1. KMS2014
Design & Management of
Training Programmes
Unit 4
Effective Teaching and Learning
Strategies

2. Objectives
♦ At the end of this unit, you will be able to:
– Explain the reasons for conducting a
trainability analysis
– Explain ways of arranging training so that
learning is facilitated
– Identify and explain the factors that affects the
transfer of training to the work place

3. Introduction
♦ What does a trainer need to do to maximise learning on the
part of trainees?
♦ Three main questions of interest:
– Is the individual trainable?
– How should the training be arranged to facilitate
learning?
– What can be done to ensure that what was learned
during training will be retained and transferred to the
job?
♦ 2 main sources of guidance
– Principles of learning
– Theories of motivation

4. Trainability
♦ Function of ability + motivation
♦ Ability
– The extent to which an individual possess aptitude or
skills to perform the tasks at hand – examples
• Muscular coordination
• Visual acuity
• Personality characteristics such as self-confidence,
persuasiveness, sociability, decisiveness, assertiveness etc
• Mental ability

5. Trainability (ctd)
♦ Motivation
– Concern with variables which influence trainee’s effort,
persistence and choices – examples
• Need for achievement or competence
• Feeling of job involvement as well as level of career
interest
• Expectancy of individuals that participation in
training will lead to desired outcomes such as
feelings of accomplishment, greater responsibility,
higher pay, job security etc
• Anxiety effects (facilitated or interfered depending
on the types of learning: simple or complex)

6. Trainability (ctd)
Performance = Ability × Motivation
♦ Objective is to train individuals who
possess both the ability and motivation to
perform what is taught in training

7. Trainability (ctd)
♦ Trainability tests
♦ How do we assess whether learners are trainable
or not?
– Through instruction and demonstration
– Perform the task unaided
– Noting errors on standardized error checklist
♦ Findings from trainability tests revealed:
– Scores produce worthwhile level of validity
– Could be used to predict success in training and job
performance

8. Arrangement of the training
environment
♦ Learning conditions – external to learner
♦ Learning defined as relatively permanent change in behaviour that
occurs as a result of practice
♦ Following variables needed to be considered to facilitate learning
– Conditions of practice
• Active practice
• Over-learning
• Masses vs. distributed practice session
• Size of the unit to be learned
– Feedback
– Meaningfulness of the material
– Individual differences
– Behaviour modelling
– Maintaining motivation

9. Conditions of practice
♦ Active practice
– Learner given an opportunity to practice what is being taught
– Early stages of learning skills, trainer should be available to guide
practice – to minimise risk of learner develop inappropriate
behaviours
♦ Over-learning
– Provides trainees with continued practice far beyond the point
when the task has been performed correctly several times
– Relevant to:
• Activities that must be practiced under simulated conditions because
the real situation is either too expensive or too dangerous
• Tasks which are designed so that individuals cannot rely on lifelong
habit patterns e.g. certain emergency procedures

10. Conditions of practice (ctd)
♦ Importance of over-learning
– Increases the length of time training material
will be retained
– Making learning more reflexive – to become
automatic
– More likely to maintain quality of performance
during emergency and added stress
– Helps trainees transfer what they have learned
during training to job settings

11. Conditions of practice (ctd)
♦ Massed vs. distributed practice sessions
– Problem of dividing practice periods into segments
OR
– Plan one continuous session
– Decision depends on nature of task to be trained
– Possible problem about distributed practice session –
management frequently anxious about getting
individual trained to standard as quickly as possible
– Better for learning motor skills as rest period between
practice sessions allow fatigue to dissipate (Hull, 1943)

12. Conditions of practice (ctd)
♦ Size of unit to be learned
♦ Issues to consider:
– What is the optimum size of the unit to be learned?
– Should you attempt to teach the entire task at each
practice session?
– Is it more efficient in the long run to teach individual
subtasks initially and as the trainee starts mastering
each subtask begin the process of combining them?
♦ Three strategies used in scheduling training
– Assume that a task can be divided into three distinct
parts or subtasks

13. Conditions of practice (ctd)
Phase I Phase II Phase III Phase IV
Whole
training A+B+C A+B+C A+B+C A+B+C
Pure-part
training A B C A+B+C
Progressive
part training A A+B A+B+C A+B+C

