Page 96 - The Creative Training Idea Book Inspired Tips and Techniques for Engaging and Effective Learning

lucas chap 03 11/20/02 11:46 AM Page 85
DETERMINING PARTICIPANT NEEDS Setting the Stage for Learning 85

Asking your participants what they want or need is one way of ensuring that you truly
provide information and tools that add value for them. Ideally, such information gath-
ering should occur prior to the design of your program in order to incorporate material
that is needed by participants. If this is not feasible, then obtain the information as
quickly as possible before or at the beginning of a session.

Pre-Session Needs Assessment

There are a variety of ways to gather information related to participant needs prior to
your session. The best choices are face-to-face or over the telephone, which allow for
follow-up questioning and clarification of information.

One-on-One Interviews

If at all possible, meet with or talk to all participants on the telephone prior to a sched-
uled session. Also, contact their supervisors, managers, team members, and if possible,
their customers to get a broader perspective of needs. Talking to others helps give you
insights into areas that those people see as performance needs. This is helpful because
participants often do not recognize or admit to knowledge or skill gaps witnessed by
those around them. Such interviews should be conducted before the design and delivery
of training when possible.
At the least, I encourage you to speak with participants even when you have been told
of needs by supervisors or program sponsors. My experience has been that the latter
groups do not always have an accurate picture of the needs of their employees. These
people are too often not in daily contact with participants. As a result they only believe
they know performance and knowledge gaps, or skills required to do a job.

Focus Groups
Interviewing 6–10 participants at a time in a focus group is an alternative to one-on-one
interviews when you have limited time or participant availability. With this format you
do lose the intimacy of personal interviews, but you gain opportunities for one partici-
pant to piggyback on the ideas of others or to generate additional needs based on some-
thing said in the group. There is also an opportunity to validate an issue that surfaces
by eliciting the input or ideas of others. Such groups can consist of participants, super-
visors, peers, managers, customers, or any combination of those groups.

Surveys

Questionnaires that collect data are effective when time is limited or you have large num-
bers of people to query. To address the time issue, you should keep your surveys short
and focused. Even though closed-ended (e.g., yes/no responses) are easy to tabulate,