling out a form; validating customer information

• How participants would most likely interact with material - Teach blackjack by sitting at a blackjack  table, not reading a manual

Exercises - are very effective, unless...

• "Unusual" or complex exercises interfere with learning - learners may miss the point

• Adults don't like far-fetched or artificial exercises - respect their maturity

• Need some challenge (but not too much) - remember to keep the environment safe

• Stories-are "sticky" - stories help learners to remember. Anytime you are about to go in to lecture mode, ask yourself, "Is there a story I could tell that would illustrate this just as well?" and then, at the end of the story, ask your learners "So what is the moral of this story?" THAT is when the true learning comes about; give the audience time to process the point of the story and draw a conclusion - otherwise it was an interesting story that happened to somebody else.

Keep 'em active! - nobody sits for hours on end at the job - don't expect it in training either.