Thursday, June 24, 2010
Workshops and training NEVER work: the disconnect between instructional design theory and practice
I know it's a bit of a negative title to the blog....but it's how I'm feeling at this very moment. As an instructional designer, I am schooled in the business of designing instruction that is aligned and designed to move participants from a start point to measurable outcomes. In theory, all of these outcomes should be met to a particular degree. When I design my courses, I find that I have the typcial frusteration of students who do really well followed by a large gap and then students who struggle and quit due to outside factors. In comparison, I see that my workshops (faculty professional development focused) follow a similar pattern, but sometimes the success rate (acheiving the projected outcomes) is even more dismal than my academic courses. Now, if I step back and take my instructional designer hat off, I'm not as dissapointed. I look at the faculty and staff that attended and see that though they didn't acheive the exact outcomes, they did move a step or two in the right direction. Often times, they acheived what they wanted out of the workshop. With professional development, isn't that what's truly important? So then I get to thinking. Why do I prepare these robust workshops with various outcomes....spend planning time....prep time....create handouts and websites...practice my content delivery...follow-up, etc.... If they truly are going to "get what they get" out of the workshop, why don't I just customize all my professional development attempts? How about picking several faculty a year to work with individually to customize their professional development endeavors. Measurable payoff for a small portion of the faculty, but less time spent on prep for a workshop in which most participants do not reach the projected outcomes.
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2 comments:
POP (now you know why I do so much prepping at the last minute); however, I think you need to maybe rethink the purpose of the workshops. I've decided most of the time the workshops are about introducing faculty to different technologies and provide them with a bunch of ideas on how/why they might use them. Unless we're talking super geeks, you will probably always have to do one-on-one support after the event.
Does that make sense?
Consider also that the timing of what you are teaching is not in sync with the "need" (or actually, perceived need) of your customers, at this particular instant. Case in point; Blackboard upgrades, up to now, have been intuitive. The recent upgrade is most certainly NOT Instructor friendly, and any instructor that has not taken a look at the interface well in advance of the beginning of the time they plan to use it will be unpleasantly surprised! Hence, the JUST IN TIME training that you have scheduled, now becomes PANIC training, and not at all effective.
Don't know if I addressed your particular point, but this is where I am today! -emj
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