Class-room based training

Classroom-based training is what most people think of when you say ‘training’. It’s been around forever and is (at least thought to be) familiar to everyone from their days in school or college. It is still occasionally called ‘chalk and talk’ learning, reminding us of blackboards, hard chairs and desks, exercise books and detentions.

But this link in people’s minds to their own past lives seems to put off about as many people as it attracts. If there is a continuum running from formal education at one end, through teaching, training and learning to development at the other end, classroom-based training often looks trapped closer to the formal and abstract end rather the practical and business-focussed end. However, most classroom-based training must be practical if it is to be cost-effective.

Trainers often report that the people they see to train are those that like training rather than those that need training. The people who need training most are sometimes those who work hardest to avoid it. And often these ‘training avoiders’ are the more senior staff and managers, who feel that their seniority and experience means that they don’t need training, that they don’t need to learn what’s on offer. Good senior management teams take classroom-based training very seriously: they ‘lead from the front’ by taking an active part in the work of the training room, both as participants and as training providers.

Classroom-based training can have relatively low design or set-up (fixed) costs. The content of training events and programmes is often already available and accessible within the organisation. Content can also be found in the literature or online, or bought from larger and well-established training organizations like Oakwood International. Even ‘bespoke’ training events or programmes usually involve at least some standard ‘off-the-shelf’ elements, and careful web searching can find complete agendas and training plans, ice-breakers, exercises, games, presentations, handouts and role plays. Intellectual property law precludes the wholesale reproduction of these online resources, but the ideas that underlie them are not copyright, so as long as the ideas are reformulated into new training plans, the training designer need not fear legal action.

The greatest cost in the design of training is usually the salary or fee of the trainer. Most freelance trainers charge fees for design of training at somewhat below those they charge for delivery, although this will vary depending on the complexity of material to be trained and on the regularity and frequency of delivery – and on whether the designers will be doing the delivery themselves. If the designer is spending a great deal of time designing an event or programme they will only deliver once, they will seek to charge more for the design than if they are guaranteed to get ongoing delivery fees.

Classroom-based training has relatively high delivery (variable) costs. In a one-day or longer event or programme, one trainer can probably only deal with a maximum of about twelve participants at a time. Between four and eight participants is often judged as more practical.

So, in order to train a small group of people in a day, the costs could break down as:

• Trainers fees and expenses (travel, accommodation and subsistence)
• Participant expenses
• Participant lost-opportunity costs (work that is being missed while participants attend the training)
• Materials costs (participant manuals, handouts, case studies and exercises, copies of slides, folders, writing paper, pens, name cards or stickers, flip chart paper and marker pens, Blu Tack or tape)
• Room, facilities and equipment costs (including hardware and new technology where needed)
• Refreshment costs (lunch, water cooler and glasses, tea and coffee, sweets and biscuits)

If a single event or programme training ten people costs $6000 to deliver, then ten such events, training 100 people, can cost $60,000, as there are few economies of scale in classroom-based training. But there may be other ways to meet the learning objectives. For example, an e-learning application to meet the same learning objectives may cost $60,000 to design, but almost nothing to deliver. Many more than 100 people can hit the learning objectives, at no additional cost.

All this means that if large numbers of people (say more than 100) are required to learn the same material, other kinds of learning opportunities and interventions need to be considered. E-learning is often favoured for delivering very high volumes of training.

However, Classroom-based training is good for smaller numbers of participants, to obtain buy-in, build team spirit and practice behaviour change. It needs to do so in order to avoid the charge of it being too abstract, formal and unfocussed on business needs. It is especially good for Activists. It can strongly influence knowledge, skills and attitudes but, as it takes place away from the workplace, trainers need to make action plans explicit to translate learning back into the workplace.

It is easy to measure learners’ immediate reactions to Classroom-based training, through assessment/evaluation forms or ‘happy sheets’. Harder-to-measure longer-term changes to learning, behaviour and results need to be examined through the organization’s performance management processes.