Activate Technical Skill Set

Scaling Up New Hire

The flagship training program used in the company where I work is called “Activate”.  It is part of a new hire training program that consists of online and instructor-led training (ILT).  It was designed and implemented previously, but as the year 2020 was fast approaching it was determined that there was a need to scale up the program to accommodate a greater number of attendees per month.  The plan was to take the current version offline in the fourth quarter of 2019 and launch a revamped program with the ability to handle a larger capacity of trainees regionally in January of 2020.  With the holidays and other commitments, we would end up with about 10 weeks of development time before the Alpha test scheduled for the second week of January.

Back Ground

A little back history: At the time the Activate program consisted of both pre-work (eLearning and OJT), the main ILT class, and additional post-class training at the attendees’ locations.  The company had three training centers located across the US where the ILT class was presented.  This occurred several times a month for an audience of 16-20 employees.  The challenge was scalability.  It became clear that, accounting for growth rate, meeting the company’s attendance goal was out of reach in the current configuration of the training program.  A new version of the Activate ILT that could be implemented at a regional level became the focus. The deliverable requested was the ability to put up to 18 attendees per-week through a session with the possibility of having multiple sessions running concurrently, each region determining when to schedule the class.  Needless to say, this proposal created several challenges when compared to the previous version.  These challenges included a need for many more certified instructors and possibly more equipment (required for interactive activities) than each region had available.  Since the new version would push the ILT out of the Learning & Development (L&D) controlled training centers, every detail on deploying and running the ILT would have to be fully documented.  It should be mentioned that the training centers were fully self-sufficient when it came to running this ILT, having all the necessary equipment and documentation and a local training specialist to coordinate.

The Plan

The initial plan was to simply scale down the class size and run the class several times in the course of a week.  However, after reviewing this idea it became clear that the Achilles heel was the burden of equipment and support materials that would be placed on each of the locations.  The plan would have required upwards of eight identical stations requiring eight full sets of equipment.  This would pose a tremendous challenge locally.  The solution I came up with involved the concept of executing the hands-on portion of the training in a round-robin format where the attendees would rotate between three stations, each station covering a particular discipline (Lighting, Audio & Projection) to be instructed on over a day and a half.  The concept was pitched to the stakeholders and signed off on.  Of course, this idea opened up a new set of challenges that were not present in the original ILT configuration.

New Challenges

The new format required only one full set of equipment for every three attendees, as we would have three separate discipline areas to be covered (see diagram).  This helped solve the equipment needs for the regions but presented a new set of challenges to overcome.

Timing of the session became a big concern early on, as there would only be two instructors that would have to divide their time between three separate disciplines running concurrently, so activities at the stations would need to be timed to allow for two instructors to be able to present all of the materials.  This required a great deal of coordination within the ID team.

From an instructional design stand point, I was lead ID on this project working with three addition Instructional Designers, each of us responsible for a particular piece of the program.  Coordinating the overall look of the program became a large focus for me as, in the end, it should look and run as if there was a single author.  We also created a post-class assessment delivered online that would be pushed out to the attendees several days later,.

All in all, the materials that needed to be created for this new version of the program included the following:

    • Instructor Guide
    • Participant Guide
    • Job Aids
    • Running Schedule
    • Onscreen Content (PPT)
    • Station Specific Content
    • Local Coordinator Documentation
    • Equipment Lists
    • Room Diagrams
    • Post-Class Assessment

In this new format, each region became directly responsible for identifying team members that would facilitate the training as instructors and then scheduling these individuals for each class.   The Learning & Development department would take on the responsibility of training the first pool of regional instructors and each region would then train new instructors as needed, with L&D auditing the instructors intermittently.

The Instructor Guide for the ILT portion of the Activate portion is available to view HERE.

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