Training needs analysis: principles and method

Matching needs with method and content

The needs of the audience?

Analyzing the course search statistics in Courses, we can see that while some subjects are more popular than others, such as computer science or languages, on the other hand the range of human interests is almost infinite. At the number of humans on earth, any subject with a minimum of reality will eventually get a sufficient audience...

If any subject can find a person's attention, on the other hand one can apparently interest any person in any subject, as long as one cleans up one's prejudices and puts in the necessary art.

Since one can be interested in anything, what will determine the need will therefore be defined primarily in terms of the individual's priorities.

My priorities or the program's?

These are individuals learning. Their interest in the process is essential. But from the didactic (teaching) point of view, the operation of the course also has its minimum operating conditions, its needs.

Taking into account the needs of the training program or the trainer is the other factor in the teaching equation. Teaching is a communication between two poles, sender and receiver, and they have needs to consider and match for the exchange to take place.

When schools only address the needs of the students they err just as much as if they only address the needs of the teacher, program, or administration.

Matching the first need

At a distance, the first need of a distance program or trainer is a student who knows how to learn on his own. Is our student really one, or is he or she an apprentice student, one of those who do not know how to study on their own?

More than half of e-students never even get to the beginning of their course; they are dropped before they even begin...

For the student, this fact may not be obvious to them: "Learning to learn" may not interest them, may not appear to be a need or a priority.

So, the first need to be matched up is this. The means? A self-study test or progress standards in the early moments (hours, days or weeks) of a course. This is followed, if needed, by basic self-study training.

The second need: follow along, be interested and interesting

Both for the trainer and the student, interest is paramount. Nothing happens below the emotional state of interest. If a student already knows what is being discussed, they will be bored; if they no longer understand, they will lose interest. A course that is too advanced or not advanced enough creates friction. Fortunately at a distance, the student has a choice and so do the designers...

Here is an approach proposed by Mr. Jean-Francois Auvergne of the Delegation for New Educational Technologies at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis to match the training program with the student's needs.

Assuming that the student is interested, that he or she has chosen to take a course or program,

propose competencies to be attained that are those developed and plotted in the smallest granularized units,
propose tests (automated or not) to measure the candidate's level for these competencies,
from that point on, assign certain granules with, in addition, individualized prescriptions intended for the candidate's guardians and the candidate.

The advantages of this approach are:

preventing the student from skipping essential steps of which he/she is unaware;
ensuring his/her progress and being able to supervise it;
ensuring that it corresponds to his/her real needs within the training program :
- if he passes everywhere, he does not need this training and moves on to the next step,
- if he does not pass the prerequisites, the student cannot take this course and is returned to the previous steps.

So, everyone wins.

By competency...

The competency-based approach may irritate some. In fact, there is no other way to determine whether knowledge is valuable and understood than by applying or using it. This is why competence is a fundamental criterion for measuring whether learning has actually occurred.

Part of the irritation in education stems from the confusion between the concepts of training and culture. Unless we are training historians or writers, the history or literature taught will not be measured in terms of competence (telling the story of... ) but in terms of interpretation (why did Clovis want the Soissons vase?) or else appreciation... which changes with the generations and does not have the objective character of "competence." At this point, we will not speak of training but of cultural transmission. It is not a question of verifiable and applicable "knowledge" but of "conventions" enjoying a more or less wide acceptance.

The cultural need will thus be better served by a "script-novel", "reportage" or "documentary" approach that will be able to rally all the desired attention.