Whether your trainers have on-the-job experience or are new to the trainer role, it’s important to provide them with skills to effectively facilitate learning.
Why is this so important?
- Adults have learning needs that are different from those of traditional students. Adults need to know why they are learning something and how it affects them. They have life experiences that they should tap into as a resource for ongoing learning, and they bring various levels of prior exposure to any topic. Adults prefer a hands-on problem-solving approach to learning. Finally, adults want to apply new knowledge and skills immediately, which is crucial to retention.
- Facilitating self-directed learning is more effective than simply lecturing or flipping through a PowerPoint presentation. Learning must result in a positive change in the learner’s knowledge, skills, and behaviors. In order to accomplish this, you must be proficient in the art of facilitating learning, both in workshops and sometimes virtually. Remember the Golden Rule of Learning: Whoever is doing the work is doing the learning. Make sure it is the learner instead of you!
- Providing the correct type of feedback at the appropriate time to learners is essential to improved performance. The primary objective of training is to improve learners’ performance. When you provide feedback to learners about how they perform and how they can improve, performance can improve dramatically. Yet some trainers don’t give feedback regularly. Because of this, learners often state that they don’t know what their trainer’s expectations are or how to do a better job.
What can you do to get the right training for your trainers? Our Trainer Certification has information about how you and your trainers can become certified facilitators of learning.
