Tag Archives: learning delivery activities

Designing a Training Course for Having Good One-To-One Meetings – Learning Delivery Activities

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Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash

Previously, we saw Ola write the learning objectives and key learning points (read about it here) for a course she is designing titled, how to have good one-to-one meetings. The next step for Ola in designing the training session is to develop the learning delivery activities that will be used to deliver the key learning points. The key learning points are the topics that will be covered to help the participants achieve the learning objectives (what the participants must know and be able to do by the end of the session).

Ola is planning to deliver the session using a blended learning format. When she is ready to roll out the session, she will send all the participants a workbook two weeks before the session. The workbook will contain some information for them to read before the session. The first 30-minutes of the actual session will involve them reviewing what they read before coming to the session. The aim of this is to help the participants understand information that does not need to be repeated during the actual session so they can focus more on practical activities to learn about how to have good one-to-one meetings.

And also, Ola will be delivering the session virtually using either Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

The table below shows the learning delivery activities that Ola designed for each key learning point.

Key learning pointsLearning delivery activities
What are one-to-one meetings?They will do a group activity to work on some questions designed to review the pre-course reading the delegates did before coming to the actual virtual session.
After the group activity, each group will present back their answers.
Purpose and benefits of one-to-one meetingsThey will do a group activity to work on some questions designed to review the pre-course reading the delegates did before coming to the actual virtual session.
After the group activity, each group will present back their answers.
Creating a one-to-one meeting agendaThey will be given a group activity to create an agenda template that contains the agenda items that they are likely to discuss during a 1:1 meeting.
After sharing the agendas they will be shown examples of other agenda templates and each person will then have the opportunity to create an ideal agenda for themselves.
How to have a one-to-one meeting – demonstrationThe facilitator together with a willing volunteer will demonstrate both a poor and good 1:1 and the participants will observe and give feedback highlighting the differences between them. They will also be given the opportunity to discuss what they will do differently to make the good 1:1 even better.
How to have a one-to-one meeting – practice sessionThe participants will finally be put into small groups to practice having 1:1s with each other and give feedback.

Ola has now finished developing all four courses for the mini-management development programme she’s implementing for a group of new and inexperienced managers. The courses are:

  • Setting expectations
  • Giving effective feedback
  • Having good coaching conversations
  • Having good one-to-one meetings.

Now she has to do the easier work of delivering the courses. We will come back and see how Ola is doing much later.

Designing a Training Course for Giving Effective Feedback – The Learning Delivery Activities

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Photo by Benedikt Jaletzke on Unsplash

Ola has been working on a mini-management development programme for her organisation called OpenNoviz (a fictional company). The development programme consists of four modules and she is currently designing and developing the second module which is, how to give effective feedback?

Ola has already written learning objectives and key learning points for the course. You can see what they are here.

Now, she wants to develop learning delivery activities to deliver the key learning points. Learning delivery activities are the various activities that will be used to teach each of the key learning points which are necessary to achieve the learning objectives.

After much thought below is a first draft of the learning delivery activities that Ola created for the session.

Ola is running this session in a blended format. When she is ready to roll out the session, she will send all the participants a workbook two weeks before the session. The workbook will contain some information for them to read and tasks to complete before the session, so the first 30-minutes of the actual session will involve them reviewing what they read before coming to the session and it will cover the first three key learning points (see below in table)

Key Learning PointsDelivery Activities
What is effective feedback?They will do a group activity to work on a case study activity designed to review the pre-course work that the delegates would have done before coming to the actual virtual session.
After the group activity, each group will present back their answers.
Benefits of effective feedbackThey will do a group activity to work on a case study activity designed to review the pre-course work that the delegates would have done before coming to the actual virtual session.
After the group activity, each group will present back their answers.
What is involved in giving effective feedback?They will do a group activity to work on a case study activity designed to review the pre-course work that the delegates would have done before coming to the actual virtual session.
After the group activity, each group will present back their answers.
Poor and good feedbackDemonstration of two feedback scenes and the participants observing will need to observe which feedback is good and which is poor.
The SBI feedback frameworkA presentation of what the SBI feedback framework is with some examples. The participants will then compare the framework to the previous demonstration to identify which one used the SBI framework.
Giving feedback the SBI wayAnother demonstration of feedback that is not SBI. They will then be put into pairs to rewrite the feedback they just observed and demonstrate it back to the group in an SBI format.
Next, they will be put into groups of threes with each person rotationally playing the roles of feedback giver, feedback recipient, and observer to practice giving each other SBI feedback. They will be given three different scenarios so each person gives feedback on a unique scenario.
Review, reflect and closeReview, reflect, and close

Designing learning delivery activities

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Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

I’ve been writing about my simple training design framework and designing learning delivery activities is the fourth stage in the framework as shown in the chart below.

A learning delivery activity is an activity that helps to deliver a key learning point. There are various types of learning delivery activities that we can use to deliver a key learning point such as:

  • presentation
  • video
  • question and answer sessions
  • group discussions
  • case studies
  • practice sessions (or role play)
  • Quizzes
  • Reading sessions
  • Start and stop group coaching

It is important to choose a delivery method that is appropriate for the key learning point that is being taught and this requires us to be thoughtful. If the learning point is mainly knowledge acquisition then a learning delivery activity such as a video, presentation, or reading session may suffice. But where we want to help participants develop skills, a learning activity that incorporates problem-solving and practice is more suitable. In this case, we may use activities such as practice sessions, start and stop group coaching, and case studies.

Let’s return to Debbie and Larry’s case. Debbie wants her managers to develop effective feedback skills. She’s had a conversation with Larry who has been able to identify that the managers do have some performance gaps when it comes to giving feedback which are:

  • knowledge gaps
  • skill gaps
  • habit gaps

Larry has identified this learning objective:

By the end of this training session, participants will be able to give feedback that:

  • clarifies observed behaviour
  • states the impact of the behaviour
  • identifies change needed or behaviour to be maintained where required

From the learning objective, he identified four key learning points:

  1. clarify observed behaviour
  2. state the impact of the observed behaviour
  3. identify any change of behaviour that may be required
  4. identify behaviour that needs to be continued or maintained

Now he wants to use some learning delivery activities to deliver the key learning points.

A key aspect of the training session that Larry is designing is to teach the managers a feedback framework that will help them do all the actions defined by the key learning points. Not only does he want them to know about the feedback framework and be able to describe it, but he also wants them to use it to practice giving feedback.

He has decided to teach them a simple but effective feedback framework from the Centre for Creative Leadership called SBI which stands for Situation – Behaviour – Impact.

Teaching them about the SBI framework is mainly about meeting a knowledge gap so he has decided to use two learning delivery activities for this. Later, to meet the skills gap he will get them to undertake some practice sessions to learn how to use it.

First, he will use a presentation with a slide to tell them what SBI is. Through the presentation, Larry will describe what SBI is and also give them examples.

Then he will split them into small groups to read two scenarios. One where SBI is used and one where it isn’t. In the small groups, they will read and evaluate the scenarios and then feedback afterward.

During the feedback, Larry will again clarify what the SBI framework is.

Larry will use the same approach to design learning delivery activities for all the other key learning points thereby creating activities which when put together will form a whole course.