In this week’s edition of our Training Tips series, we asked Training, Marketing, and Customer Success Managers to answer the question, “What do you think the most effective type of training is and why?”

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What do you think the most effective type of training is and why?

  • “To be truly effective, training has to find learners where they are. After all, you can have the fanciest e-learning or instructor-led training, but if your learners don’t care about it or aren’t ready to learn, then what’s the point? We believe in educating customers through a blend of formal learning (in our interactive Academy paths), social learning (through our community), and just-in-time learning in our Knowledge Base and in-product education. We pull all of these together to make sure that learners have what they need, when they need it.”
    – Adam Avramescu, Head of Customer Education at Optimizely
  • The research shows that blended learning, a mix of e-learning and facilitated live events, is most effective for adult learners. If you think about it, it makes sense: people can take e-learning modules at their own pace, independently, and then get questions answered and have a more tailored experience during a live event with an instructor. I think the key is to have these two types of experiences be 1) very well defined and designed and 2) seamlessly interwoven. The reality is that this type of program is sometimes logistically difficult to pull off. A mistake many learning organizations make is to put EVERYTHING into live training, including topics that are basic knowledge and could easily be learned independently, even by sending out an email. This wastes the learner’s (and instructor’s) time!
     Betsy Bruce, Senior Manager of Education at Socrata
     
  • “The most effective training type is having multiple types of training! If you want to train a wide variety of learners, you need to make sure that everyone can receive the information effectively. We currently provide video, quiz, and text-based (both in a visual workflow and a text article) training, and we’re currently working on a “lab” portion of our courses that will cater to hands-on learners. Also, providing more resources at the end of the lesson helps those learners who really need to see the whole picture.”
    – Amanda Bridge, Technical Writer at Procore

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In our Training Tips series, we asked Training, Marketing, and Customer Success Managers what some of their best practices are to get the most out of a customer training program.  Stay tuned for new Q&As each month!