Designers and developers of a world-class IT learning experience stake their reputations on delivering successful learning outcomes, but what does that actually mean? Learn more about how to develop strategic alignment in the three critical areas needed to deliver a successful training program.
Designers and developers of a world-class IT learning experience stake their reputations on delivering successful learning outcomes, but what does that actually mean? We define successful learning outcomes as individuals that exit a training program expressing overall satisfaction with the learning experience and equipped with job-ready technical skills that they can put to use immediately. This degree of success is impossible without information and strategy alignment in three critical areas:
1. The Current Technical Environment
Gaining a better understanding of the current employee population will help set a baseline for course participation volume, curriculum concentration, and what type of learning environment will best serve the employees. To that end, conduct an initial assessment that pinpoints:
- Size & demographic information
- Existing IT skills within the workforce
- IT skills gaps
2. Challenges Preventing Business Growth
It is impossible to properly tailor a program to meet the needs of your organization or to leverage learning outcomes to meet new organizational goals without a thorough awareness of the challenges currently standing in the way of growth:
- Budget & resource limitations
- Flexibility, mobility, and accessibility
- Potential events that can disrupt learning
3. Desired Business Outcomes
You can’t define learning outcomes if you haven’t defined your desired business outcomes. For the record, knowing that your workforce needs more skilled technical laborers is not enough to deliver a return on educational investments. The most successful learning outcomes are the result of reverse engineering. Organizations clearly define what they wish to achieve in the future, what IT skills are needed, and for what purpose. With specific insight, program designers and curriculum developers can customize coursework to create a pathway that gets the organization from where it is to where it wants to be. In addition to delivering desired learning outcomes, this approach ensures that organizations:
- Train for the skills they want, not the skills they already have.
- Attract and enroll the right caliber of learners.
- Establish a process for measuring progress & success.
Of course, there’s a lot more to building an internal training program for IT skills development than these three elements. From designing an effective enrollment process and creating high-quality content to hiring instructors and assessing learners, effective IT training programs involve a lot of moving parts that must all work in tandem to deliver a cohesive learning experience. To help organizations understand the full scope of what goes into building and deploying an accelerated training program, we did a breakdown of costs and considerations. Check it out.