WHAT WORKS — AND, WHAT DOESN’T

June 15, 2015

All training is not equally effective.

All courseware titles are not equal in scope or production design.

All trainees do not come to you from a single learning culture.

Many studies have proven that traditional “lecture/reading/testing” training programs no longer give the payback in skills acquisition that they once did.

For individuals born after 1960, their learning culture is enmeshed with video, simulations, and gaming.

And, that is why, beginning with interactive laser videodisc (IVD) in the 1980s and CD-ROM in the 1990s, multi-sensory learning has become the surest way to a training payback.

Today we are evolving into an e-Learning training environment.

However, learning and retention have not profited in the ways we originally expected.

Too many e-Learning examples are nothing more than adapted PowerPoint presentations.

The much more effective multi-sensory approach has, too often, disappeared.

The consequences are great.

Skills are no longer being acquired as readily.

The bottom line contribution of training has shrunk.

And, all because we have forgotten to insist on a continuum in the multi-sensory approach to learning.

We should recognize that those training initiatives which actually improve learning and lengthen retention are the ones that incorporate multi-sensory delivery.

And, we must summarily reject those adapted PowerPoints which never belonged in an e-Learning environment in the first place.

If we don’t — but, continue to buy (or, build) converted PowerPoints — we are wasting our organization’s money; depriving our workers who are seeking opportunity; and, cheating our organization from acquiring the additional skills necessary for increased growth and profitability.

So, “yes,” effective training can significantly increase skills and contribute mightily to the bottom line — but only when we demand a multi-sensory approach to the e-Learning initiatives we build and purchase.

As trainers and producers we need to get back into sync with our trainees’ learning culture.

And, that means a multi-sensory approach to training!