Those of us who work in the learning and development community hear it all the time. "I have done classroom training before." Anyone can be a trainer, it's true. Leading a class merely requires someone who is knowledgeable, personable and a great presenter. Structuring and developing a training program is a different story.
Feeding information to a classroom is easy. The presenter can even enhance the experience by catering to adult learning. This is often overlooked by many instructors. You will find more details about this in another post.
Facilitating and developing training are two different things. When an instructional designer writes a program, he/she establishes content around fundamental objectives. The objectives determine the fundamental information to cover in the class. Instructional designers use this method to focus on what learners need to know vs. what is nice to know.
Many times, employees are tasked with putting training together. They may know the content and be a great presenter. Yet, when they develop the content, it may include too much information and/or appear disorganized. This overwhelming amount of detail makes it difficult for learners to acquire the fundamental knowledge.
Objectives define what a learner should be able to do after a session. The information needs to focus on the primary details alone to ensure effective knowledge transfer. The additional information can be included in supplemental documentation.
In short, yes, anyone can deliver a training class but instructional designers play a key role in pinpointing the content. It also helps that instructional designers are typically detached from work. This allows them to look at the responsibilities from a different light.
The question is... are you asking your employees to develop training programs? If so, what have you done to ensure it's effective?
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