Part of creating a training program for any business is to know how many hours it will take to complete. After all, employees participating in the course would have to stop doing their daily tasks. You cannot make the participants stay in the course for long because their absence could affect the operations of the company.
This is why you need to be able to smartly time how long the training would take. If it cannot be helped and you need to make it long, do not cram everything into one course. You need to cut it into segments so trainees can absorb it easily. Not only that, it will help employees spend a couple of hours/days in the program and then go back to their usual work. You can give them a week or two before the second phase of the program commences.
Figuring out the length of your training program is not as simple as you think. If what is at stake is the time of the employees and their productivity at work, you need to be careful about the time that you will declare the program will take. You want it to be as near accurate so as to meet the expectations of both the management and the employees.
While there is no actual formula to compute this, there are a couple of mistakes that you need to avoid to make your assumption correct.
- Failing to consider group discussions. In any training program, it is important to have discussions or open forums – regardless if it is between the instructor and the employee or between employees. This can take time and you should always include this in your length estimate. You need to think carefully of the time it will take to have these discussions. In truth, you may have to set a limit because some discussions can take forever to complete. You can give them 10 to 15 minutes and be strict when implementing these.
- Assuming the same time frame for all elearning activities. If you want to engage the participants in your elearning course, you need to include a couple of activities in the program. Engaging them will make the program more interactive and in effect, increase the retention of whatever is being taught. But if you have more than one activity, you need to make sure that you will consider the type of activities that you will use. Some may be longer to complete than the others. You should be careful when you make assumptions about the time to complete for each activity.
- Forgetting to consider time for reflection and critical thinking. The participants need to reflect and think about what they are learning at different times during the lesson. This is another reason why you need to segment long courses. You want to give them time to absorb what they are learning so they will not forget. If you keep on piling up ideas, they might end up forgetting the first few lessons. Consider this when you are estimating the time of the training program completion. If you do not include this, you might be forced to breeze through the lessons and speed up the learning process of the employees. That can compromise the retention rate of the employees.
- Thinking that all learners have the same level of learning capabilities. We all know this is not true so it is not accurate if you generalize the ability of the participants to go through the course. Some might be slower than the others. If they cannot respond to your activities in the same way, you can be assured that they cannot complete the course at the same speed. Some could find it hard to catch up with the rest and thus fail at the training program if they are rushed. You my want to have a couple of learners test the program so you can see where you can average the time that it will take for them to complete the course.
While you do not have to be precise when you are trying to estimate the length of the training program, you want to make it as near accurate as possible. This will help you decide how you will deliver the course – if it has to be divided or not.
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