Planning for Transfer

Stocksnap

When I reflect about the goal of all learning and education, it is primarily to cause individual, organizational or community-level change. However, it is this aspect of planning for change using specific transfer plans where we often tend to fail in our role as program planners. I guess, the greatest disservice to planning programs is to plan and execute programs that stay on budget, meet all stakeholder requirements, are designed and delivered smoothly BUT fail to transfer any learning to the job. In that sense, I view planning for transfer as an integral responsibility of my role as a program planner.

As I reflect about my own work experience, I can differentiate the programs I have planned for folks in an IT organization trying to sell new software versus foremen at the waterfront working with containers and gantry cranes all day. There is so much that's different about the culture of selling in a global organization versus the culture of safety at the waterfront especially in a unionized environment. While my IT adult learners did short bursts of 'training' on their mobile phones, the foremen were coached and mentored one-on-one, in an intense program, on the dock. The transfer context of a sales pitch versus a ship to be loaded or unloaded on time is so strikingly different that program planning including evaluation and transfer approaches for the two cannot be the same.

For me, the key insight is to be aware of the learners' context because without it, there can be no learning or transfer. As a program planner, I tend to immerse myself in 'a day in the life' of my audience to make these key decisions. I like how Connie (@elearningcoach) describes the need for participating in such a discovery before the analysis. I love her concept of 'customer safaris' as a discovery tool and in my work at the waterfront, such a safari also includes climbing container vessels! I engage in needs analysis and participate in job work shadowing/observation to understand more about the audience. I continue to educate myself and my clients including key program sponsors and other stakeholders to systematically think about evaluation and transfer as key components of planning. All along the way, I ask myself two key questions:

• How will the participants apply what they are learning when they get back to their workplace?
• How will we know if we met the desired goals of individual learning leading to enhanced organizational performance?