Participant Centered Training Model
A Trainer, as you suspect, has a wide range of responsibilities. His or her chief responsibility is always to the participant, to provide effective learning sessions directly suitable for each group of adult learners, to encourage the participant to be active, to recognize and accommodate individual differences in participants, and to enable participants to contribute their knowledge to the learning group.
What is Participant-Centered Training?
The Participant-Centered Training model is based on the following operating principles:
- Learning is change that takes place inside the participant; the trainer can facilitate this change, but cannot directly create this change in the participant.
- The trainer can best facilitate this change by providing learning events in which the participant has a central role.
Perhaps the significance of the trainers assuming responsibility for the participant can most easily be understood by comparing participant-centered and trainer-center training.
Trainer-Centered
- Sees learning as a result of trainer action.
- Sees the participant as largely passive.
- Sees participant as automatically receptive – a vessel to be filled with information.
- Focuses on the information.
- Uses presentation primarily with some group work focused on case studies.
- Includes content that expands knowledge.
- Often assumes that fun and enjoyment are frivolous.
Participant-Centered
- Sees learning as a result of participant action.
- Sees the participant as active.
- Assumes the participant as not automatically receptive. Participant must work with the information to own it.
- Focuses on motivating participants and building collaborative teamwork.
- Uses a wide variety of techniques to simulate whole brain thinking and support retention.
- Assumes that all materials be practical.
- Makes learning enjoyable and encourages laughter which aids problem solving.
Why use Participant-Centered Training?
The dominant instructional paradigm is based on having a trainer present good information skillfully (and passionately) and having learners responsible for processing, sorting, retaining, and applying it.
Participant-Centered Training Model 2 We have learned that the dominant paradigm is not effective or responsive to what adult learners want. Offering a lot of information to the mind of the participant means that they have to work very hard to learn it.
Participants are selective about what they take in. (They must be selective for survival.) If adult learners are resistant to a message, they can actively inhibit receiving it. Trainers should not waste their opportunity to encourage participants to want to receive new ideas, skills and attitudes and to engage in active practice which will lead to permanent change.
All participants are different from each other in important ways. Each participant has had different training and experiences, and thus, has developed a different structure of knowledge. Each message communicated by a trainer to participants will fit into this personal structure of knowledge in a different way.
Participants need the opportunity to fit new information into the existing structures so that the new ideas are firmly embedded in the learner’s neural networks and readily available for recall and use.
Hundreds of adult learners have asserted that they strongly prefer participant-centered training.
Additional Learnings:
Brain research over the last two decades has demonstrated that the brain processes information in many ways during learning experiences.
PCT encompasses newer educational concepts such as learning styles, emotional intelligence, multiple intelligences and experiential education. All are responsive to the unique nature of each person by connecting learning to the participants real lives, emotional experiences and personal histories.
PCT collaborative methods enhance challenge and minimize the threat that inhibits learning.
PCT techniques stimulate multiple parts of the brain which makes retention easier.
Work is increasingly collaborative and calls for heightened trust between people for the work to be exceptional.
PCT uses trust building, collaborative methods that help people use the information immediately on the job and in personal life.
Learning Design Model
Critical Elements
Needs Assessment
The Needs Assessment is a data gathering activity which determines the present skill level, knowledge and attitudes of potential participants, and the results desired from the training by potential participants, managers, human resources specialists.
The desired results from the needs assessment are used to develop statements of learning goals for the course. The information about present level of knowledge, attitude and skill is used to determine the appropriate beginning place for the course.
Learning Goals
Setting course Learning Goals is developing a set of statements which identify major results that should be gained from the training course. A goal is simply a description of what participants will be able to do at the end of training that they could not do at the beginning.
The learning goals define the criteria for determining the success of the course. Careful statements of goals ensure that each aspect of the training is specifically tied to course goals, and that priority learnings are emphasized.
Present Needs
The statement of Present Needs is a description based on the needs assessment of the potential participants’ present capability to carry out important job tasks, level of morale and motivation, and attitude toward training. The description of present needs also includes the operational successes and problems in the organizational unit or units where the potential participants are working.
The statement of present needs also includes a profile of the potential participants for the course including the number of years in the profession, years on the job, previous professional training, and learning style.
