CIPD - Learner-centred courses

Learning, training and development

Revised August 2008

This factsheet gives introductory guidance. It:

examines the role of formal courses
considers how courses can be made most effective
looks briefly at the role of the facilitator.

This factsheet applies some of the ideas discussed in our Training to learning Change Agenda on the need to update methods of learning used in formal off-the-job events. It is aimed at helping learning and devlopment professionals to:

design courses which maximise participants’ learning
choose providers of courses which achieve similar levels of applicability
understand the implications of the ideas for the facilitators of such events.

Visit the Training to learning Change Agenda

Why is it important to design effective formal courses?

HR professionals know that the ability to learn, and to continue learning, is a skill that is needed to maximise the value of each employee to the organisation and to enhance their individual employability. Our work on moving from training to learning has emphasised that formal training interventions such as off-the-job courses are only one way of facilitating learning. The newer ways of learning, such as e-learning, may be of increasing importance, but the formal training course is still seen by a fifth of learning and development professionals as the most effective means of promoting learning in organisations, and its use is, if anything, growing. In our 2007 Learning and development survey in-house development programmes were used by 60% of respondents.

View our Learning and development surveys

As Martyn Sloman sets out in his book The changing world of the trainer¹, formal courses have continuing advantages:

They offer protected time for learning.
They offers the chance for participants to share ideas with each other and learn from shared experience.
They may offer participants the opportunity to practice skills in a risk free environment.
A course instructor can give feedback immediately and in a non-threatening way.
A training course can signal what matters to the organisation. Compulsory courses are a strong signal that this knowledge is still important.

The question then becomes how to ensure that the courses offered are designed in order to maximise these advantages, and to construct them in a way which concentrates on the needs of the learner.

What makes learning effective?

Our report How do people learn drew attention to assumptions implicit in the conventional practice of training and describes the value of alternative (or complementary) approaches to instruction, in particular quoting Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between 'knowing how…' and 'knowing that…'. In organisations where enhanced performance is the desired outcome of learning, thinking professionals are aware of the complexity of the process that translates information (knowing that) into practical skills and the ability (knowing how) to put learning into practice after a course.

The report also emphasises two important determinants of learning effectiveness – context and motivation:

Effective courses need to reflect organisational culture and encourage the alignment of the individual and organisation. By reflecting as closely as possible the way in which the learner does thier job, the skills or knowledge learned can more easily be put into practice after the programme. Courses also need to align with other aspects of learning culture as one part of the organisation’s learning strategy.
Effective courses also need to consider that learning takes place when learners are motivated to learn. Positive motivation can lead to self-driven, self-directed learning, but only within an appropriate context, and with sufficient facilitation and support.

Find out more about our How do people learn report

Awareness of the value of learning

Before, during and after a formal course, questions about the value of the investment in learning need to be asked. What is the organisation aiming to achieve by running the course, and how will it justify the investment in the time of the participants and the cost of the facilitator, venue, etc? Formal objectives need to be considered for each course, covering the specific outcomes for the learners, and the effect their learning is likely to have on their performance and the performance of the organisation as a whole. For more discussion of how the value of learning might be assessed, see our factsheet on evaluating training and our Value of learning Change Agenda.

Maximising learner motivation

Needs for learning

Whether a formal approach is required depends first of all on what it is that people need to learn. Our factsheet on training needs analysis covers the process of ensuring that the needs are relevant to the organisation’s objectives.

Go to our factsheet on Identifying learning and training needs

But it is also important that learners feel that the course is relevant and matches their individual needs. Individual motivation can be checked or enhanced for a specific course, for example by:

asking participants what their needs are before attending and/or at the start of the programme
asking their boss to input, and to discuss needs with the individual before attendance
carrying out a specific 360 degree feedback process beforehand focussed on the individual’s current needs. It doesn’t have to be a complicated questionnaire – see our factsheet on 360 feedback for more information on this technique
- Go to our factsheet on 360 feedback
facilitators being prepared to be flexible with a planned programme, so they will adjust the methods and/or content to cover participants’ requirements and the key organisational objectives.

Understanding the learners

Training professionals are becoming experts in the needs of their own learners and understanding that course design is a blend of methods appropriate to meet individual expectations as well as appropriate to the subject matter. Understanding your learners’ requirements, and the stage they are at in their careers is an essential prerequisite for designing courses for them. Our online tool on Training to learning provides a means of analysing readiness to learn and provides some examples of companies who have done this.

