3 Characteristics of Reliable Training Activities

Good instructional designs incorporate activities that force participants to think, practice, and reflect in areas that make sense for their career development and job performance.

To ensure that your instructional activities make sense, ensure that they have these three key characteristics.

1. Relevant. Reliable training activities 100% reflect the real-world and are considered germane by the participants, their bosses, and the business. Reliable activities focus only on the most important and most frequent scenarios that participants will encounter in their real-world jobs.
   
   
2. Ambiguous and Challenging. Reliable activities are typically a bit unclear (like the real world), requiring participants to strategize, plan and collaborate (also like the real world) to define the goals, roles and actions required to complete the activity. This pushes participants to explore and solve problems with limited resources from different perspectives.
   
   
3. Get Real Work Done. Reliable activities teach participants while allowing them to complete real work. They result in a ready-to-use products (i.e. completed project plans, finished sales account plans, draft call scripts) instead of some artificial outcome.