Artefact 4: Training Trainers for Success

Overview

At the time that I entered the Master of Education program, I was a relatively junior instructional designer. I had a good mechanical sense of how to create courses, and thanks to some professional development in instructional design, was able to create functional courseware. However, I recognized that truly masterful, award-winning courses were different from my creations. Both MDDE603 and MDDE604 gave me the theoretical underpinnings to understand some of the features of exceptional courses, while MDDE610 equipped me with a background in the technologies of distance education. At the end of the program, I took MDDE621 to consolidate skills in instructional design and distance education technologies into a cohesive theory of practice.

This artefact also presented an opportunity to resolve a real-world problem. Shortly before enrolling in MDDE621, in my role as a Training Program Manager I inherited a team of contact centre trainers. The trainers had no formal trainer training. While the New Hire program, which they taught, was developed such that it could be delivered by any subject matter expert, I expected that our training team could significantly improve the quality of delivery by equipping the trainers with facilitation skills. Consequently, I decided that both of my MDDE621 assignments would form the basis for a Train-the-Trainer Program. For the first course assignment, I developed a plan for the design and delivery of a Train-the-Trainer Program. The second course assignment was to create one of the modules of the Train-the-Trainer program (2.7).

Analysis of the learning process

I began by exploring the theories which would be used in the design and delivery of the program. While I had already explored core ideas of behaviourism, constructivism and cognitive information processing in MDDE603, I wanted to take a deeper dive into more granular frameworks. Reviewing the theories from the MDDE621 textbook, I recognized andragogy as a suitable framework for our program; it was developed for adult learners, and appeared to be a synthesis of most of the conceptual theories I already recognized to be effective (1.6).

While Andragogy was a great conceptual framework for adult education, I recognized that my trainers would require a more practical model that could guide their day-to-day practice of training. The model that most readily jumped out at me was Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction. I had researched this model as part of MDDE604, and recognized its components from behaviourism, constructivism, and cognitive information processing. Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction also overlapped quite well with Knowles’ Andragogy (2.3).

In order to design an effective training program, I had to conduct a needs assessment for my trainers. In this assignment, I applied a systems view to explore the attributes of the trainers, their environment, the learners, and their support systems (2.2). Based on our geographic distribution, their variable availability due to training demands, and cost issues, I chose to apply a distance delivery model for the training.

In my time in the corporate training world, I had become aware of a multitude of effective train-the-trainer programs offered by other institutions. Rather than trying to imagine the themes of an effective train-the-trainer program, I began by selecting as a base the objectives from the first professional training course I attended, which was the Instructional Techniques course offered by Friesen, Kaye, and Associates (FKA). I noted the FKA objectives as such in the course outline. While the core objectives developed by FKA were solid, I began to recognize opportunities for improvement, such as:

• Integrating opportunities for facilitators to discover their teaching perspective (this became a reflective learning opportunity that would form an underpinning for the entire program)
• Customizing the content to align with the company’s drivers, mission
• Establishing and applying a recognized teaching model (which in the case of my program became Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction)

Therefore, I added a number of objectives related to the items above.

I also recognized that a number of the objectives from the Instructional Techniques workshop were grounded in pseudoscience (e.g. ideas related to “learner styles”). Consequently, I removed those objectives from the curriculum (2.6).

I then set about grouping objectives into units, and identifying the topics for each unit.
I had to establish the program delivery methods and tools as well. To do so, I compared the needs and capacities of the learners (which had been outlined in the needs assessment) against the tools available to our organization.

I recognized that assessment would be required for the program. Early in the development process, I identified an appropriate summative evaluation strategy – which was for participants to facilitate a segment of the New Hire curriculum. While technically this evaluation was summative, I also recognized that it was an opportunity for participants to receive some formative evaluation (as all people are on a path of continuous learning).

Post-Activity Reflection

The process of developing the training plan, followed by the actual module, was empowering. Given the subject matter of the course (i.e. teaching the participants to be effective facilitators), after building the course I finally felt a sense that I had attained my goals in the Master of Education program.

Following the development of the course, I began a module-by-module rollout of the course. I observed measurable increases in the trainers’ performance metrics, as well as increased awareness of their role as facilitators and increased satisfaction. I have continued to apply the instructional design concepts I gained in this assignment when building new courses.