Instructor/Facilitator Guides (Part 2)
Tips and the Value of Creating a Detailed Guide
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Darryl L. Sink and Associates, Inc. (DSA) helps organizations design and develop learning and performance solutions that get results. DSA works cooperatively with organizations to:
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In Part One of our tip on using instructor/facilitator guides, we discussed how detailed a guide should be related to the key parameter of scalability.
In Part Two, I would like to share with you the value of creating at least a level II guide for any formal training program.
Have you ever experienced a situation in which a person developed a course or program, delivered the program themselves and suddenly was no longer available to deliver the program? Maybe they received a promotion. Maybe they left the company. Maybe they had a prolonged illness. If they had not created a detailed guide for their course, you probably found yourself having to recreate the course nearly from scratch. Dr. Paul Swan, one of our DSA outstanding associates, was once head of training for a $1.8 billion company, with over 10,000 employees. He was concerned about this situation and made it a policy that if formal training were indicated, a level II instructor/facilitator guide would be required. Paul knew that in our tracking of the effort to create a level II guide, compared to a level I guide, it only requires 15-20% more time to create a detailed level II guide. It seemed to me to be a very good policy to receive a level II leader guide, to avoid losing the total effort put into developing a course.
Here are a couple of tips that might help you in getting to a level II leader guide efficiently and effectively. I recommend that you only produce a level I guide (an outline of what you are going to say and do) until you have gone through a trial run of your program. This will allow you to get everything together necessary to run the program in less time than creating a level II guide right off the bat. After all, we often change things around or even eliminate topics once we try a program out. Once the program has been tried out and you are relatively certain things won’t change significantly, create the level II guide. This will be used to train others to deliver the program.
Another idea is to record your presentation, if it is a relatively short course, and ask a junior level person to write a level II guide from the recordings and having observed the course live. This is a great professional experience for a less experienced instructional designer and it saves a senior level instructional designer’s time. The original designer can then review a draft and make final changes to the guide.