How Do I Love Thee? (Module 6)

My content area involves using webinars to facilitate training. I have participated in several webinars over the past few years and what I find most interesting about them is that they serve two main purposes. First, they give the facilitator the flexibility to deliver training to multiple locations in one session. Secondly, they offer interactive features that often mimic, and in some instances enhance the learning environment. For this assignment, I created the above graphic, which is a basic design of a webinar training session.

A crucial element of my job as an Instructional Designer is to design training programs. This responsbility requires taking a request for training and determining the “who, what, when, where, and how” of delivering it to the intended audience.  For example, in the graphic above I used a request to train a group of employees on a new process. To accomplish what is needed, I created a model of all the elements needed to create the training program. In other words, I presented the concept of how we got from A (the original request) to B (a viable training solution).

As I previously indicated, in order for me to design a training program I use the “who, what, where, when, and how” process. The breakdown of this process (as shown above) is as follows:

1.      Who: The audience is a total of 20 employees from two separate sites

2.      What: A training program to teach creating service contracts for third party  consumers

3.      When: Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 1 to 2pm

4.      Where: Virtual/Online

5.      How: Via Adobe Connect

There are many factors to consider in the design process. For instance, for this particular training program I had to meet with members of our IT department to make sure that the training database was able to accommodate the type of training needed. The process also included determining the best training time for all the parties involved (ex. Great Falls: MST, Florida: CST, and Sterling: EST).  Additionally, a trainer had to be assigned to faciliate the course and prior to that they have to complete a train the trainer session before the delivery of the course can take place.  

As you can probably imagine, within the design process there is considerable dimensional thinking and modeling involved. I firmly believe using these two thinking tools can simplify some of the more complex aspects. With that being stated, I see a good comparison to designing a training program incorporating the “who, what, when, where, and how” to a set of building blocks (see the image below). 

Consider a set of building blocks in the following colors:

A (orange) = who
I (blue) = what
R (red) = where
N (green) = when
T (purple) = how

When these blocks are properly arranged and stacked up, they spell out the word “TRAIN,” which is ultimately what I have to make sure happens.