Consideration in Designing Effective Training Programs: Selecting and Preparing the Training Site, Selecting Trainers

The five principles (Merrill, 2013):

1. Problem-centered. Learning is promoted when learners acquire skill in the context of real-world problems.
2. Activation. Learning is promoted when learners activate existing knowledge and skills as a foundation for new skill.
3. Demonstration. Learning is promoted when learners observe a demonstration of the skill they are working to acquire.
4. Application. Learning is promoted when learners apply their newly acquired skill to solve problems.
5. Integration. Learning is promoted when learners reflect on and discuss their newly acquired skill.

These five principles integrate some of the most important learning theory and research from the time of Aristotle until now. They reflect the development in learning theory over time, adding new perspectives to previous theories rather than substituting the new theories and throwing out the old.

5 Learning Theories

In addition to the five principles,

1. Cognitivism
2. Constructivism
3. Social constructivism
4. Experiential learning, and
5. Transformative learning.

The Role of Instructor Passion

Without proper knowledge of and consideration for how the human brain works, and how to design an effective learning experience, passion alone with not lead to high learning outcomes.

Integrating the 5 X 5

The learning objective was to enhance the employees’ knowledge of the product so that they could use the knowledge to sell.

Getting their Attention

The first step in the training session design is to create an introduction that aims to grab the learner’s attention and let them know why their participation is important. What they are going to do in the training

• Why they should participate the training
• What they will be able to do after participating the training (learning goals)
• How they will know they have achieved the learning goals
• How they can apply the knowledge and tools from the course in real life, and
• How they are going to be assessed and how real life experience will be a part of the assessment.

Creating the Content

The second step in the training session design is to create the actual content. The content is divided into five parts Information about the product: in this case a video that explains the product.

1. Observation: a sales expert showing how to sell the product to a consumer, using the knowledge from the video above.
2. Recap: the sales expert discussing a recap of numbers 1 and 2 above, highlighting the most important actions the learners can apply.
3. Exercises: real-life practice selling the product to a consumer. And,
4. Assessment: multiple-choice assessments, including peer instruction (Mondrup, 2016), that facilitates reflection and discussion. The questions are developed so that they require the learner to have watched all the videos and completed the real life practice.