Go to our Training to learning online tool

The cultural dimension

Past experience of learning from formal courses will determine learners’ expectations, with one important factor being their cultural background. Rather than relying on cultural stereotypes or formulae, training professionals need to understand their own learners. Knowing where they are in their careers, their personal motivation to increase their capacity, and the methods of learning they are used to is essential information to be able to work out how far the design of a course can stretch learners or whether ideal methods will need to be adapted to reflect cultural expectations.

Learning styles

In addition there is the question of learning styles – see our factsheet on learning styles for more information.

Go to our factsheet on Learning styles

The work by Kolb and others has shown that learners have characteristic strengths and preferences in the ways they take in and process information. However learners are not fixed in one style and will benefit from exposure to a full range of approaches. Effective courses will therefore:

have different approaches built into each programme to allow different preferences to be met
encourage participants to extend their learning capability and become more effective learners.

Formal courses and content

Effective courses use methods which suit the content of learning and blend methods where there is more than one category of content or learner need – for more on this, see Iain Thomson’s discussion paper in our 'Helping people learn' webpages.

Go to our Helping people learn webpages

Depending on the area where the course aims to increase capability there are some generalisations that can be made about good practice:

Acquiring skills

Practising skills in a safe environment is where the training course comes into its own. Learning behaviour and skills can only be learned by doing – imagine learning how to ride a bicycle from a book or a lecture alone! The professional’s role is to set up simulations, and environments where people can get practice working equipment without interfering with real work, or endangering themselves and others. In these cases off-line practice can be organised, training times allocated on otherwise on-line systems or simulations can be built. Learning happens while carrying out the work under guidance from a live tutor or a learning package.

Working 'offline' is taken one step further in the complex area of interpersonal behavioural skill. Critical skill areas include those of handling customers, dealing with conflict or complaints, coaching and other management skills.

Transmitting knowledge

Formal programmes are not well suited to the transmission of knowledge, though there are a few areas that may require input from a real expert or be ‘one off’ or too specific for e-learning to be written. Unfortunately in many types of training, particularly regulatory areas, direct delivery of facts is often used as an insurance policy, but learners’ capacity to retain aural information is much lower than we often assume it to be.

Sharing knowledge

Social learning is a highly effective process that goes on daily in most people’s lives on the job, informally sharing information, ideas and tips. Discussing information allows learners to construct the knowledge in a way that has meaning for them. Formal events are a useful way of sharing and enhancing the knowledge of, for example, a project team. Bringing them together at intervals during the project or after its completion to reflect on experience and share and record the lessons learned is both a formal learning experience for individuals and a part of the knowledge management process of the organisation.

Developing culture

The ‘attitude’ area of the training needs analysis is often the most difficult area in which to encourage learning. We want our learners to emotionally engage with company values, or to take personal responsibility when implementing policies towards customers or health and safety. If we want to engage hearts and minds, telling people what to think or believe is rarely effective. An inspiring presentation from the chief executive can build enthusiasm but it also needs to be followed up so people learn how to put that engagement into practice in their day to day work.

Matching methods to needs and learners

One of the reasons courses are still widely used is that learning and development professionals are building the research on effective learning into their design. This section covers some ways to improve the design of formal courses to give ideas to trainers on how to apply them, and to the purchasers of training courses to recognise features that will ensure they choose courses or providers who will come up to the standard of the best.

Participation and practice

Courses covering skills maximise individual learner participation and build in practice, feedback of results, and ideally, yet more practice. This means including time for each participant, sufficient time for feedback, and if possible giving the opportunity for participants to practice again, using the feedback they have received. Course design will therefore:

Ensure that work is done in small groups as much as possible and give each participant the opportunity to contribute, practise and ask questions.
Use real examples. Learners can be primed to come with issues they face, for example if they are learning how to deal with difficult customers, they can be asked to bring or write short scenarios of recent incidents. Assertion programmes can use the situations in which each delegate finds it hard to assert themselves – management courses can include recent issues with members of staff.
If using real examples is difficult, then case studies can be substituted but they do age very quickly and do not have the immediacy of the issues today’s participants are facing or the immediate applicability of the learning.
Stress the applicability of skills to day-to-day work, and encourage learners to set themselves targets for the application of new learning back in their workplace.

Use of feedback

Feedback is one of the critical skills of facilitators, and of line managers – done well it gives learners increased confidence and the ability to continue their learning with each new opportunity to practice, whether on a course or as part of their work. Management programmes will include practice in the skill of giving feedback and overcome old prejudices about feedback only being negative. Many effective courses use all members of the group to give feedback on the skills they see practised as well as the facilitator. For more information, see our training activity on giving positive feedback.

