Portland Program
August 2, 2004

Faster, Cheaper, Better:
How to Design Performance-Based Training within Tight Budgets and Hectic Schedules
with Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thigarajan

Overview

When the professor of a graduate course in Instructional Development asked him what he wanted to do for his semester assignment, Thiagi answered, "I'd like to redesign and repackage this course!" The professor was an open-minded sort so he humored the promising foreign student in his first semester in the US. The following semester, the professor used Thiagi's package as the basis for the course. Two semesters later, Thiagi renounced the model that he had been using in a much-cited article, "Help! I Am Trapped Inside an ID Model!"

Since his graduate school days, Thiagi has developed hundreds of corporate training programs all around the world for a wide range of target populations using a wide range of technologies. For the past 10 years, Thiagi has defined, refined, and applied his CCCC model for design a variety of training for his corporate clients.

Who should attend this workshop?

• New Instructional Designers who want to apply best practices for rapid instructional design
• Experienced Instructional Designers who want to expand and enhance their toolkits and cope with modern corporate realities 
• Performance consultants who want to use training to support other interventions
• Subject-Matter Experts who want to convert their lectures and handouts into interactive training 
• Instructors who want to reduce their lesson preparation time
• Training Directors who want to reduce the cost, increase the speed, and improve the quality of training packages

Benefits for Individuals

• Identify limitations of traditional training design models in dealing with new types of content, new technologies, new generation of learners, and new corporate realities
• Identify alternative principles that offer faster, cheaper, and better training design 
• Apply the CCCC (Concurrent Continuous Creative Co-design) model for rapidly designing training packages with greater motivational and instructional impact
• Apply seven proven principles to the design of high-quality performance-based training materials and methods
• Rapidly design training packages by ignoring, combining, re-sequencing, and accelerating steps the process
• Reduce self-doubt, guilt, and anguish by positively associating faster and cheaper instructional design with more cost-effective learning outcomes

Benefits for the Organization

• Reduce the training budget
• Reduce training development time
• Deliver quality instruction during tough economic times
• Avoid waste of training dollars
• Retrain instructional designers to cope with corporate realities

Workshop Content

An Innovative Alternative to Training Design

• Foundations of the traditional instructional design model from behaviorism and engineering
• Features of traditional instructional design model that make them unsuited for current realities
• Foundations of the alternative training design model from creativity, improvisation, and complexity theory
• Features of the training model that are aligned with current realities

Details of the New Training Design Model

• Concurrent implementation of analysis, design, evaluation, and design
• Continuous process of treating all delivery as an opportunity to improve the training design
• Creative application of principles from innovation, improvisation, and self-organizing social systems
• Co-design approaches that transform learners into teachers and teachers into learners

Applying Proven Principles of Training Design

• Stop designing content; start designing activities
• Use a dose of reality as the final performance test
• Open minds with open questions
• Blend everything: online with nonline, active with passive, independent with collaborative, and learning with life
• Let the inmates run the asylum
• Let learners teach and test each other
• Drive the locomotive while laying the track
• Design while delivering the training

Strategies for Speeding Up the Design Process

• Eliminate or combine design steps without sacrificing effectiveness
• Use electronic recording devices and computer software to speed up the design process
• Discover training resources in unexpected places
• Use powerful templates for creating activities and structuring content

Speaker

Thiagi
Workshops by Thiagi, Inc.
4423 E Trailridge Rd
Bloomington, IN 47408-9633
812-332-1478
thiagi@thiagi.com
www.thiagi.com

Dr. Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan is the Resident Mad Scientist at Workshops by Thiagi, Inc., an organization with the mission of helping people improve their performance effectively and enjoyably.

Thiagi's long-term clients include AT&T, Arthur Andersen, Bank of Montreal, Cadence Design Systems, Chevron, IBM, Intel, Intelsat, United Airlines, and Liberty Mutual. On a short-term basis, Thiagi has worked with more than 50 different organizations in high-tech, financial services, and management consulting areas. For these clients, Thiagi has consulted and conducted training in such areas as rightsizing, diversity, creativity, teamwork, customer satisfaction, human performance technology, and organizational learning.

Thiagi has published 40 books, 120 games and simulations, and more than 200 articles. He wrote the definitive chapters on simulations and games for ISPI's Handbook of Human Performance Technology, ASTD's Training & Development Handbook, and the American Management Association's Human Resources Management and Development Handbook.

Thiagi currently writes a monthly online newsletter, Play for Performance. This newsletter, now in its third year, features Thiagi's training games and other creative interventions that deliver results quickly and effectively. He served as the editor of NSPI Journal and Performance & Improvement for more than 10 years. He currently edits the simulation/game section in Sage Publication's journal, Simulation & Gaming. He is also a contributing editor of the monthly journal, Educational Technology.

Thiagi has made hundreds of presentations and keynote speeches at professional conferences. At ISPI, Thiagi holds the "records" for making the most presentations, conducting the most preconference workshops, and being invited to make the most Encore presentations. Thiagi is also a regular presenter at Lakewood's TRAINING Conferences and the annual conferences of American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and North American Simulation and Gaming Association (NASAGA).

Thiagi has been the president of the North American Simulation and Gaming Associating (NASAGA), International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), and Association for Special Education Technology (ASET). He has received 17 different awards and Presidential Citations from ISPI, including the society's highest award, Honorary Life Member. He also received an Honorary Life Member award from NASAGA as well as its highest award, Ifill-Raynolds Award.

Internationally recognized as an expert in multinational collaboration and active learning in organizations, Thiagi has lived in three different countries and has consulted in 21 others.

Details

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