Have you got the delivery of a training programme down to a fine art, all your students leave with beaming faces and extremely motivated to put all their new-found skills into use as soon as they return to work.

Does this mean that they have learnt everything they need to know? How much will they actually remember to use? As we all know, it is not humanly possible to take every detail in from a few training sessions, therefore the learning process really needs extending - the training has not really finished just because they have left the course.

The OnlineLearning offered very useful guidelines for suggesting ways of making learning on-going:

• Get learners to write down what main skills they wish to obtain from the training and how the intend putting them into use upon completion.
  
• E-mail is a useful facility for maintaining informal contact with learners to see how they are getting on and even asking for examples as to how they have applied their new-found skills.
  
• Talk to the managers of the learners to see whether they have noticed improvements and where these skills have been applied - or if not, why not.
  
• If there are people within the same area that have been through the training as your latest attendees, then ask these people to act as mentors to provide support back in the workplace.
  
• If you have a help-desk within your organisation, maintain regular contact and some will even produce a report outlining the most frequent problems they are receiving that could easily be amended by targetting appropriate training.
  
• Make sure that the organisation does not forget you exist e.g. newsletter articles, e-mail messages, network pop-up messages. Provide a variety of training seminars, not only formal classroom, such as specialist workshop sessions, lunch-time sessions, software review sessions, or even opportunities for people to 'pop-in' and cover their specific requirements.
  
• DO evaluate your feedback forms, don't let them just gather dust. It may also be useful to re-evaluate your learners around about a month after they have attended training. Review alternative methods of delivering learning so that there is choice and flexibility such as CD-ROM's, web-based training, one-to-one and practice manuals.
  
• Make sure you gather research to ensure that your training is making a difference, if not you need to re-address what you are doing immediately.

So how do you manage to fit all this in your normally extremely busy schedule? There needs to be time set aside for important issues such those highlighted above, also, how do you expect your learners to learn, if you are not including yourself as part of the process? Please use the comments facility below to provide additional points of interest and how you manage your time and how develop your skills in order to provide an effective and up-to-date training provision. Does the organisation you work for, give you training opportunities or do you have to provide your own?