Does the question of what can happen after training move you? It does us too! Especially the phase after the personal meeting of trainers and participants.

Corporate Learning Camp 2016 with blink.it

A great platform to address this was provided by the Corporate Learning Camp 2016 at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. Every year, experts in professional development come together and exchange exciting insights, their wishes, and needs – ranging from independent trainers to heads of human resources development in large companies. In several sessions, we were able to exchange ideas with trainers, HR developers, and other learning professionals about e-learning, the learning organization, and training transfer.

Overall, Konstantin Ristl and Michael Witzke attracted many participants for a total of four sessions. These were:

• “Studio@home: Best Practice Filming with the Smartphone”

• “Offline and Online in Training”

• “Mr. Steinbeißer, the Nightmare of every HR Developer”

• “Training Done – Now What?”

Session 4 - Training Done - Now What?

In my entry today, I want to particularly convey what we experienced in the Friday session “Training Done - Now What?”. We are constantly looking for new ways to support training transfer and make face-to-face training even more valuable with digital content. The session addressed exactly these topics. The mind map below gives you an overview of our results. We developed the proposed methods together with all the attendees in the session.

The starting point was the question: “What do I do between the in-person appointment and a follow-up appointment?”.

The selection of the contributions also reflects the current trends in HR development. The profession of the trainer is changing. The advancing digitalization will further accelerate these changes. The Trainer 4.0 combines multiple roles. Trainers are increasingly expected to take on the role of a coach who accompanies long-term change processes. Although trainers are still regarded as experts in their topics, the transmission of this expert knowledge is increasingly shifting to the digital space. The reasons speak for themselves. Participating employees can independently prepare for training at the workplace or participate live with the trainer in a webinar. The dissemination of information does not necessarily have to be conducted by the trainer on-site.

The trainer is also increasingly becoming the mediator between different groups in the company. Participants receive support not only from the trainer but also from their direct supervisors. For this reason, session participants demanded that team leaders and supervisors should be more involved in further education. This has long been called for in theory, but in practice, it is only limited. New concepts are needed here.

A large number of contributions during the session revolved around the topic of training transfer. Training transfer remains the number one topic in further education. In addition to approaches like the transfer diary or the blog, there are also exciting, new ideas such as the transfer knowledge interview and reflection questions. Even if learning outcomes can be measured after training, without the application of knowledge in practice, nothing has actually changed in the workplace.

This also shows that video content continues to play a significant role in the delivery of training content. In my experience, for the topic of video creation, the rule is “learning by doing.” Short videos as content are quickly dismissed as too complicated or too time-consuming. Once you learn the process, it becomes clear that filming with the smartphone is not witchcraft. A video with good sound and bright images is easily achievable with any common smartphone. The medium “video” opens up completely new possibilities for all phases of training. For example, a training participant can share their transfer knowledge and insights after the training with other training participants in a video. Such a report is much more authentic and convincing than a text. Messages of this kind are recorded in a duration of 2-3 minutes. With the maturation of in-house social networks (essentially the company's internal Facebook or YouTube), the demand for simple ways to create video content is also increasing.

Would you like to contribute something to our collection of methods? Then write a comment or contact us directly at info@blink.it.