9 Responses

1. hours or…

   Its not the duration or the start or finish times that are important, but what it is that the learners need to achieve and how long that will take.

   The other factors that need to be taken into account are (in no particular order):

   1. trainers style
   2. frequency and timing of breaks
   3. motivation of learners

   so it all depends….

2. I prefer shorter more intense days

   A very interesting issue – I hope it gets a lot of contributors.

   Twenty eight years into my ‘helping people to learn’ life I have moved away from the conventional 9ish to 5ish day and very much favour a long morning, ideally starting around 9 and finishing after 1.00.

   Add within the traditional model, a lunch and break time, and I really don’t think there is much of a time loss especially when the learning curve effect kicks in and the value tails off.

   Much depends on travel and so on of course, for me ‘though, where I can, this works best, as it allows a return to work, gets people when typically most energised, and can be followed up with other one to one contacts.

   Not the best use of my time in terms of optimising days but, hey, who matters most – my ideal preferences or the needs and best options for the paying client?

   Let’s have some more on this as I believe it’s a very fundamental issue.

   Andrew Gibbons

   http://www.andrewgibbons.co.uk

    

3. Effectiveness of Learning

   Hi Christina

   To a large extent, I agree it all depends on many factors.  I have found in the past, people very seldomly learn much after 5.30, and it is a mistake to carry on to squeeze more in to the day.  However it may be politically sensible to start more promptly at 9.00 to give the impression of getting on with it straight away, and the training not being perceived by your new managers as a soft-option day.

   I think the real answer here is to demonstrate clearly to the new management what the effectiveness of the training is – it needs to be evaluated and the benefits explained to them.

   Tim

    

4. Turn the tables…

   Hi Christina,

    

   I’ve been very fortunate this past week that very senior managers were on the 3 day sales training I’ve just delivered. Fortunate because they could see how hard delegates had to work and how much it took out of me… Ideally this training would have been delivered in 2 x 2 day sessions. In future it will be, because overloaded people don’t learn so well, or as much, and are less likely to transfer learning in to changed behaviours & results in the workplace. Style is part of it, and my approach was certainly high energy, engaging etc – the feedback was ‘epic’!

   Great if your new management can see what value you bring and how overcooking things will actually result in less effective training, not more effective…

   And if you feel like it, why not ask them why they don’t hold management meetings for longer periods in a day, and so cut down disruptions the their operations etc…??!!

    

   Take a look at some of the material at http://www.kaizen-training.com, experts in accelerated learning & how people learn.

    

   Good luck,

   Martin

5. Ideal Training Day

   There are a number of factors that influence an ideal day:

   • What are you limitations in terms of catering and providing a room, food, etc.?
   • How far people have to travel to get to the place?
   • Is the course taking place over a single day or multiple days?
   • What is the chronotype of delegates?

   By knowing these factors, you can heuristically formulate a plan that would satisfy most factors. Some factors may contradict each other, so defining a purely ideal setup might be impossible. You may need to compromise on one or more parameters. 

   There is research in this area mainly on chronotype and also how people learn progressively over time. The chronotype is effectively a graph that represents how productive you are at different times of the day. For example some people are morning people and some are night people. They simply get more done at specific times.

   Unfortunately the general wisdom is that everyone is always more productive in the morning. Research shows that this is not necessarily true. Some people like the warming up process. As a day passes, new associations are formed in the brain based on what you encounter. Accumulation of these associations can make it easier to come across new ideas, become more creative and solve problems. All of this means that some people might be a lot more productive in the afternoon or evening having worked on the topic all day.

   To take advantage of this, you can ask your delegates to tell you about their chronotype before attending the course. If you know when they best learn, you can bias the course and its content to maximise learning. Of course, you may need to use a statistical approach as you may not be able to satisfy everyone’s chronotype.

   The morning is ideal for learning new content and memorisation. This suggests that if you have a lot of content to go through which people need to be aware of or memorise without doing much analysis on, you can ask them to come early in the morning and use a larger part of the morning to go through the content.

   On the other hand, if your course requires solving and is mainly analytical, you may prepare people in the morning by working on similar topics and move on to problem solving later in the day. This suggests that you can start later than normal and finish late as well. People don’t learn well in later part of the day, but they are usually efficient when participating in activities related to content covered earlier in the day. Again, as a trainer you can exploit this as well.