14. Feedback
♦ Practice without evaluative feedback retards learning
♦ Feedback (knowledge of results) is critical for both
learning and motivation
♦ Forms of feedback
– Verbal praise
– Test scores
– Productivity reports
– Performance measurements
♦ Functions of feedback
– Tells trainees whether their responses were correct
– Makes learning process more interesting for the
trainees
– Leads to the setting of specific goals for maintaining or
improving performance

15. Feedback (ctd)
♦ Feedback should be provided as soon as
possible after trainee’s behaviour
♦ Feedback need not be instantaneous but
relationship between behaviour and
feedback must be clearly evident
♦ Specificity (amount) of feedback must be
appropriate to capabilities and stage of
development of learner

16. Feedback (ctd)
♦ Types of feedback
– Positive feedback
– Negative feedback
♦ Positive feedback e.g. making praise the
consequence of behaviour will usually
strengthen that behaviour
♦ Positive feedback is perceived and recalled
more accurately and accepted more readily
than negative feedback

17. Feedback (ctd)
♦ Negative feedback
– Is often denied by trainees with low self esteem
due to unwillingness to accept critical
comments
– Trainees may accept negative feedback from
trainers who are perceived as trustworthy,
knowledgeable and powerful
– Negative feedback must not be seen as punitive
in order for it to be effective

18. Feedback (ctd)
♦ Error feedback
– Associated with BF Skinner’s work on behaviour
modification - seen as a form of punishment and is
disruptive to learning
– When associated with Frese & Altmann (1988) error
feedback is seen as having positive effects because one has
to learn to deal efficiently with errors on both a strategic and
emotional level – training programs need to be designed so
that trainees have the opportunity to make errors, receive
feedback on them and encouraged to solve these problems
by themselves
♦ Intrinsic feedback
– Knowledge of feedback from tasks itself
♦ Effective learning strategy should include both intrinsic and
extrinsic feedback
♦ Feedback – most effective when it affects a person’s goals
♦ Feedback – works best when it involves simultaneous
behavioural feedback and end-results feedback

19. Meaningfulness of material
♦ Material that is rich in association with the
trainees and is thus easily understood by
them
♦ How do we make sure that our training
materials can be understood by the trainees?
– Provide overview: course outlines
– Use familiar examples, terms and concepts:
visual aid
– Sequence in logical order

20. Individual difference
♦ Demographic characteristic
♦ Age (Tucker, 1985)
– Younger (40 – 49): preferred management
training
– Upper age group (50 – 59): preferred training in
technological areas
– 60 & above: showed little interest in any kind
of training

21. Individual difference (ctd)
♦ Management hierarchy (Bernick et. al.,
1984)
– First line supervisors: technical factors such as
book keeping, written communication
– Mid-level managers: human resources courses
such as leadership skills, performance
appraisals
– Upper management: conceptual courses such as
goal setting and planning skills

22. Individual difference (ctd)
♦ Male-female managers (Berryman-Fink, 1986)
– Both male and female: assertiveness,
confidence building, public speaking and
dealing with opposite gender
– Male managers: listening, verbal skills,
nonverbal communication and empathy and
sensitivity
♦ Government workers (Tucker, 1984)
– Need for human resource planning with regard
to organisation

23. Individual difference (ctd)
♦ Learning rates
– Related to the rate of learning among individuals is the
best question: when is learning highest and lowest

24. Individual difference (ctd)
♦ Differences among trainees in abilities, motivation level,
interest and prior history will affect performance and
attrition (dropout) in training programmes (Christal, 1974)
– Select applicants for training programme who possesses
trainability
♦ Individual differences in trainee abilities is related to
learning phenomena
– Abilities are related to a number of different learning
phenomena such as performance during massed vs.
distributed practice session, whole vs. part training as
well as retention and transfer (Fleishman, 1965)

25. Individual difference (ctd)
♦ Implications are:
– Shorter training programme: if trainees are experienced and
possessed task-related activities
– Longer training programme: advisable for relatively inexperienced
trainees (Fleishmann & Mumford, 1989)
♦ Trainers differ in the kinds of “mental model” they
formulate and that these mental models affect how well
trainees learn what is being taught
♦ “mental models”: schemata
♦ Employ a training approach which encouraged trainee
exploration and the active development of an integrated
mental model

26. Mental model – Key characteristics
♦ Mental models include what a person thinks is
true, not necessarily what is actually true
♦ Mental models are similar in structure to the thing
or concept they represent
♦ Mental models allow a person to predict the
results of his actions
♦ Mental models are simpler than the thing or
concept they represent. They include only enough
information to allow accurate predictions

