There are a lot of things that go into training programs and the planning behind them, and if certain steps are missed it can lead to a lack of success in training. Some of the things that are important to include in a training program are as follows.
- Plan a training program properly
- Allow sufficient time to hire the right people
- Ensure the training materials cover everything that needs to be taught and do not include anything that does not
- Define what acceptable quality is and how it will be measured
- Show that the goals are achievable and what must be demonstrated in terms of consistency to show that the training is complete and successful
- Set clear targets
- Use the best person to deliver the training
My Experience With An Effective Course
I have had experiences with courses that seem to be extremely effective as well as ineffective, but one effective course that I can draw on is my financial investments course I took last year. In this course it had a mixture of difficult content that somewhat required self teaching or self paced learning from the lecture videos to work through the homework. However, these videos were step by step explanations of the processes and reasoning behind the practices being conducted. Additionally, the professor teaching the course was extremely knowledgeable and experienced in the industry, and was teaching materials that seem to be almost second nature to him. This style of course came with its own struggles and benefits because I wasn’t able to just rely on doing exactly what the teacher did, because I needed to think about what the next steps were and why I was doing what I was doing. When I realized I didn’t understand why or what I was doing on a problem I was able to reach out to my professor or go to office hours and get a hands on experience and explanation of how to do the work and why I was doing it that way. This course taught me skills and knowledge quickly in regards to financial investments as well as how to do the calculations and processes through excel. I also inadvertently learned a lot of new functions and skills on excel that I would have not learned otherwise without this course and immense help and training from my professor. This structure was really great because the homework was worth a lot of points and was not easy to do, however if I put the time in and reached out for help I was most always going to learn and get a good grade. Additionally, the course had low point discussion posts that helped students learn the reasoning and logic behind investment practices which had a lot less help and more personal learning. I liked this because it made me think out of the box and struggle but not stress so much that I was going to fail the class if I got a bad grade, which led to me producing better quality work. Last but not least, our professor provided the class with topics and information that was relevant and of interest to the majority of our generation as well as providing topics that were trending or that students were aware of. This led to an overall more interested and engaged class of students that led to more productivity and a higher quality of work.
My Experience With An Ineffective Course
One course that I can draw upon as being ineffective is a financial planning course that I took. This course was one that I went into being really excited about and looking forward to learning from. However, I quickly was met with the realization that the course was not going to be everything that I had hoped for it to be and also that it was not going to be an extremely engaging course. I looked into the option of dropping the course to take it with a different professor but found that it was not really an option for me and my degree plan. I kept an open mind despite the structure of the course, which was strictly a discussion post and quiz each week, and sometimes financial planning worksheets to fill out, and then a midterm and final. I worked through the lectures and required learning materials each week, but found it somewhat difficult to follow along when I didn’t really have any homework or assignments that related to the materials that I was learning. Additionally, the quizzes were really small and difficult to study for as I had no clue what to expect because it was unlike traditional classes that have homework to build the expectation of what you’ll be quizzed on. I was very confused how I could go from one finance class for my major that was so effective, engaging, and informational to another that lacked all of that. I continued to try and learn on my own, watch learning videos and materials on the topics I was learning outside of class, as well as find homework, but it led to little success. I consistently struggled to stay engaged and interested in this course because of how little it had to offer me, as well as how little engagement and consistent work it required of me to learn and understand the skills and concepts behind the course. Additionally, the questions and topics could have been geared better towards my generation or something students could better imagine themselves experiencing rather than talking about planning for those already older than them. However, this is a pretty accurate depiction of how the career would be at the start for any college graduate. Lastly, there was very little supervision or communication between the professor and the students as well as little to no communication between students which I felt like led to a lack of involvement, idea sharing, and problem solving. This course lacked much effective structure to help myself and I assume other students learn and comprehend the needed materials to succeed after school.
References
Hira, N. A. (n.d.). The making of a UPS driver (p. 2). CNNMoney. https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/11/12/101008310/index2.htm
Ellis, A. M. (2020, November 3). Your new hires won’t succeed unless you onboard them properly. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/06/your-new-hires-wont-succeed-unless-you-onboard-them-properly
Corkery, M. (2017, August 8). At Walmart Academy, Training Better Managers. but with a better future?. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/business/walmart-academy-employee-training.htmlZiman, B. (2011, June 6).
What makes a training program effective?. isixsigma.com. https://www.isixsigma.com/success-factors/what-makes-training-program-effective-and-successful/#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20factors%20we,include%20anything%20that%20does%20not
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