atic, formal training involves carefully proceeding through the following phases:a) Assessing what knowledge, skills and /or abilities are needed by learners;b) Designing the training, including identifying learning goals and associated objectives, training methods to reach the objectives, and means to carefully evaluate whether the objectives have been reached or not;c) Developing the training methods and materials;d) Implementing the training; ande) Evaluating whether objectives have been reached or not, in addition to the quality of the training methods and materials themselvesA systematic approach is goal-oriented (hopefully, to produce results for the organization and/or learners), with the results of each phase being used by the next phase. Typically, each phase provides ongoing evaluation feedback to other phases in order to improve the overall system's process.Note, again, that not all formal methods are systematic. Some courses, workshops, and other training sessions have goals, methods and evaluation, but they are not aligned, or even integrated. The methods, in total, do not guide the learner toward achieving the training goal. The evaluations are too often of how a learner feels about the learning experience, rather than of how well the learning experience achieved the goal of the training.Self-Directed and "Other-Directed" TrainingSelf-Directed TrainingSelf-directed training includes the learner making the decisions about what training and development experiences will occur and how. Self-directed training seems to be more popular of late. Note that one can pursue a self-directed approach to informal or formal training. For example, self-directed, informal training might include examples of informal training listed above (book discussion groups, etc.), as long as the learner chose the activities and topics themselves, either for professional or personal reasons. Self-directed, formal training includes the learner's selecting...
