Back in my early classroom teaching days, I used to start a course by asking students why they were attending. I wanted to know what they wanted to get out of the class. I was always surprised how many would simply reply, “I have no idea. That’s why I’m
by Site Staff
March 1, 2006
Back in my early classroom teaching days, I used to start a course by asking students why they were attending. I wanted to know what they wanted to get out of the class.
I was always surprised how many would simply reply, “I have no idea. That’s why I’m here. My office just purchased XYZ system, and I’m here to see what it does. Then I’ll take that information back to my group, and we can figure out what we want to do next.” In other words, training was expected to precede relevance.
In the “good old days” of IT education, that was training’s job. Students came to class to find out what this new thing was about and then get certified on that technology. They had little to no idea what that would mean to their lives or jobs. Training assumed that once we showed them all the possibilities and gave them an overall perspective of the system, the students would take that foundation back to work where it was their responsibility to make the jump to relevance. The question is, did they make this jump, and what will best serve them now?
I would argue to a degree that some things were applied, but many things were not. I also would argue that many programs are not drawing the number of students they could because they have not shifted the emphasis from a focus on content to a focus on relevance.
As students progress through a learning intervention, they begin to “get it,” personalize it and apply it to their specific outcomes. They no longer want to become certified on all that a system or program can provide or to attend training that covers everything from soup to nuts. For these learners, the days of learning every aspect of a system have become obsolete. It’s no longer necessary for them to learn this way. Students want training to be an experience that leads with relevance that the new content supports. The frustrating thing for learners is that we continue to write many of our training and certification programs as if everything is new and needed. The contradiction I continue to hear in the industry is that although training providers feel that training is down, companies report that the need to train mission-critical skills is more important than ever before. So, why aren’t students showing up? Why the disconnect?
At Microsoft Learning, we did some extensive research with our customers and realized that learners weren’t seeing the shift between relevance and training. Their feedback was clear: If our training programs and certifications weren’t relevant to the type of learning they needed, they didn’t want to attend.
We needed to take a hard look at the ways our products enabled our training partners to offer our programs and certify our customers. We began offering new services and courses, such as organizational assessment tools to help tailor training to specific projects, and business skill courses for desktop users, which focused on business practices while teaching new skills. We also introduced a new certification strategy that adds layers based on job roles and competencies instead of assessing a student’s overall understanding of one of our systems.
These are new approaches for Microsoft and ones that the company will continue to examine and refine. Either way, the focus on relevance needed to change.
As a learning industry, we need to look at each training program we offer and ask ourselves where it falls within our student’s learning path. Is it a completely new area justifying a broader and more general approach? Or is it further down the learning food chain, justifying a more focused and relevant offering?
If the learners have an existing experience base, the training needs to build on that and allow the learners to jump in where appropriate to take their knowledge to the next level. Unless we start building learning programs that offer relevance to these more advanced learners, the learners might not give a chance to the mission-critical content that follows.
Bob Mosher is director, learning evangelism and strategy, for Microsoft Learning and has been an influential leader in the IT training space for more than 15 years. He can be reached at bmosher@clomedia.com.