Training and Development

Course Description

Training and Development examines training and development fundamentals, applications, and cases, with emphasis on methods for identifying training needs, implementing effective programmes, and facilitating knowledge sharing among organizational staff.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MAN is the Management prefix, and the 3000-level number places this in the upper division. Daytona State publishes it at 3 credits, offered in fall, giving approximately 45 contact hours consistent with the whole published MAN family in this repository.

Training is one of the largest discretionary expenditures organizations make and one of the least rigorously evaluated. That combination is what makes this course worth taking seriously: most organizational training does not change behaviour, the reasons are well understood, and a manager who knows them can avoid spending money on activity that produces nothing but a completed attendance sheet.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the role of training and development in organizational strategy and performance.
• Distinguish training, development, education, and performance support.
• Apply the instructional systems design process, including the ADDIE framework.
• Conduct a needs assessment at organizational, task, and person levels.
• Distinguish problems that training can solve from those it cannot.
• Write measurable learning objectives.
• Apply adult learning principles to programme design.
• Apply learning theory, including behavioural, cognitive, and social learning perspectives.
• Select training methods appropriate to the content, audience, and constraints.
• Design training content with appropriate sequencing, practice, and feedback.
• Describe e-learning, blended, and on-the-job training approaches and their trade-offs.
• Deliver training effectively, including facilitation and presentation skills.
• Design for transfer of training to the workplace.
• Evaluate training using a recognized framework and select appropriate measures.
• Calculate and interpret training cost and return on investment.
• Describe onboarding and orientation programme design.
• Describe management and leadership development approaches.
• Describe career development, succession planning, and talent management.
• Describe coaching and mentoring and their organizational use.
• Describe legal issues in training, including required training and discrimination exposure.
• Describe diversity, accessibility, and inclusion considerations in training design.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe learning management systems and training technology.
• Describe knowledge management and organizational learning.
• Describe learning analytics and data-driven training decisions.
• Describe cross-cultural and global training considerations.
• Design and deliver a training module as a project.
• Prepare for a professional credential such as ATD's CPTD or SHRM certification.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Training's strategic role
• Training, development, and performance support
• Instructional systems design and ADDIE
• Needs assessment at three levels
• Training versus non-training solutions
• Writing learning objectives
• Adult learning principles
• Learning theory applied to training
• Selecting training methods
• Content design: sequencing, practice, feedback
• E-learning, blended, and on-the-job approaches
• Delivery and facilitation
• Transfer of training
• Evaluation frameworks and measures
• Training cost and return on investment
• Onboarding and orientation
• Management and leadership development
• Career development and succession planning
• Coaching and mentoring
• Legal issues and required training
• Diversity, accessibility, and inclusion

Optional Topics

• Learning management systems and technology
• Knowledge management and organizational learning
• Learning analytics
• Global and cross-cultural training
• Training design project
• Professional credentials

Resources & Tools

• Employee Training and Development (Noe) — the standard text for this course and the one most programmes adopt.
• Telling Ain't Training (Stolovitch & Keeps) — short, practical, and the best available corrective to lecture-shaped training.
• Design for How People Learn (Julie Dirksen) — excellent on the cognitive side and unusually readable.
• Association for Talent Development (ATD) (td.org) — the professional body; substantial free content, and the CPTD and APTD credentials.
• SHRM (shrm.org) — free resources on the HR side, plus SHRM-CP certification with a student pathway.
• Kirkpatrick Partners and the Phillips ROI Institute — free overviews of the evaluation frameworks the course teaches.
• Articulate Rise/Storyline and Adobe Captivate — the industry e-learning authoring tools, both with free trials; Canva and Google Slides are free and adequate for coursework.
• H5P and Moodle — free, open-source e-learning content and LMS platforms for hands-on practice.
• OSHA and EEOC — free guidance on legally required training and on harassment-prevention training expectations.
• Florida Department of Commerce — free information on Florida's incumbent worker and quick-response training grant programmes, which fund employer training in this state.

Career Pathways

• Training specialist or coordinator — the direct entry role.
• Training manager or director — the advancement path.
• Instructional designer — a distinct and well-paid specialization focused on designing rather than delivering; a strong route for people who like the design side.
• Learning and development business partner — embedded with a business unit.
• Organizational development specialist — broader change and effectiveness work.
• Human resources generalist — training is one of several HR functions.
• Corporate university and technical training — manufacturers, utilities, healthcare systems, and theme parks all run substantial internal training operations, and Florida has all four.
• Sales enablement — a growing, well-compensated specialization.
• Consulting and freelance instructional design — genuinely viable, and much of it is remote.
• Compliance training — healthcare, financial services, and aviation all have mandatory training functions.
• SOC codes 13-1151 Training and Development Specialists, 11-3131 Training and Development Managers, and 25-9031 Instructional Coordinators.

Special Information

⚠ Most workplace problems are not training problems — diagnose before you design

The single most valuable idea in the course, and the one that saves organizations the most money.

Training solves exactly one problem: people do not know how. It is routinely deployed against problems it cannot touch, which is why so much of it fails and why the failure is then attributed to the training rather than to the diagnosis.