Go to our training activity Positive feedback skills

Using time effectively

Bearing in mind that the major barrier to learning is seen as time, there is always pressure to cut down on the amount of time allowed for courses. Learning professionals need to be aware that although some methods take more time than traditional delivery, the investment is justified by the far greater amount of learning that results. Indeed, overly abbreviated training for skills may not result in any learning or retention. However, taking some learning off-line (by pre-work or reading), and following through with activities such as coaching can overcome some of the issues.

Moving away from the delivery of knowledge

If knowledge transfer and assimilation is important, the following are some alternatives to trainer-based delivery:

E-learning or directed reading with exercises and tests to ensure that knowledge has been understood and to check retention.
Pre-work, pre-reading or pre-testing where the knowledge is a pre-requisite, followed by exercises on the course that apply the knowledge to the work context.
Offering opportunities for sharing and consolidating knowledge – for example at the start of a course using discussion based on participants’ pre-reading, existing knowledge and experience or sending small groups to research topics and present their findings to others. Asking participants to come up with the essential knowledge and the context in which they will use it will ensure that the knowledge is relevant and expressed in language that is meaningful to them.
Structured debates - after an expert input, posing questions that allow the group to internalise and apply the new knowledge.

When designing events for sharing knowledge, the learning and development professional will need to plan and manage the learning process, encourage presentations and group work by the participants, but will not control the content, nor the outcomes, which the group decide upon. Good design ideas include:

giving opportunities for reflection both individually and collectively
encouraging consolidation of the experience
challenging groups to generate new ways of working for the future.

This will result in actions for improving working processes and collaboration for the next stage of work. See the case study on Rolls Royce team reviews in our Training to learning Change Agenda (linked to above) for an example.

Personal and emotional involvement

Effective methods which engage learners both personally and emotionally must include opportunities to translate concepts into real behaviour. This means that the learners need to be asked to work out how the organisational themes will actually be seen in their day to day work. Many of the methods mentioned above allow this – for example, working in small groups helps individuals to see the relevance of ideas to their own situations and allows them to share ideas with their peers in the absorption of cultural messages and the ways in which they can be applied.

Other ideas:

Using real examples or cases to ask learners to make decisions and apply their knowledge, or including films/simulations for visual and emotive input.
Role playing and feedback to test knowledge, interpersonal skills and allow discussion of the drivers of behaviour.
Using creative techniques such as theatre to engage and involve people, and the other senses – see our factsheets on creative methods of learning methods and NLP in the workplace for more information.
- Go to our factsheet on Creative learning methods
- Go to our factsheet on NLP at work
Involving line managers and senior managers as role models of the organisational message.

Facilitation

Professionals are seeing themselves as the facilitators of learning rather than the deliverers of content. An article in People Management talks about the ‘classical trainer’ an expert from whom the group expects to learn, and contrasts this role with that of the ‘modern trainer’². Classical trainers will meet the needs of participants who expect to have information presented in a formal way, but this may not be the best way of ‘knowing how’.

When using the more participative methods discussed in this factsheet, facilitators need to be able to:

Have the confidence to say they are not the experts – this can be challenging for those who like to be in control, but it’s easier to draw on the experience of others if you believe the trainer does not need to have all the answers. The facilitator’s expertise is the process of learning itself: understanding how it happens and how to make it work for everyone.
Structure the debate by choosing the questions to ask which will draw information, knowledge and ideas from the group and check the important points have been covered. The facilitators’ input will provide a consolidation of the topic and an extension of the learner’s existing knowledge.
Create a safe confidential environment so that participants will trust that nothing they say or do (particularly in those early practice sessions) will be repeated outside the training room.
Realise that the course is only part of the learning process – for the individual, it needs to link to their:
- prior learning and experience
- current needs arising from their job and career demands
- immediate experience when they return to the job
- what their boss will encourage
- subsequent learning.

Conclusion

As professionals move from concentrating on training to learning, the provision of courses that follow this philosophy will maximise the opportunity given to learners to learn practical and applicable skills and knowledge. Courses that use the types of techniques discussed above treat learners as equal and active partners in the process of increasing the adaptability and performance of organisations.

References

SLOMAN, M. (2007) The changing world of the trainer: emerging good practice. Oxford: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann.
COTTELL, C. (2007) Commission accomplished. People Management. Vol 13, No 4, 12 July. pp34-37.

Learner-centred courses