Rebranding training
I’ve noticed a trend in recent years, and that's the rebranding of "training".
Learning companies have been trying to distinguish themselves from the crowd by offering “skills-based training” and I’m a tad confused. If you are creating training, literally defined as “the action of teaching a person or animal a particular skill or type of behaviour” then isn’t the skills-based part, almost redundant…
Yes, I’m being pedantic because this type of vacuous rebranding, just annoys me.?
Training focuses on developing specific competencies that people need to perform their jobs or tasks effectively. This approach differs from academic education, because real-world application is the measure of success. Not how well a learner recalls information in an exam or conducts research.?
I work with corporate learners and as any good Instructional Designer will tell you the andragogy use needs to be skills-based, hence my confusion at seeing so many corporate training companies jumping on this rebrand.
For those of you who aren't in learning design, let me explain my annoyance.
When I create training I start with the overall vision for the training, and then use levels 1-3 of Bloom’s Taxonomy to ask three basic questions:
Working with SMEs, we map out the answers to these questions and end up with a lovely (often giant) structure. This is then grouped and divided into sensible topics.
My favourite part is building a logic model for this, especially when you can throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Where we explore - how do we execute this in a classroom course, digital experience, video or even an experiential event??What approach will suit the learner best?
And I could write sheets and sheets about my process and all the ideas you can use, but I digress.
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All this methodology ensures that whatever is built, value for the learner is at its core. Sure you also need:
But if the training doesn’t have tangible outcomes for the learner, what’s the point?
Everything should be made to ladder up to the skills the learners need to walk away with. And that’s how we measure success, not with multiple-choice questions which have no meaning or value. Not with feedback surveys that measure how happy a learner is. It's all about whether the learner can confidently do what they need to do.?This needs to be continuously assessed on the job, built on and refined. If needed they can come back for more training should they want or need it.
Training should be the springboard, so learners can begin or continue the journey. So that they can reach the other levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, namely Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation. Now for the learning pros reading this, I’m sure you’re thinking - isn't this basic?
And that is my point and why this rebranding has irked me.?
If you aren’t following this approach, or something similar, what on earth are you doing? Enquiring minds want to know.
I've seen and experienced enough hideous training to know, that there are enough people and companies in the industry that churn out terrible, pointless training. This is often why I feel the need to apologise at parties for some terrible course someone's taken that week, which had nothing to do with me.
I understand the marketing value of rebranding training as something new and sexy, but how about we just get it right in the first place?
Perhaps I'm being naive, but I genuinely think if we create brilliant learning experiences, then we don't need to waste time rebranding anything. Quality and value often speak for themselves.
Thank you Rx, thinking along the same lines. Yet I find that the process you're going through is not always valued and there a rebrand comes in as more tangible outcome than all the thinking behind the value and quality of training. So my approach is to talk about the process of creating that springboard for skills in just as sexy way as people talk about a rebrand.
Attended Punjab Group Of Colleges
6 个月Waoo ?????????????????????????????????????????? subhanallah Murshad Sakhi Shahbaz Qalander Mast bang saharab drink ????
VP, Training (scaled learning) at Jellyfish
6 个月The challenge we always face is that everyone has experienced years of "learning" - so think they know what it is and think they can do it themselves. We essentially suffer from mass familiarity bias. The client wants the comfort of the thing they've experienced before even if they didn't like it or think it's effective. It's just what's done. And thats an issue because they're unaware that adult learning is often akin to learning to drive a car by watching your parents do it. I think they miss seeing this because: 1) The consequences of getting a training wrong are often less catastrophic than crashing and dying. There is little direct experiential consequence when they do a bad job of training. 2) The part that they experience is the tip of an iceberg. They are not aware of how much underlying research and analysis exists in order to establish the procedure to becoming a driver because they don't experience it. My only hope for the skills rebrand is that it is a nice simple way of getting our audience to feel like this is something they don't already know. That they should engage with a specialist who knows what it even is to get the job done. Anyone want to place bets on whether it'll work?
Ongoing professional development || the TEFL Development Hub || Trinity CertTESOL and DipTESOL trainer || ELT author
6 个月I think the issue is the assumption / idea that customers want something new - we're seeing it a lot in ELT (English Language Teaching) with teachers rebranding themselves as language coaches...when many of them have no training in coaching and are really just doing what they did before as teachers.