training design Archives - Keystone Development and Training Ltd

When Creativity Strikes

June 17, 2019Uncategorizeddesign, HR, learning, managers, OD, pace, training, training design

Designing training is quite a creative thing. Yes – there are some things that you can do to progress the creation of a course when your brain isn’t in it, but when creativity strikes BOOM!! You work so much more quickly and what you create is so much better. I’ve just experienced this in a non-work capacity. In my lunch break, I decided to go and pick the raspberries (we have so many growing!!), and whilst I was outside, allowing my mind to wander, I suddenly knew how I wanted to re-design the garden. It’s been something we’ve been talking about for about a year, but despite looking in magazines, searching on-line, going round garden centres and so on, we didn’t move our thinking on much. But little ideas have been stored here and there. Last week, we found ourselves watching an episode Springwatch. We weren’t even giving it our full attention, but there was a small item on creating a nature garden in a small, urban space. What a nice idea I thought, but that was it. However, today, as I finished picking the raspberries, I turned and looked at my rectangular lawn and dilapidated shed and tatty patio,…

Training Design Support

June 16, 2019training design

Imagine being able to quickly design effective, impactful learning solutions that satisfy all your stakeholders... Here at Keystone Development and Training Ltd we LOVE designing bespoke, blended learning and development programmes. But we know that sometimes YOU have to design them too! Maybe that's because your content is very niche, or you need to maximise agility, or you have a large team at your disposal who are employed to do just that. However, designing great learning isn't as quick or easy as it seems. Designing training (in what ever format) is part ART and part SCIENCE. Whether training designers are inexperienced, working alone or designing to a deadline, it can be difficult for them to do great work. That's why we provide support and assistance to training designers and learning developers too! We do this through: The Training Designer's Club. An on-line community for learning and training designers to support each other, share ideas and ask for assistance. The Facebook group is free to join, and our VIP membership (coming soon) offers a more personalised and in-depth service. Find out More On-line Learning Courses. If you are new to training design, or maybe it only forms PART of your role,...

Designing Training for Designing Training!

March 20, 2019Uncategorizeddesign, training, training design

The Training Designer’s Club is only a couple of weeks old, and we already have over 50 members – a real mixture of experienced designers and people coming to it for the first time; freelancers and internal designers. So far. I’m delighted with the feel of it and the conversations that are starting to place. And it made wonder if there would be demand for more formal assistance for new training designers? I don’t know about you, but I just picked it up, and then over the years discovered why some things worked than better than others, and started to add to my toolkit. It’s taken a long time. And its time that many people don’t have. So I’ve had a genius idea (or perhaps I’m living in cloud cuckoo land)… Please take 5 minutes to watch this video and let me know your thoughts. So – what do you think? If you want to be told when I’ve developed the idea, please add your details here, and I’ll email you when I have more to show and tell. And, if you haven’t already, why not join the Training Designers Club on Facebook?

Introducing the Training Designer’s Club

March 5, 2019Uncategorizeddesign, OD, training, training design

I’m getting excited about the development of my Training Designer’s Club. It’s a support group for anyone involved in designing training – whether it’s at a strategic level or at the nitty-gritty end of creating session plans and delegate materials. If you are a lone L&D person in your organisation OR new to training OR responsible for learning design, it’s for you. Please come and join me, and help me to shape the direction of what I hope will become a valuable community. LEARN MORE or JOIN THE FACEBOOK GROUP NOW.

Creativity in Learning Design

March 3, 2019Uncategorizedbusiness, design, HR, managers, OD, training, training design

Last week, I attended the Manchester L&D ‘Unconference’ – an opportunity for L&D professionals to meet, agree their own agenda and have the conversations they want to have about all things L&D. The first session I joined was all around the question “How can we be more creative in training design?”. It was quite insightful, and here are the summary thoughts that I came away with. Firstly, what do we mean by creative, and why do we feel the need to be creative? We quickly agreed that creative doesn’t mean ‘wacky’. Creativity can be quite serious! Creative training is defined in relation to the topic and the audience. Yes, sometimes creative training may involve crossing streams and building rope bridges: It may involve Lego, singing, or lots of coloured pens; It may simply involve a live demo, detailed case study or expert interview. Creativity in training is simply about providing an alternative way in to the learning – a different way of exploring it from the norm. It’s about providing multiple touch points and appealing to different learning preferences. It’s about getting people off autopilot and grabbing their attention, taking them out of their comfort zone, but only by a…

Thank You

December 18, 2018Uncategorizedbusiness, design, HR, OD, training, training design

