Platform Training Program Plan

One of the electives I took as part of my studies was in program planning for adult learners. What I appreciated most about the class was that it took an idea and built upon it for each successive assignment. By framing the assignments in that way, it gave me a great appreciation for all of the steps that go into a successful plan.

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For my project, I planned training sessions for technical support and implementation engineers for a new release that we have coming up. The release is a major shift in the way we do things, since it unifies three previously disparate pieces of software. As a result, it fundamentally changes the way that we install, implement, configure, and support the product. Currently, our organization still assigns resources (for implementation engineers) or cases (for technical support) based upon the products that the individual is strongest with. That model will no longer work with the new platform release. 

There were three major phases to the project plan assignment: 

- Create a plan of action and provide it in a presentation-style format, as if it were being delivered to stakeholders in a meeting

- Create a program proposal based on the ideas presented previously

- Create a full written program for the project and provide a 10-minute multimedia presentation that clearly describes the project

I used the pragmatic planning approach as described by Caffarella and Daffron (2008), and using that approach, I was able to create a viable plan for training a large group of employees on a brand new product within a two week period. The program includes scenario- and problem-based learning to help increase retention (Hwang & Kim, 2006), and the use of games to help support information delivery and improvement of critical thinking skills (Azadegan, Reidel, & Baalsrud, 2012).

One criticism of the final assignment I received noted that it was weak on sustainability and marketing, both of which I completely agree with. Those are aspects that I didn't give a lot of thought to, considering that this was intended to be a one-off project for internal training. Looking back on it, however, I can see how that was somewhat shortsighted. A solid, sustainable plan could be recycled for future product releases or other, similar projects, or possibly even for other departments or for customers. If I had it to do over again, that is definitely something I'd consider.

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Although this program plan doesn't translate directly to learning theory, I felt it was important to include in my portfolio to show that my capabilities extend beyond facilitation. Included are downloads of the plan of action and the full program description, with the presentation in the section below.

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References:

Azadegan, A., Riedel, J. C., & Hauge, J. B. (2012). Serious games adoption in corporate training. In International conference on serious games development and applications, 74-85. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

Caffarella, R.S., & Daffron, S.R. (2013). Planning programs for adult learners: A practical guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Hwang, S. Y., & Kim, M. J. (2006). A comparison of problem-based learning and lecture-based learning in an adult health nursing course. Nurse Education Today, 26(4), 315-321