As our newsletter subscribers know, one of the services The Training Doctor provides is "Training Triage," that is, helping companies to redesign training they already have in place, but which doesn't hit the mark, for some reason.

One of our more recent projects highlighted one of the more typical situations we encounter: there was not much point for the trainees to be there. It was a three-hour class - delivered online - which was strictly lectured. This approach violated a number of learning principles - both general, classroom principles, and more specifically, online learning principles.

One of the easiest ways to determine if you are designing a quality learning experience is simply to ask yourself: What is the audience doing during this class? If the answer is "nothing," then you really have not designed a class at all!

One of the wonderful things about technology is that it freed us from having to bring people together to simply transmit information. We now have the ability to create e-Learning, podcasts or videos which allow for self-study.

So, if your audience is truly doing nothing during your class time, then you need to take "classtime" out of the equation. Look to an alternative means of relaying your content. The adult learning principle that was violated in the course that we were assessing as that it was strictly lectured and there was no purpose to having the learners gathered together. The online learning principle that was violated was that live and online learning should be reserved for those topics which truly benefit from having "minds together."

The benefit of bringing people together is to achieve more creative ideas and benefit from the collaboration and synergy which results from having many thoughts on one topic. A simple question to answer, but a hard objective to achieve: What is the audience doing during this class?