The Trainer & The Instructional Designer - Two Sides of the Same Coin!

A fire! A raging wild forest fire!

It is spreading at a lightening speed through the training circles of India, and this fire is called instructional design.

In the last three years, the training scene in India has changed like never before, and the main driver of this change has been the BPO industry. For those who are new to the mechanics of this industry, here is brief summary of the why and how of this change. The BPO industry of India has an unending requirement of call-executives of agents, which is driven by the growth of the industry and the high employee turnover rates. After the agents are inducted they require immediate training for two main skills – voice & accent, and processes. Other than these, the continual interactions with client result in developmental training requirements on the soft-skills front.

Now the BPO trainer, by virtue of the kind of trainings he or she imparts, is different from the corporate trainer of yesteryears. The corporate trainer of the past was usually not happy to be part of the training department, for after all, the training department was considered to be an overhead department and thus, always operated in constraints. In the BPOs, the training department has a clearly defined responsibility. They are almost a line function as no new recruit can enter the hallowed portals of the shop floor, without the initiatory rites performed in the training halls!

Thus, the responsibilities of the trainer have also grown considerably. They have become more result-oriented. With the effectiveness of their training programs under the scanner, they are now looking at the ways to make their trainings more powerful and effective. And their unstoppable quest for knowledge automatically brings them the answer. You guessed it right – the answer that they find is – Instructional Design!

So when a trainer meets the new discipline of instructional design and decides to become someone who doesn’t just train but who also designs and develops the content for the training programs; he or she stands at the threshold of a transformation. The transformation from a trainer to a Training Lifecycle Specialist!

Let us look at the skill-set that a stereotypical trainer possesses. Please note that we are not considering the SME-Trainer, who trains on the subject that he or she is an expert of.

A trainer’s primary focus area is training implementation and so the following are important for him or her.

• Good body language
• Excellent verbal communication
• Good command over contextual terminology
• Strong repository of quotations/humor/interesting factoids
• An inclination towards abstraction rather than concretization
• Disinclination towards verbal thrift
• High Energy Action-orientation

The skill set required for a good instructional designer is somewhat different. As an instructional designer is a synthesizer or a creator, the following are important for him or her.

• Wide information base
• Inclination towards verbal thrift
• Propensity to be specific rather than generic in expression
• Good written expression
• Willingness to research
• Capability to think and write…for hours!
• Apathy towards high energy action

Do you see the difference?
Trainers are different from designers; but the fact still remains – trainers can benefit a lot from instructional design if they open themselves to some attitudinal changes. Even if they don’t they would still see their trainings benefiting from applying the ID principles to their own area, which is the implementation of training programs.

Let us see how ID could help a trainer.

In the Analysis phase of the training lifecycle, instructional design could assist the trainer in collecting the right kind of information for a particular training program. ID could help the trainer design more effective research questionnaires with the right kind of questions, conduct interviews and supervise group discussions in a more effective manner, and also analyze the data to arrive at information that will truly be useful in the future phases of the Training Lifecycle or the TLC.

In the Design phase of the TLC, the trainer designer could benefit from the knowledge of instructional design while identifying, phrasing, and sequencing the objectives correctly, selecting or creating the right kind of examples, designing the appropriate practice activities, and finally writing effective assessments.

The next phase, called the Development phase makes good use of the instructional design principles to ensure participant motivation and enable learning. It also helps the trainer designer write the content of the different training documents in a synergistic manner.

The trainers already rule the Implementation phase. However, instructional design helps by giving them tools to understand the participants’ learning processes and influence learning positively. It allows them to review the entire process of learning in view of the instructional design principles.

Finally, in the Evaluation phase, instructional design assists a trainer determine the effectiveness of the entire training program by formulating the right evaluation plans.

As it’s clear, the trainer can easily make good use of instructional design in the Implementation and Evaluation phases, as he or she is already equipped with the behavioral characteristics associated with these phases. However, the other three phases would require the trainer to transform from a high-energy, active, charismatic leader; to a high-creativity, somewhat sedentary, patient writer!

My experience suggests that this transformation isn’t easy. Most trainers tend to forget that the adult learning principles apply to them too, when they become learners. They forget that in order to design and develop, they will have to shed their trainer robes and don the garb of an ID. I haven’t seen an impatient person make a good ID, or an ID at all! As a good instructional designer, you should be prepared to sit and type for long hours, you should be prepared to wait for an idea to blossom, and you should also be prepared to trash your entire day’s work, if you don’t find it up to mark.

If you are a trainer wishing to transform your trainings into breath-taking performances, you need to begin at the beginning. You need to learn instructional design, and then apply it to design and develop your own training programs – only then will your training programs speak for themselves!

Author: Shafali R. Anand