Solving Your Training Problems With T4 Video

How to use TV - style video to “move the needle” on results with your training

 

It’s the giant elephant in the room. From the Kirkpatricks’ book Training on Trial, to folks such as McKinsey, MIT Sloan, SPI, ES Research, AHRD, and the Corporate Executive Board, there’s a large body of research suggesting that workplace training is not generating results. So what’s going on?

 

The “Terrible Too’s” of Training

The first problem is that there’s a giant disconnect between how people learn and the training that most employers provide. Nearly all of it totally ignores the realities of adult learning.

As we point out in our book, Taming the Terrible Too’s of Training, workplace learning is too much, too fast, too long, too boring, too hard, too far ahead of time, too infrequent, too inconsistent, too inconvenient, and too expensive.

Learners are buried in content during a one-time event, what’s called “acquisition learning.” Then they go back to work where it’s not immediately used, not reviewed, not reinforced, and not coached. And in the rare case that learners actually try the new skills, they’re punished if they’re not perfect at it. As a result, what little learning that happen during events, disappears.

A perfect example of a total waste of training time is a half-day Excel class. Over a four-hour period, you supposedly learn hundreds of commands, with multi-level menus and complex options. Then a month later, you need to create a pivot table, and what do you have? Nothing. You’ve forgotten it all, assuming that you even retained it in the first place.

So what do you do? You go on YouTube, search for a video on pivot tables in Excel, and watch how to do them. This is called “refresh learning.” After watching the video and creating the table, you promptly forget the procedure, because you can always go back to the video if you ever need to do another pivot table.

And if you do this enough, you don’t need to keep accessing the video. You’ve remembered it through sheer repetition, what’s called “unconscious learning.” So why do you even need the lab training event?

The Importance of a “Refresh Learning” Strategy

It turns out that training departments are doing their job. But that’s not the issue. According to an ATD study, 76% of the positive results of training happen outside of the event. Conversely, according to a study by T&D magazine, 90% of the causes of poor training results also happen before or after the event.

So the training event isn’t the issue. Yet where does training focus its attention, and its budget?  A University of Phoenix study found that 85% of the budget is spent on the events themselves.

You want to know a fun question to ask a training professional? “What’s your refresh learning strategy?” Normally, all you get back is a blank look.

Based on all the research, and on practical experience, you should make this bet with your employer:
Halt allof your training events, and save the budget money. Then take half of the money and focus solely on the after-training activities—refresh learning, coaching, and performance support content. Do that and you’ll actually get better business results.

Training that Works – T4 Video

OK, so you need to revamp your approach to training. You need short programs that people want to complete, and that can be delivered in the right way, to any device.

Of course, what you’re talking about is video—but not just any video. Call it T4 Video—content that “tames the terrible too’s of training.” What does this video look like? And what type of special instructional design does it require?

It looks just like TV, ala the evening news. Research shows that the most effective content is video that integrates an on-screen presenter with the content. It’s not two windows. That causes split attention, which lowers learning. It’s not a talking head. That’s boring. And it’s not someone reading the text on the screen. That’s excruciatingly mind-numbing, and also lowers learning.

Actually, it’s a matter of capturing the look and feel of a live event. Format your slides differently, adjust your instructional design to use the media properly, build in mental engagement exercises, and you have eminently watchable and popular training content.

                                                          

Creating a TV-Style Video Mini-Studio … on a Shoestring

At this point you might be thinking, “Great idea, but I don’t have $50,000 in my budget and the staff to run a full green screen studio.”

Ah, those were the old days, and those days are gone. The technology now exists to create full TV quality, HD video that looks just like the evening news. And you can do it in an 8 x 8 foot area, with a laptop, standard software, and less than $800 in equipment.

For example, you can take an existing classroom program, reformat the PowerPoint slides to leave room for you on-screen, and then record your presentation in the mini-studio exactly like you deliver it live. Literally in minutes, you can have a finished online training program.

With a mini-studio like that in Figure 1, you can quickly and easily produce video programs that look just like TV. The output is a standard MPG file that you can distribute any way you want, to any device. And once you have the studio all set up, the marginal cost to create additional programs is … $0. There’s just the trainer’s development and presentation time, which is the same regardless of the medium of delivery.

Summary

There’s nothing inherently wrong with classroom learning. It’s just a total violation of adult learning rules. And there is definitely lots wrong with that awful screen-flipping, read-the-screen e-learning.

If you think about it, we’re all professional TV watchers. We’ve spent thousands of hours perfecting our skills. It’s how we prefer to get our information. We have access to it anywhere on our PCs and mobile devices.

So give your learners the information they need, where they need it, exactly when they need it, in the format they want it. That’s TV-style video. And with today’s technology, there’s no reason you can’t give it to them.

And by the way, T4 Video is one of the few situations today where you can lower your costs, and actually get better results. It’s the perfect solution for both acquisition learning, and for implementing your refresh learning strategy.

Author Bio

Ken Cooper is the Founder of CooperComm, Inc. He has conducted over 2,500 seminars, appeared on satellite TV for Anheuser-Busch and Apple, and has created over 1,000 video-based online training programs.Ken is the co-author of Taming the Terrible Too’s of Training, and the author of Effective Competency Modeling & Reporting, The Relational Enterprise, BodyBusiness, and Stop It Now. Visit www.KenCooper.com