Before designing anything, establish which of these you actually have:

• A knowledge or skill gap — they genuinely do not know how. Training helps.
• An incentive problem — the desired behaviour is punished, or the undesired one is rewarded. A safety programme in an operation that rewards speed is fighting its own compensation system. Training does nothing.
• A resource or environment problem — the tools, time, staffing, or information are not there. Training makes it worse by implying the fault is personal.
• A process problem — the workflow itself produces the errors. Fix the process.
• A selection problem — the wrong people are in the role. Training rarely closes this.
• An expectations problem — nobody told them clearly what was required. Communication, not training.

The diagnostic question worth memorizing: "If their life depended on doing it correctly tomorrow, could they?" If yes, it is not a training problem. That single question, asked early, prevents most wasted training spend.

The organizational politics worth knowing: training is frequently requested because it is visible, fundable, and easier than fixing the real cause. A manager who can say "training will not fix this, and here is what will" is more valuable than one who delivers what was asked for.

⚠ Transfer of training is the real problem, and it is mostly not about the training

The finding that most changes practice, and it is well supported.

A substantial share of what is learned in training never gets used on the job. The research on transfer is consistent, and the striking part is that the determining factors are mostly outside the training event:

• Supervisor support is the strongest single predictor. A manager who asks about the training, expects the behaviour, and makes room for it produces transfer; a manager who says "forget what they told you, here's how we actually do it" destroys it in one sentence.
• Opportunity to practise soon after matters enormously. Skills unused within weeks decay, so training delivered months before it is needed largely evaporates.
• The work environment must permit the behaviour — tools, authority, time, and process have to allow it.
• Accountability and follow-up — measurement, coaching, and revisiting the content sustain change; a one-off event does not.
• Trainee motivation and perceived relevance matter, which is why mandatory training with no explained purpose performs badly.

The design implications are concrete: involve supervisors before the training, not after; use realistic practice with the actual tools and situations; build action planning into the session so participants leave with a specific commitment; schedule follow-up; and provide job aids, since a checklist at the point of work often outperforms remembering a course.

The corollary that reframes the whole subject: the training event is a small part of whether training works. Most of the leverage is in what surrounds it.

⚠ Evaluate at the levels that matter — reaction sheets measure almost nothing

The measurement discipline, and the gap between what organizations measure and what they claim.

The standard framework distinguishes four levels of evaluation:

1. Reaction — did they like it? Cheap, universally collected, and weakly related to whether anyone learned anything. Enjoyment and learning are not the same variable, and entertaining training can teach nothing.
2. Learning — did knowledge or skill change? Requires assessment, ideally before and after.
3. Behaviour — did they do it differently at work? This is where transfer lives, it requires follow-up weeks later, and most organizations never measure it.
4. Results — did organizational outcomes change? Hardest to attribute, and the level executives care about.

Practical guidance for using this honestly:

• Decide the measures before you design the training, because the objectives and the measures should be the same thing stated twice.
• Do not claim level four from level one data. "Participants rated the programme 4.6 out of 5" is not evidence of impact, and presenting it as such is the field's most common credibility failure.
• Attribution is genuinely hard. When sales rise after sales training, other things also changed. Isolating the training's contribution requires control groups, trend analysis, or estimation — and being explicit about which you used.
• ROI calculations are only as good as their assumptions, and they should be presented with the assumptions attached rather than as a single number.
• Some training is worth doing without an ROI case — legally required training, safety training, and onboarding among them. Say so rather than manufacturing a number.

⚠ Some training is legally required, and some creates legal exposure

Compliance content a manager needs, because training is one of the places employment law touches operations directly.

• Safety training is mandated under OSHA for many hazards and industries, with specified content, frequency, and documentation. Records matter — training that cannot be evidenced is treated as training that did not happen.
• Harassment prevention training is not federally mandated for private employers generally, but it is a factor in an employer's defence in harassment litigation, which is why most organizations conduct it. Some states and many contracts require it.
• Industry-specific mandates abound — healthcare, financial services, aviation, food service, and childcare all carry required training with defined intervals.
• Training can itself be discriminatory. Selection for development opportunities, if it disproportionately excludes protected groups, creates exposure. So can content that stereotypes, and assessment that has adverse impact without job-relatedness.
• Accessibility is required. Training must be accessible to employees with disabilities — captions, materials in accessible formats, and physically accessible venues. This is an ADA obligation, not a courtesy.
• Compensability — under the FLSA, time spent in employer-required training is generally paid time for non-exempt employees, and getting this wrong produces wage claims.
• Training agreements and repayment clauses — contracts requiring employees to repay training costs on early departure are used and are enforceable only within limits that vary.

Rule 11 applies — employment law and required-training rules change through legislation, regulation, and litigation. Verify with counsel and current agency guidance.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

MAN3350 is a lecture course, 3 credits and approximately 45 contact hours, matching the published MAN family (MAN3025, MAN3240, MAN3353, MAN3593 all at 3/45). Expect case analysis and, in most sections, a project in which you conduct a needs assessment and design and deliver a training module — build that project around a real organization if you can, because it becomes portfolio material for instructional design roles.

MAN3350 is upper division: a lower-division human resources or supervision course will not substitute for it. Students arriving from an A.S. should note that A.S. degrees are applied and do not carry the A.A.'s guaranteed junior-status transfer, though Florida institutions publish B.A.S. management pathways designed for that population.