Mastering Training Design

"If judgments of my work are always external, I will be dependent on the judge, not myself.

The judgment needs to be internalized. I need to establish the authority of my own voice, to make judgments about my own work.

The only way to do this is to invite the conversation between the two.

Trainers must create openings that allow participants to dialogue about their own work. They must get people to reflect. They must explore the subtle nuances of their development. This takes a broad range of skills."

~ Adapted from Bena Kallick

Mastering Training Design
When you design and deliver training, who plays the role of performance judge? Does the learner have an opportunity to assess their own learning? Do they understand the nuances between a good, better and amazing performance of the learning?

In every Mastering Training Design program we facilitate, the question of how to best assess the training function surfaces. Many of you rely on Donald Kirkpatrick’s four-level model. Here you can see how Kirkpatrick's model overlays on the 4MAT model:

The key to effective assessment in training is to design the learning in such a way that assessment is part of the design. The 4MAT model allows you to do this by including assessment throughout the training design. The conscious focus on learner application supports assessment at higher levels.

The soon-to-be released book Hold On, You Lost Me! Use Learning Styles to Design and Deliver Training that Sticks, co-authored by 4MAT creator Dr. Bernice McCarthy and Jeanine O’Neill-Blackwell, President/CEO of 4MAT 4Business, is being published by ASTD Press in June 2007. An entire chapter is devoted to incorporating assessment into the training design process.

Be well,
Jeanine O'Neill-Blackwell
President/CEO, 4MAT 4BUSINESS