Once you gather the needed data about your audience, it’s time to reconcile what you have captured and report on your results. The outcome of reconciling the data is a list of findings and gaps which are reported to the stakeholders. This step is critical to perform because it ensures that the data points that will be used to create the course or curriculum are agreed to by all parties involved.
Step 2: Reconciling Data Collected
Even with time constraints, it’s important to reconcile and prioritize the data you collect. Reconciling data is needed to validate the accuracy and reliability of the data collected. Prioritizing the data is needed to distill down the data, referred to as findings, that are most relevant to what the training program will need to address.
In a corporate setting, to reduce the time to completing this step, data capture uses a qualitative research approach and reconciling the data is done dynamically during the data gathering phase.
The result of this phase is the synthesizing of the information into relevant data points that will be used as the basis for defining the training recommendations. At this point, data points that were validated by different sources, such as the audience and documentation gathered, are referred to ‘findings’. In some cases there are incongruences between the data sources. The incongruencies found that could impact the training plan are called ‘gaps’.
Step 3: Reporting Findings and Gaps
Findings are defined as data points that are collected and validated through various sources during the data reconciling phase of effort.
Gaps are defined as data points that are collected and cannot be validated due to inconsistent feedback, or are data points that may inhibit the success of the training recommendations.
Prior to making recommendations, the findings and gaps are reviewed with the stakeholders and a subset of the target audience. The purpose of reporting the findings and gaps before making recommendations is to ensure that there is consensus among the stakeholders and target audience representatives. Obtaining consensus and making corrections where appropriate are critical since the findings and gaps are used as the basis for the training recommendations.
Findings are the basis for creating training proposal. The findings include information such as
- Is the request for training appropriate. There are times when training is not the way to solve the problem.
- Gaps between what the target audience knows versus what they need to know.
- Supporting collateral and other resources that would also be updated or modified to fill the gap.
- Other audiences that may need to be informed through change management or training strategies about the target audiences new tasks or roles.
Call to Action
In today’s world of content generation where the focus is on the content and not the audience consuming the content, it’s easy to skip the steps of reconciling and reporting on the results captured about the target audience. In many cases, it’s the difference between creating how-to job aids and creating educational offerings that will help your audience learn the skills and knowledge needed to perform new job tasks. The more you know about your audience and their circumstances, the more likely you will create a course or curriculum that will be relevant and impactful to them.