Agile Training Design, pioneered by Conrad Gottfredson, embodies the following: Align, Get Set, Iterate & Implement, Leverage and Evaluate. The term stems from the software industry, in which eLearning tools were adapted to meet the dramatically changing needs of business. The same however, can certainly be applied to instructor-led staff training or longer training and development programs of the blended kind. With the fast pace of the corporate climate, you want speed in your training design so that you can meet new needs but also improve your program’s efficiency. It goes without saying that the faster your learners absorb, adapt and execute, the earlier they will be able to apply their learning and perform on their jobs. And, such learning transfer would improve business performance significantly.
This post will consider why Agile Training Design is so important:
Benefit #1: a Quicker response to the need of change
Given this agile mindset, course content is broken down into more navigable chunks. It’s not an extensive, seemingly endless linear process. It's a far more digestible and flexible way to present learning material that they can understand. Now, because the material is broken down into smaller components, and evaluation is taking place with each piece, it becomes clearer where the gaps are, where the learning is not being properly transferred and what areas require some more work. The talent developers get a quicker and more streamlined means of identifying, remedying and relaunching based on the insights gathered from each module.
What makes more sense: don't design a monstrous catalogue of training in one go. It is far easier to pinpoint the mistakes within your curriculum if you continuously test each block rather than waiting until the end of a massive program.
Benefit #2: Enhanced Collaboration
In keeping with this theme of better adapting to change, agile learning techniques promote greater collaboration across the board. The evaluation component of the agile system is key here. By consistently reviewing learning initiatives, evaluating performance and measuring training effectiveness, the process of improving the program in collaboration becomes far easier. With this type of agile approach, a constant feedback loop becomes a natural part of the training improvement conversations.
This is where Kodo Survey serves such a significant purpose. We offer real-time data insights into what learning objectives are being met, how the learning is progressing and whether it’s used on the job. You gather feedback based around measurements of the learning taking place, incorporate this feedback and then test it again. The reports provided offer the opportunity for greater collaboration and engagement with your stakeholders which again, is what the agile process is about.
Benefit #3: Focus on the Learner
It's not too long ago the standard was to nail down standard training program content that all employees would then be herded through. The problem of course with such an approach is that the learner often gets lost in the shuffle. The objectives may be met then and there, but in the end, the learning is not transferred to the job and performance is little changed as a result of the training initiatives.
Enter a 21st century approach to L&D. It’s not the program that counts as much as it is the learner. As such, companies start to care more and more about what works for a particular employee, how they can consequently finetune their system to reach this employee and ultimately, how best to get the learner to embrace the concepts, absorb them and utilize them in his/her day-to-day activities.
Kodo Survey helps you get a step closer to becoming agile in your creation and improvement of courses and programs. Our detailed reports allow you to see what learning objectives are falling through the cracks and thus where change needs to happen in order to lift learning quality, maximize training efficiency and drive high impact learning. It also offers a tool for ongoing collaboration between the learner and the manager to discuss the development opportunities, where learning might be faltering and in that case, what to do about it.