Risk:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Lack of time;
Lack of support;
Not having the right skills or tools;
Not planning ahead;
The inability to link training to business objectives.

The problems with

training
By Scott Berkun (with Vanessa Longacre)
For a few years I worked with Vanessa Longacre planning training
sessions and educational events at Microsoft. We covered topics
such as project management, leadership, design and usability, and
used every training format, from large 500 person events, to
lectures, to small group workshops, to anything else we could think
of. We learned tons along the way and being teacherly in spirit, wed
like to share some of that with you. Please note: this essay is more
about larger training sessions than about how to actually teach
something. That may come in the next essay.
Its important to know for starters that we worked as a team, with
me as an evangelist and educator, and Vanessa as the project
manager and event planner. We spent many afternoons
brainstorming, designing and planning together. Through all this we
learned that there are two essential ingredients in great learning
experiences: A team of smart energetic people committed to doing
something good, and a thoughtful plan, crafted with creative energy
and smart logistical planning. This essay has two parts: the spirit,

attitude and philosophy of good training (strategy), and the logistics

and tricks for making it happen (tactics).
If you attend conferences more than you run them, you might also
want to read how to get the most out of conferences.

The main problem: No one learns anything

when theyre bored or unconscious
Dont assume old models work
Know your audience and engage them early
Give them a reason to show up and a reason to
stay
You cant please everyone
Think of the best experience
An event requires a design process
Intermission / Part 2
Quality control for your presenters
Many famous people became famous for things other than their
public speaking ability. Despite this, many famous people are asked
to speak at events, and they suck. In the case of most conferences,
its not famous people, but experts in some field or domain who do
most of the speaking. It follows that many of them, where public
speaking is concerned, might also suck.

If youre running the conference or Day O Training, and youre

selecting people to speak based on their reputation, books theyve
written, or papers theyve submitted, youre vulnerable to having
them show up and do poorly in public speaking. You can protect
yourself from this in several different ways.

1. Your acceptance criteria should match what you are

asking them to do. If you are asking them to speak, ask for
submissions that show a sample video clip of them speaking.
Ask around people in your industry that might have seen the
speaker, and ask for their review (Would you accept a chef
based on his ability to dance?). This takes more time, but if
lectures and panels are the primary thing at the conference, it
should be worth that investment.
2. Provide training for all speakers at the event. Give them
a short course on presentation skills and common mistakes to
avoid. The earlier you do this, the more time speakers have to
make adjustments to their presentations. Minimally, provide
coaching at the event itself. You could require all speakers to
show up early for a summary of tips, and for 1-on-1 coaching.
Even a one pager on presenting dos and donts ups the
quality dramatically. From the academic and professional
conferences I go to, many speakers, even experienced ones,
still make basic mistakes.
3. Review their presentation materials. You can often, but
not always, judge a presenters comfort level with speaking by
examining their materials. Since often its the materials than
live on past the event, quality control for them will pay off,
even if the speaker doesnt do so well. I often asked for draft
slides from speakers Id never seen speak before.
4. Collect feedback from the audience on the speakers
performance, and pass this on to the speakers. You can
choose to summarize and filter it, or you can give them the
raw survey information. This is another way to provide quality
control. Its not the best, since it happens after the event, but
it does set you and the speaker up with a baseline to use in
the future. Some speakers hate real feedback, even those in
the usability/design sector (can you say hypocracy three

times fast?). At the bottom line its your event: if they cant
handle your rules, dont hire them or ask them to speak.

Support different learning styles

Instructional design research tells us that individuals differ in their
ability to learn knowledge, depending on the medium in which it is
conveyed. Some people learn faster by reading, others by listening,
and most, by doing. To succeed at creating a healthy learning
environment, you have to use different mediums and formats, and
create different kinds of opportunities for learning to occur.

1. Interaction: Make sessions interactive. Require speakers to

save time for Q&A, or better yet, to integrate the audience
into the discussion. A good speaker will do this naturally,
using the audience to help guide his/her direction through the
material. But even less practiced speakers, if asked, can put
some level of interaction into their sessions.
2. Listening: This is typically the dominant learning style
supported in conferences. Any situation where you have large
numbers of people sitting together, facing in the same
direction, is listening dependent. Even with the best speakers,
attention spans are much shorter than they used to be: which
means, lectures shouldnt last longer than 20-40 minutes.
(Really. Think of the last lecture that was longer than this that
you attended. How much of it do you remember 5 minutes
later? If you force speakers to use their time wisely, they tend
to exercise concision, and everyone benefits. Thus the
motivation for 99 second presentations).
3. Reading: Some folks, myself included, like to read. Handouts
and printed materials can reinforce topics discussed during
the day, can provide references to common resources
mentioned, and can give people bored in lectures something
useful to look at. I think there is also a psychological bonus to
giving people something they can hold physically that
represents their learning experience. Taking notes, writing
down peoples names, or books mentioned, all contributes to
the attendees experience. Its well known that even if people

dont refer to notes later, the act of writing things down helps
people to remember them.
4. Doing / Practicing: This is the ultimate learning experience.
When a person actually does something, and experiences it
first hand, they are more likely to remember it, to be capable
of asking meaningful questions about it, and to consider
changing their attitudes and behavior about that activity. This
is often the hardest learning style/teaching format to create,
since we have so little experience with it within most of our
educational systems. It requires more resources: a lecture has
a 1 to 200 teacher to student ratio. To do directed exercises or
projects, usually means 1 to 10 or maybe 1 to 20. Its way
more expensive, and its harder to find people skilled in doing
it (I know it took me awhile to understand how different it is to
teach this way, than a lecture) Conference workshops are in
the right ballpark, but they to tend to focus just on talking
about doing things, which is very different from doing them in
a directed way, under the guidance of an expert.
5. Playing: Most professions take themselves way too seriously.
Its not surprising that conferences are often serious things,
where people invest in establishing and defending their
reputations within an industry or society. This creates a stiff
and uptight atmosphere, which as Ive mentioned, is contrary
to the free and fun spirit needed to learn. The keynote plays a
decisive role here, but more can be done. Provide games or
simulations that are intentionally silly, to give people a chance
to let down their guard, and experience something, without
having anything at stake (Interactionary had built in silliness
for this reason). If those games and entertainments are lead
by well known experts in the field, then everyone will feel
inclined to follow along.
Next time you attend a training session or event, see how many of
these different learning styles the instructors or organizers take
advantage of. As far as learning what your own learning styles are,
there are online questionnaires that do a decent job of it. There are
several academic institutions that study learning styles.

Food / Location / Time

Remove barriers to interaction
Do one experiment in every conference
Cheat when necessary
Collect feedback and use it with care
Ito yung link:

http://scottberkun.com/essays/29-the-problems-with-training/