
The ATD competency model for a learning professional
How adults actually learn, which is not how courses are usually built
The training plan and the ADDIE model
Assessing organisational learning needs, and the types of training available
Trends, and the six disciplines of breakthrough learning
Shaping the end goal before designing anything
Learning treated as a business strategy rather than a benefit
Linking learning objectives to business goals
Defining business outcomes and the basic types of learning outcome
Mapping the learning journey, with a diagnostic checklist
What training actually consists of
What affects the outcome, and in what proportion
The learning process: preparation, the learning itself, the transfer
Moving learning into practice, with a design checklist
How learning works mechanically
The key steps, and the nine steps of learning in full
The bottlenecks, and the importance of repetition
Success factors, motivation to learn, and the learning value chain
Transfer to the workplace as the real measure of benefit
The main challenges of getting knowledge applied
The sixteen factors that decide whether it happens
The role of the manager, and the power of reminders
Why performance support matters more than the course itself
How it works, and the options available
The purpose of a coach after training
The role of feedback, with a support checklist
Why results have to be evaluated, and who asks
Justifying the business benefit
Types of evidence, and the problems with each
The six steps of evaluation, and reporting back to management
The difference between training and development
The development techniques available
Career development
Talent management, and working with high-potential and high-performing people
What human resource development means at organisational level
The nature of organisational development, and change management
The learning organisation model
Knowledge management, executive development and succession planning
Linking learning to company strategy
Connecting it to the other people systems
Automating training, and moving it online
Gamification, and where it genuinely helps
The differences between an online and a traditional course
Learning theories and adult learning
The key principles of effective learning
What creating an online course actually involves
The basic principles of working with the technology
The toolkit you genuinely need
Choosing the right technology for your format
What helps and what only appears to
Choosing a topic and building the programme
Where the material comes from
Questions and homework that make people work
Intensive formats, and the practices that raise usefulness
How to behave during a live session
Working with the audience in real time
The stages of the learner's life cycle, and how to act at each
Preparing for the session, launching it, opening the discussion
Tracking whether knowledge has actually landed
Training people to apply it during the course
Providing feedback and using case studies
Reflection, ending the training, and the debrief
Managing the course as it runs
Monitoring progress
Challenging students who have drifted
Checking homework, and what makes a course genuinely useful
Structure, content, style, support and the difficulties of the role
What separates a trainer from a coach
Dale's Cone, the pyramid of learning
Formats and types of training, and how effectiveness is evaluated
The first stage of the cycle: problematisation
Pre-training preparation, and the optimal number of participants
What the room should look like, and why coffee breaks matter
Badges, markers, and designing the programme
The importance of visual material
The timetable of the day
Working styles of the trainer
Reflection, conceptualisation and practice as stages two, three and four
The model for creating a training design
Resistance, group dynamics and the other difficulties
Introducing group norms
Warm-up exercises and engaging participants at the start
The four phases a group moves through
Facilitation versus moderation, and dealing with objections
The structure of business training
Introducing yourself, and using aphorisms, metaphors and parables
Getting to know participants and setting individual aims
Teaching theory without losing the room, and five rules for sub-groups
How to end a training properly
Online training as a different discipline
Running webinars effectively
The technical solutions available
Maintaining contact with a group you cannot see
How facilitation relates to decision-making
The basic principles
The role of the facilitator, which is not teaching
The single most important facilitator skill
The main stages of preparation
Formulating the goal
Selecting who should be in the room
Opening so the first ten minutes are not wasted
Keeping participants focused
Managing the group
Taking notes without losing the thread
Gathering information, generating ideas, choosing priorities
Summing up what was actually decided
Assigning owners so the session produces action
Evaluating the session
Force majeure, and the participant who challenges everything
How a group actually reaches a decision
Maintaining the atmosphere
Exercises that move a stuck room
Building the agenda and estimating timing honestly
Facilitating online
Facilitating large meetings
Working with an international group
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
Training that gets excellent satisfaction scores and changes nothing at work is the normal outcome, not the exception. People enjoyed it, learned something, went back to their desks and did exactly what they did before.
That gap has a name and a literature. It is called transfer, and almost nobody designs for it.
Why good courses fail
The course was built from the material available rather than from a diagnosed need. The objectives describe what will be covered instead of what someone will do differently. There is no plan for the week after, when the old habits reassert themselves and the manager who sent the person never asks about it. Evaluation, if it happens at all, measures whether people liked the session.
Online makes each of these worse. There is no room, no social pressure, and nobody notices when someone stops watching in week two.
Method before delivery
Thirty-four lessons. Ten on instructional design as a discipline: the ATD competency model, ADDIE, diagnosing a need and linking it to a business outcome, mapping a learning journey, the nine steps of how learning actually works, the sixteen factors that determine whether knowledge reaches the job, the role of the manager afterwards, performance support, six-step evaluation, and building a learning strategy connected to the rest of the organisation.
Then six on online course construction: how adults learn, the platform and tool stack, choosing a topic and building the programme, sources, homework that makes people work, running live sessions, engagement, and evaluating what landed.
The room, the group and AI
Then six on the trainer's craft, which online creators skip and then wonder why their videos feel flat. Dale's Cone, preparing a session down to room layout and coffee breaks, the four-stage learning cycle, group dynamics and their four phases, warm-ups, handling resistance, metaphors, sub-group rules, and how to close.
Then six on facilitation, which is what separates a discussion that decides something from a lecture with questions: preparing, holding focus, generating and prioritising ideas, assigning owners, handling the participant who challenges everything, and running it online or with an international group.
And six on AI: course generation platforms, producing text, video and assessment, personalised learning paths from skills analysis, AI analytics for effectiveness, and where this is going.
Who is teaching this
Mike, the number one HR instructor on Udemy. More than 1.6 million course enrolments, over 150,000 professionals trained, PHRi and SHRM-CP certified, HRCI representative in more than 10 countries. I built the people function of the unicorn Preply and worked at Wargaming, Alfa-Bank and iDeals. I have also built and launched over five hundred online courses, which is where most of the practical detail here comes from.
What is included
Lifetime access to all course materials
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
Udemy Certificate of Completion
Practical assignments and real business cases
A section with additional courses, tools and resources
Start with this
Take a course you delivered and write down what someone does differently at work because of it. If you cannot name a specific behaviour, the course was content rather than training. That distinction is what these thirty-four lessons are about. Enrol now and start the first lesson today.