How to design effective learning programmes

It is common nowadays to hear people speak of Management by Objectives. But it is not so common to hear the relevant but often ignored question, ‘By whose objectives?’ If the question were asked someone designing an effective ‘management’ learning programme, the answer should be loud and clear as ‘by the learner's objectives.’ This is so because the objectives of the learner are in full control of what is learned, how fast it is learned, how well it is learned, and for how long it stays learned. That is, the learner makes the choice of what is learned and/or unlearned, he learns what impresses him most (whether he is expected to learn such things or not) and leaves out the experiences that do not impress him at all (whether they are ‘important’ or not). This assertion of conscious will on the behaviour of the adult human being makes it imperative that for any learning programme to be effective, the learning material to be presented to the adult, must be made to be as near as possible to what he would have freely chosen (to satisfy his learning needs — why want to learn) in terms of content (what to learn with), methodology(ies) (how to learn), time (when to learn), duration (for how long to learn formally, location (where to learn), and facilitators (people to help him learn). Hence the need for a designer to put all these items together optimally for effective learning.