Strategic Learning Arc
Each course design should designate one learning that is the most important in the course. The key learning should be based on the course goals and should highlight something that will have a lasting impact on the participants and on the organization.
Designating a key learning ensures that a course has dimension, integrity, and perspective. The key learning is covered more thoroughly than other learnings, and the activity developed for the key learning is often more extensive.
Establishing the key learning means that what is most important to learn will be learned in greater depth and retained longer.
Learning Strategy/Approach
A learning strategy or approach is a description of an overall plan for how the training will take place including format, style, size, location. Examples of learning strategies include: tailored training (on-site training of designated group), roll out (train everyone), cascade training (trainers train other trainers), intensive-retreat, seminar series, web-based instruction, packaged multi-media training, self-instructional, self-guided learning.
Establishing the learning strategy insures that the training is appropriate to the organizational goals, resources, style, future direction.
A clear statement of learning strategy guides the development of methods and activities that are appropriate to the designated strategy.
Learning Progression Scaffolding
The learning progression is an orderly step-by-step sequence or scaffolding that guides the participant from the present conditions to the goals.A learning progression focuses on what participants need to learn in order to move from where they are now to the desired goal.
A course outline focuses on subject matter and can easily center on what the designer wants to include and not on what the participants needs. An outline typically does not describe transitions from one topic to another and may leave important gaps between ideas or may go from one topic off into a quite new direction.
Designing a learning progression is like planning a trip for the participants. The journey starts at a designated place and moves from place to place in an orderly flow. The participants are not stranded anywhere along the way and always know where they’ve been and where they’re going.
Learning progressions while orderly allow considerable creativity as long as the creativity is relevant to achievement of the goals.
The learning progression, once established as a flow and sequence, is formed into a series of instructional sessions.
Instructional Units
An instructional unit is a significant segment of instruction that includes a unit goal, content (ideas, skills, processes), learning tools, methods and activities, and practical applications. Each unit has a designated time frame.
Instructional units are like chapters in a book. They typically have a title and subject matter and like a chapter in a book, they may have subparts.
Generally, a course should have somewhere between four to eight instructional units.
Session Plans
A session plan is a detailed guide for the trainer/leader to use in presenting each instructional unit of the course. The session plan provides a format for integrating all the related elements of course design including content, time, participant action, learning activity, and training media and materials.
The session plan for each instructional unit should include transition, review, warm-up, overview, topics, application, summary and assessment.
Evaluation
A course evaluation helps in improving the course design, in determining whether the course met its goals, and in assessing the impact of the course on the organization. Evaluation also helps determine whether the learning strategy chosen for the course was appropriate or whether another approach should be investigated.
Samples Of Innovative Learning Strategies
Cascade Training
Simple training design is developed which is focused on a specific learning goal and is appropriate to a wide variety of participants. A detailed leader’s guide is prepared which can be used by inexperienced trainers. One group of trainers is trained first in how to lead the course. That group gives the training and then trains another group of trainers, sometimes managers, in how to lead the course. The process continues until everyone in the organization is trained.
Modular Training
A training package is designed and produced which can be used by someone who has little or no training experience. The presentations for the course are presented by video. The package is sent to a designated leader who presents the training to a small group of people on-site.
Learning Circles
Members of a team learn from web-based instruction or from videos with self-directed materials. They communicate with each other and with a leader on-line and then meet occasionally (every two or three months) for an in-person session, which may also be online, e.g. google hangouts.
Orchestrated Learning
The design of orchestrated learning goes beyond the artificial boundaries of work life and home life and is responsive to the needs of the whole person. The training also takes into consideration the various learning styles of participants. An orchestrated session may include music, slide presentations, art, movement, as well as conceptual presentations. The training is intended to be transformational for the whole person.
Accelerated Learning
Training is designed in accordance with the latest findings from studies of the brain. Attention is paid to making sure that participants are in the optimum brain state for effective, efficient learning, and that new ideas are presented in a way that encourage receptivity, assimilation of ideas, and retention.
Interactive Multl-Media (Demonstration)
Participants are involved in making decisions about how the training will progress. Using response boards, participants make a selection among media options and suggest sequencing. They might in future adaptations be able to play with various outcomes of organizational scenarios.