I’ve been working for myself for 12 years now. And for the first 4 or 5, I really did work by myself. I got by. Then, Pam Case, Deborah Dean and Lynda Walkley invited me to a monthly networking group in my village! So I started networking. I met some lovely people who lived near me and a few of them have become friends, which is great and I loved the social side. However, they weren’t the right people for me to talk business with. They didn’t really get what I did or know the people I needed to connect with. So when Rebekah Ayres started a networking group in Liverpool for ‘people’ people I made every effort to go. It was fabulous. I made some more friends there (Hi Simon Jones!) and was able to grow my professional network and meet potential clients through these contacts. I was able to do the same for others. They helped me to gain confidence in who I was and what I did – simply by taking a genuine interest, and being able to have a detailed conversation. They pointed me to useful resources, introduced me to other helpful people and also encouraged…

How to Create an Award Winning Development Programme

November 22, 2018Uncategorizedbespoke, business, coaching, design, HR, management, managers, OD, performance, talent, training, training design

In L&D circles, the fashion is for agile learning; for bite-size sessions, or even micro-learning; for self-direction and curation. Surely no-one still attends workshops? Even worse, 18 month programmes? Well. Yes they do, and there’s a reason for it: They work. They work AS LONG AS the right people are on the programme in the first place, the programme is designed to take them on a development journey, AND those people are given high levels of support and challenge. I’m delighted to have played a supporting role in such a programme for the last 9 months – The award winning Academy at Johnson’s Apparelmaster. The Academy is multi-layered (internal) development programme that I’ve been supporting for the last 9 months. Here I am (on the right) with (L-R) Charlene Howard, Michela Deegan and Jan Fisher-Payne who each manage and deliver a specific stream. I have been supporting the largest group – the Intermediate level. Although my part has ended, the Academy is just half-way through. Twenty-Four people have been through 9 months of structured development, including self-directed learning, five 2-day workshops, telephone coaching and practical assignments. So far, the results have been pretty impressive. I’ve seen the majority of these…

World of Learning – Key Ingredients of Learning Impact

October 21, 2018Uncategorizedbehaviour, design, HR, managers, OD, training, training design

This is a short blog post based on the notes I made during this session at the World of Learning Conference in October 2018. It may not be complete or totally accurate – it’s just what I took away. I have to say that this session was one of the most insightful and useful – based on transfer of learning, which is a topic that is very important to me. This was an interesting session about an area of learning that matters to me… transfer to the job. Ina Weinbauer-Heidel explained that in most traditional training, 15% of learners get a positive outcome in that they transfer learning to the job successfully; 70% attempt to transfer learning but (for a range of reasons) fail to do so; and 15% don’t even try. So what is the reason for this lack of transfer? Her research identified over 100 factors that influence transfer of learning… she focused on 12 factors that L&D professionals can influence, which she has called 12 Levers of Transfer Effectiveness. These Levers fall into 3 categories: Trainees, Design and Organisation – You can imagine my delight when the importance of training design (not delivery) was highlighted as one…

Training Design and Learner Maturity

October 4, 2018Uncategorizedbespoke, design, HR, management, OD, training, training design

In September I ran 2 (identical) workshops for one of my main clients. One of the topics we were covering was Conflict management. It’s not my strongest subject to cover, so during the design phase I spent a lot of time researching different theories and models to get myself up to date. None of the models or theories jumped out at me as being particularly relevant for my client and the likely conflict situations my delegates would find themselves in. So I did something I would never normally do… I DIDN’T design part of this section of the workshop. As someone who ALWAYS designs in detail (I figure it’s better to give the trainer more than they need than not enough – even when that trainer is me) I felt nervous about this. Just to clarify – I didn’t leave a hole full of nothingness: I did include a section on exploring what conflict is, what causes it and created some bespoke case studies/role plays to explore the practical side of conflict resolution. What I DIDN’T do was prescribe HOW conflict should be resolved. Instead, I asked delegates to complete their own independent research into conflict resolution as pre-course work,…

How to Design Training

July 8, 2018Uncategorizeddesign, management, OD, training, training design

I’m very active on LinkedIn and I realised that many people I’d started my career with are now in very senior positions, or have international roles doing very exciting things. I am still doing (more or less) what I was doing 20 years ago: designing training workshops, learning materials and live learning events. I wondered if this meant I was a failure. I am also aware that many small consultancies like mine and putting more content on line – creating videos, running webinars, and so on. My infrastructure is so bad, I can’t do any of those things. We struggle to watch iplayer. Sometimes I feel that I’m being left behind. But focusing on what I HAVEN’T done, and what I CAN’T do isn’t going to bring success, so I flipped these thoughts. I chose not to climb the corporate ladder for 2 reasons: 1) because I wanted my children to be brought up by their parents, not a childminder, as 2) because the further into management you go, the less involved in training you are. I am a creative person at heart, and my skills aren’t in managing schedules and budgets. By staying as a researcher, designer and occasional…

Tag: training design

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