There are five steps to creating a learning environment in the instructional process. Each step has at least one major barrier that is defined as a fallacy on the employer designing their training programs which doesn’t need to exist.
a. The first step to creating a learning environment is to decide what you want to teach. The idea is to make training programs as relevant as possible to the organization (and the needs of said entity).
i. One of the biggest barriers of organizations in the first step is the lack of job-applicability of their programs --- a well-done needs analysis will ensure that an organization not only needs the program but also give a good idea of whether the program will be effective or a waste of time and money. ii. The next mistake organizations make is that they fail to set clear, concise instructional objectives. In order for training to be effective, the training has to have a very narrow goal, i.e. we need to teach the employee to perform the task of connecting calls via a switchboard. iii. Once the goal is set, you should then go to a line manager and ask them what knowledge the trainee needs to know when connecting calls via a switchboard as it applies to the organization – too many organizations skip this step and end up teaching employees a different way of doing things. This causes problems in the workplace when they make it back to it, and then they have to unlearn what they learned and start over (which creates inefficiency.) iv. The last item you should look at when deciding when you are deciding what to teach your employees in your organization is whether the training program is interactive enough. The less the employee actually makes use of the knowledge they are learning while learning it, the less of that knowledge they will actually retain when they need to be using it. Many organizations rely on “prepackaged”