27. Mental model (ctd)
♦ On the average, older trainees require longer to
reach proficiency levels than younger trainees and
they may have developed alternative ways of
organising information which could conflict with
the requirements of the training programme
♦ Older trainees need slower presentation rates,
longer periods for study, sequencing their learning
from simple to complex tasks, greater help in the
organisation and memory processes and the
greater use of training techniques that provide
active participation in the learning process

28. Behavioural modelling
♦ Based on Albert Bandura’s social learning theory
– We can learn by imitating those actions of others that
we see as leading desirable outcomes
♦ How is learning facilitated through the use of a
model?
– Positive consequences: the model’s action functions as
a cue to what constitutes appropriate behaviour
– Modelling occurs: person imitated is seen as being
competent, powerful, friendly and of high status within
an organisation

29. Behavioural modelling (ctd)
– Modelling is increased: person to be imitated is seen as
being rewarded for how he or she acts as and when the
rewards received by the model (e.g. status, influence,
friendship) are the things that the observers would like
for themselves
– Observer identification with the models is maximised
when the model is similar to the observer
– Showing a trainee a negative model (showing trainee
the wrong way of doing things) together with a positive
model appears to facilitate transfer of learning to other
situations

30. Motivation
♦ What ways are there to motivate trainees?
♦ Two theories of motivation: goal setting and
expectancy theory
♦ Goal setting
– A goal is anything an individual is trying to achieve
– States that an individual’s conscious goals or intentions
regulate one’s behaviour
– Hard goals result in higher performance than easy ones
– Specific hard goals result in high performance than
having no goals or generalised goals such as “do your
best”

31. Motivation (ctd)
– Some research done on the importance of goal setting
in increasing performance of employees
♦ Latham and Lee (1986) findings:
– Learning objectives of the training programme should
be conveyed clearly to the participants at the outset of
training and at various strategic points throughout the
training process
– Training goals should be difficult enough so that
trainees are adequately challenged and thus are able to
derive satisfaction from the achievement of objectives
– The goal should be supplemented with periodic sub-
goals during training such as trainee evaluation, work
sample test and periodic quizzes

32. Motivation (ctd)
♦ Bandura (1982) & Locke and Latham (1990)
– Show importance of goal setting for increasing self
efficacy because without specific goals people have
little basis for judging their capabilities
– Self-efficacy refers to the person’s conviction that he or
she can master a given task
– Low self-efficacy can result in a decreased level of
performance
– However, goal setting also leads to depressed reactions
since their adequacy of performance is measured
against their personal standards
– Depressed reactions often arise from stringent self
evaluation

33. Motivation (ctd)
♦ Expectancy theory
♦ Instrumentality theory
♦ States that an individual will be more motivated to choose
a behaviour alternative that is most likely to have
favourable consequences
♦ “What am I going to get out of that?”
♦ If the individual perceived that putting effort may result in
something of value then the individual is motivated to
choose a particular behaviour
♦ The key concepts of the theory are
– Outcome
• Salary increases, promotion, dismissal, illness, injury, peer
acceptance, recognition and achievement

34. Motivation (ctd)
– Valence
• Desirability or attractiveness of an outcome to an
individual
– E  P Expectancy
• Employees perceived probability that a given
amount of effort will result in improved
performance that is quantity/quality of work
– P  O Expectancy
• Perceived probability that improved performance
will lead in turn to the attainment of valued
outcomes (e.g. bonus, pay increase, promotion)

35. Motivation (ctd)
♦ The theory assumes that before deciding how much effort
to exert, employees ask themselves whether or not the
following occurs:
– That the action has a high probability of leading to better
performance (EP)
– That the improved performance will lead to a certain needs related
outcome (PO)
– That those need-related outcomes or organisational rewards are of
value (valence)
♦ Here are two conditions that affect the two expectancies
– The PO expectancy depends on a person’s perception of the
rewards contingencies presently found in the organisation

36. Motivation (ctd)
– The EP expectancy depends in part on the relatively
stable characteristics of the workers such as
intelligence, motor abilities and personality traits and
the individual’s perceptions of what makes the
successful employee – of whether effort can be
transformed into an effective performance
♦ What are the implications of expectancy theory in
motivating trainees?
– The trainee must believe that “there’s something in it
for me” in terms of valued outcomes – higher wages,
opportunities for advancement, skill acquisition etc.) If
not then the training programme will be viewed as a
waster of time or will just lead them to no where

37. Motivation (ctd)
– Trainers should not assume that their trainees
have accurate perceptions of reward
contingencies
– Organisations should ensure that each trainee
has a high EP expectancy by providing
effective instructors, eliminating obstacles to
effective performance, providing accurate role
perceptions and selecting trainees with requisite
ability and motivation
– Only high valence outcomes should be used as
incentives for superior trainee performance

38. Motivation (ctd)
♦ In summary, the practical implications of
the two theories are that they can be applied
in motivating learning by making sure that:
– Trainees see the value for themselves in
participating in the training
– Trainees understand the goals or target
behaviours of the programme
– Trainees clearly perceives the link between
their actions during training and their receipt of
the valued rewards

39. Retention & transfer of learning
♦ What can be done to ensure that what is
learned in training will be retained and
transferred to the job?
♦ Transfer:
– The extent to which what was learned during
training is used on the job
– Three transfer possibilities
• Positive transfer – learning in the training situation results in
better performance on the job
• Negative transfer – results in poorer performance on the job
• Zero transfer – has no effect on job performance

40. Retention and transfer of learning
(ctd)
♦ How can we optimise the possibility of getting
positive transfer?
♦ Before training begins
– Conduct a needs analysis that includes multiple
constituencies
– Seek out supervisory support for training
– Inform the trainees regarding the nature of the training
– Assign tasks prior to the training sessions
♦ During the training session
– Maximise the similarity between the training situation
and the job situation

41. Retention and transfer of learning
(ctd)
– Provide as much experience as possible with the tasks
being taught
– Have the trainees practice their newly learned skills in
actual situations back on their jobs
– Provide a variety of examples when teaching concepts
or skills
– Label or identify important features of a task
– Make sure that general principles are understood (not
merely memorized) before expecting such transfer
– Provide trainees with the knowledge, skills and feelings
of self-efficacy to self-regulate their own behaviours
back on their jobs

42. Retention and transfer of learning
(ctd)
– Design the training content so that the trainees can see
its applicability
– Use adjunct questions to guide the trainee’s attentions
♦ After the training
– After completing the training programme, trainees
should be assigned specific behavioural goals
– In addition, the trainees and/or supervisors should
complete behavioural progress reports to monitor the
extent of the goal achievement back on the job

43. Retention and transfer of learning
(ctd)
– Have the trainer collaborate with each of the
trainees in using the applications plan principle
– Make certain that the trained behaviours and
ideas are rewarded in the job situations
– Use the relapse prevention strategy which relies
heavily on behavioural self-management to
encourage confidence and self-esteem (Marx,
1982)

44. Organisational factors affecting
transfer of learning
♦ Factors that affect trainee outcome expectancies
(Latham & Crandall, 1981) are:
♦ Pay and promotion policies
– Research suggests that pay and performance systems
are effective methods for bringing about and sustaining
performance (Heneman, 1990)
♦ Environmental constraints
– Have deleterious effect on trainee’s outcome
expectancies

45. Organisational factors affecting
transfer of learning (ctd)
– Empirical investigations show the effect of
environmental constraints on an individual’s behaviour
– Peter, et al (1982) found that three types of situational
constraints affected performance on goal setting tasks:
• Completeness of task information
• Ease of use of materials and supplies
• Similarity of work environment to training environment
– To minimise the probability of low outcomes
expectancies
• Conduct organisational assessment to identify any barriers to
transfer before training begins in addition the traditional
organisational and person training needs assessment

46. Social variables affecting the
transfer of learning
♦ Other environmental variables are social in nature
and stem from interactions with peers and
supervisors
♦ Peer groups
– The interactive dynamics between the individual and
his pees is a potent force in the socialisation process
within an organisation
– Interaction can provide support and reinforcement for
not only learning what is being taught in the training
programme but also in applying what was learned in
the job

47. Social variables affecting the
transfer of learning (ctd)
♦ Supervisory support
– To increase the probability of transfer of training to
work in the workplace, supervisors need to reinforce
the application of what was learned in training to the
job
– Do this effectively by undertaking the following:
• The supervisor must be fully aware of the training objectives
as well as the training content for attaining the objectives
• Another way to publicise commitment to training objectives is
to have the supervisors and the trainees sign a contract

48. What did I learn from this unit?