Comprehension checks
Ten-second polls between blocks, everyone answering at once.
Training that changeswhat people do.
Finding the real gap, writing objectives you can observe, budgeting practice over content, and measuring something better than whether they enjoyed it.
Design
Most training fails before delivery, by solving a problem that was never a skills problem.
Find the real gap
- State it as a behaviour, not a topic.
- Train it if they cannot do it yet.
- Do not train it if process or tooling blocks them.
- Do not train it if the incentives reward the old way.
Write observable objectives
- “Understand X” cannot be watched.
- Use apply, diagnose, produce.
- Aim at apply and above.
- Below apply, it should have been a document.
Use a process
- Analyse the gap and what they know.
- Design objectives, then practice, then content.
- Develop the materials and real cases.
- Evaluate, decided now and not afterwards.
Sequence it deliberately
- Recall first, before adding to it.
- Show a worked example, then their turn.
- Feedback while the attempt is fresh.
- Practise on their own work, not an invented case.
Budget practice, not slides
- At least 40% of the clock is them doing it.
- In 90 minutes that is 36 minutes.
- If you cannot find it, cut content.
- Content can be a document. Practice cannot.
Open with the gap, One idea at a time, Show, then do, Feedback while it is fresh, Real cases, not invented ones, Cut content, never practice
Deliver
On the day, the job is to protect the practice from the content.
Open with the gap
In their language, not your syllabus. Why this, why now.
One idea, then do it
Every session drifts towards talking. Fixed practice blocks are the defence.
Name the errors first
Say the common mistakes out loud before anyone makes them.
Cut content, never practice
When you overrun, the slides go. Practice is the part that transfers.
A 90-minute skills session (example)
Forty of the ninety minutes are the learner working, which is the 40% floor met. Input is twenty-five minutes across two blocks, never in one stretch.
A question with a right answer, Everyone answers at once, Anonymous by default, See the split before you move on, Reteach the part that missed
Check it landed
“Does that make sense?” is answered by the people it already made sense to.
Top questions
Anonymous · Live- 01
How do we prove this changed anything?
27 - 02
What if my manager does not reinforce it?
19 - 03
Can we practise on our own backlog?
11
Send it the same day, Schedule the second touch, Retrieval, not re-reading, One thing for managers to reinforce, Spacing beats length, Measure at level 3
Make it stick
A single session is an event. What follows it decides whether it was training.
Send it the same day
Memory decays fastest right after the session. A week later it arrives without its context.
Schedule the second touch
Before the first session runs, not after. A single event loses most of its effect within days.
Make follow-up retrieval
Answering, not re-reading. Coming back to the material is what beats the forgetting curve.
Measure at level 3
Reaction scores measure enjoyment. Whether behaviour changed at work is the level that justifies the budget.
Six common mistakes, and the fix
Training a problem that is not a skills gap
If the cause is process, tooling or incentives, training will not fix it and will get blamed.
Objectives written as “understand X”
You cannot observe understanding. Use apply, diagnose, produce, something you can watch.
Filling the time with content
Content is the cheap part. Practice is what transfers, and it is what gets cut first.
One session, no follow-up
A single event loses most of its effect within days. Schedule the second touch before the first.
Measuring with a happy sheet
Reaction scores tell you if people enjoyed it, not whether anything changed. Go to level 3.
Same material for beginners and experts
Split the group or differentiate the practice. One pace fails both ends of the room.
Where Diaposi fits
The design work above is yours. Two parts are hard to do live in a room of any size: checking that something landed, and producing material people will actually revise from.
Anonymous confusion
Nobody has to admit in front of their manager that they are lost.
Live pace signal
A score for the room, so you slow down while it still helps.
Take-home material
Deck, their notes and their flags: the thing the follow-up runs on.
The second touch
Rerun the check weeks later and compare it against the day itself.
Training is designed. Behaviour change is earned.
Bring the deck you already run. Check what landed while you can still act on it, and everyone leaves with something to revise from.
The report a trainer sends afterwards
Go live with Diaposi