   For training content on this topic you can look into Time Management Training Materials

   Check wikipedia for research on chronotype

   And you can get general soft skills training materials here.

    

   Ehsan Honary

6. Ideal training day – or days that is a question

    

   At the heart of this question, for me, is what is an ideal training session?

    

   In the 90’s I co-delivered a seven day strategic management programme called making strategy work. It started on Sunday afternoon and ended on the following Saturday morning at lunchtime.

    

   The course was non stop from the 14.00 start on the Sunday every other day was an 08.30 start with a finish time of between 18.00 – 18.30. It didn’t stop there as at every meal time, at 19.30 sharp, we had an invited senior official from the company or an external speaker.

    

   In the delegates "spare time" of late evenings and early mornings they had to manage three different projects al within different teams and all culminating in major presentations on the Friday to senior managers who would be their potential bosses of the future.

    

   If someone suggested this to me now I would say that there is a limited value in this type of approach from a learning point of view in the sense of people going back to their work place and applying all the things covered, or even some of them, or even one in most cases.

    

   What was interesting was that most people loved this experience, something of a fusion of big brother with the bush tucker trials thrown in with your future bosses all watching.

    

   The training team tackled the learning effectiveness of this course with the CEO but had to wait for a change at the top before implementing a thorough overhaul which transformed the programme into series of four two day modules linked by practical assignments and supported by external coaching.   

    

   Recently I have been equipping people in the line to deliver their own soft skill training for themselves. They start with a short 45-60 minute single issue trainings which enable them to introduce a subject and carry out some practical exercise.   

    

   Their results have been excellent. The interesting thing is that their own training was a two day course running from 08.30- 18.00 each day with a 45 minute lunch break.  The key to success may be down the design which was to effectively repeat one session four times over the two days integrating the theory as we went and instilling in the delegates good feedback skills so I did la lot less talking than they did.        

    

   Cheers.

   Nick

    

    

    

      

         

    

7. how long is a pece of string?

   Personally I find people generally cannot concentrate for more than 2 – 2.5 hours at a time – so my ideal training day involves 2 x 2.5 hour sessions with a lunch break and mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks.  Or even a half day of 2.5 hours.  I have testimonials dripping off me regarding the effectiveness of my training – and no-one has ever complained the sessions were too short!

   Are you managers insane? Why do they think people like lorry and coach drivers have strictly limited working hours?  It’s because people cannot remain fully concentrated on something for very long.

   Time isn’t wha matters – it’s what the trainees get out of it, retain and are able to apply to their work that’s important.  Their attitude towards the training is also a factor – being press-ganged into a ridiculously long day will certainly cause resentment and be a real bvarrier to effective learning.

   Regards

    

   Cathy

8. Ideal training day
   Dear all,
   I have eagerly read all your contributions, I dare say with some amusement at times (recognising certain ideas stated), satisfaction (seeing gut feelings confirmed) and attention for the clever and compelling way of formulating arguments that should help to persuade our management. The bottom line as I would filter it now, after all your input, is indeed that there is no such thing as an “ideal” training day, and that it is our challenge to stay aligned with each new group, remain flexible, keep up the energy and not so much fret over time (be it too little or too long) as long as we can ensure people will take away the key message we want to bring across. Note – I realise in my original post I had not made it clear that our team is facilitating management (soft) skills, which I am aware can call for a slightly different approach than e.g. a soft ware training.
   A big thank you for all your reactions.
   Christina

9. Ideal training day
   Dear all,
   I have eagerly read all your contributions, I dare say with some amusement at times (recognising certain ideas stated), satisfaction (seeing gut feelings confirmed) and attention for the clever and compelling way of formulating arguments that should help to persuade our management. The bottom line as I would filter it now, after all your input, is indeed that there is no such thing as an “ideal” training day, and that it is our challenge to stay aligned with each new group, remain flexible, keep up the energy and not so much fret over time (be it too little or too long) as long as we can ensure people will take away the key message we want to bring across. Note – I realise in my original post I had not made it clear that our team is facilitating management (soft) skills, which I am aware can call for a slightly different approach than e.g. a soft ware training.
   A big thank you for all your reactions.
   Christina