Since the ADDIE training model was developed at Florida State University in 1975, training designers have added their own tweaks and improvements to the way it works.

But despite all the refinements over the years, ADDIE is still worth knowing about. It provides a useful structure for planning and implementing your training. Let’s review the steps today and see what we can learn.

Meet ADDIE

ADDIE is an acronym that divides the process of training into the following steps:

• Step One: Analyze your business needs and consider what kind of training will support them. Weigh who your learners are, pinpoint the behaviors you want your training to change, develop metrics to measure, and plan an overall timeline for training.
• Step Two: Design a master plan. In this step, you decide how your trainees prefer to learn, where and how your training will be delivered (in classrooms, computerized learning centers, on mobile devices or tablets) and what kind of training materials will work best (videos, training manuals, interactive quizzes, etc.).
• Step Three: Develop your training materials. In this phase, your instructional designers create the lesson plan and materials you will use.
• Step Four: Implement your plan in the strongest way you can. This usually takes place in two steps. First, you train your trainers to use the materials you have developed in the preceding phases. Second, you launch your program.
• Step Five: Evaluate the success of your training, in several ways. One goal is to loop back to Step One (Analyze) to see whether your training has gotten you closer to meeting your business objectives. A second step is to measure and monitor your metrics to see whether your program has changed behaviors and achieved its goals. The third step is to is evaluate your training plan, materials and trainers to find ways to improve your overall training initiative.

Think of ADDIE as a Way to Plan and Evaluate Results

While not set in stone, the ADDIE framework offers a good checklist for training. As we noted at the start of today’s post, it has been refined over the years. If you’re planning new training that achieves results, we invite you to speak with a Tortal Training consultant today.