Once you have completed the assessment phase, you can start defining the training contents and objectives. In this article, you can find a synthetic overview of all the steps you need to go through during the training programme design process.

Before you start, try to identify thought leaders in the sector/themes you would like to address in order to understand the basic contents as well as the frontiers to be considered in shaping the learning offer. Sometimes, especially in adult and professional training, the added value of a training resides in the novelty of contents, and its capacity to push knowledge towards sectoral (and trans-sectoral) boundaries.

To start designing the basic contents of the programme, it is necessary to have a clear idea of what the learning objectives are. Here are some indications on how to define effective training programme objectives.

After defining the effective goals of your training programme, it’s the right moment for starting the process of contents creation. This process could be done in a cooperative way, involving the community of users and stakeholders you gathered. Organize a co-design session to define what kind of content you want to address.
Here you can find some tips on designing and building a course.
Follow the indications in this guide to set and implement co-creation events within the educational field.

Collaboration has an essential role in creating an innovative, interdisciplinary and meaningful training programme. Universities willing to innovate their training courses or organisations willing to improve their spaces designing a shared learning framework, need to open up to new contributions and contaminations from society. Starting from the community you gathered during the whole process, define the epistemic communities and communities of practice involved who can have a stake, a role or be a reference in the learning path. Have a look at this paper to understand key enablers and barriers to involve different partners for the innovation of training at university level.

Once you have defined communities and experts who will contribute to the cultural offer, also specify those who will be actually teaching, coaching or mentoring within your training programme. They will be getting onboard with an active and central role, and you could also involve them in the definition of the training methods and approaches. As a founding team, make sure you always involve all the stakeholders in the correct moment of the process and to make them in the condition of giving positive and constructive inputs to the project.

Look at this set of digital technologies that can be used to support trainers and mentors to implement modern and innovative initiatives in learning activities. Read this Tools and Methods handbook for teachers who want to create new collaborative teaching and learning activities around Industry 4.0.

Once you will involve epistemic communities and communities of practice, you or someone in your team will probably be the facilitator or coach of the learning experience. Taking as an example the Mondragon Team Academy, its programmes are based on team coaching.
Cunningham established some mandatory qualities for the team coach in “The Wisdom of Strategic Learning” (Cunningham, 1994):
1. High self-esteem.
2. Generally positive attitude
3. Ability to cope with uncertainty
4. Belief in learning
5. Basic competencies in social skills
6. Patient nature
7. Trustworthiness
8. Sympathy towards the fields of interests of the learners
9. Enough time for the learners
10. Understanding that the team coach does not get the credit, but the learners do.

Now that you have the “who”, the “why” and the “what”, it’s time to define the “how”, that means the approach to learning.

Moving away from teacher-driven learning, in this new scenario, education is more and more aware of the power of learning that comes from personal reflection, and the learner’s awareness of their own needs, passions, plans and challenges. Change starts by empowering individual and team learning processes, and by creating learning environments that encourage learners to take responsibility for their own learning and performance.

For these reasons it is very important to define a learning/teaching approach which is coherent with the spirit of the project.
Here are some examples:

• