I had a great conversation with someone on twitter about e-learning, and they raised an excellent point about other training.  They asked me if I found that like e-learning, did I find that people had the same approach to other types of training such as classroom training?

You’ve probably like me experienced that e-learning is (in many cases) something that is a “Ticking-box” exercise where you don’t actually learn very much and are merely going through the motions for a piece of paper at the end.  Worst of all (and I admit to being guilty of this many times in the past), you go straight to the assessment at the end to try and pass; bypassing the part that your employer really wants you to do; where you learn something! Sounds familiar?

Many times, we see people attending our PTT Train the Trainer courses who’ve been previously delivering “training” in a “tick-box” format.  This is normally defined as standing and “Telling”; people attending this type of delivery than normally have the attitude even before they turn up that they will sit there for however long and go through the motions.  There is little or no learning taking place, and the chance of a behaviour skill or knowledge transfer into the workplace happening is virtually nil.  This then is no different from the average e-learning experience, and it’s undoubtedly not training.

Training when it’s done correctly, delivered by any means should always be:

Enjoyable – Whoever said we couldn’t enjoy training?  Training when it’s enjoyable, and fun helps learning to take place in the most natural way.

Engaging – Interactive and engaging training helps us learn in a way that keeps us interested, motivated and gives us more chance of remembering what we have learnt.

Productive – Training happens for a reason; it needs a change of behaviour skill or knowledge change to occur in the workplace (workplace transfer).  If learning doesn’t take place, then it is a waste of valuable time and money.

Our PTT Train the Trainer courses get you delivering training like this; firmly banishing ticking boxes to surveys, questionnaires and bad e-learning.

Scott Fraser is a Master Trainer at Target Training and delivers our PTT Train the Trainer courses and our Advanced PTT Train the Trainer courses.  You can read more about him here.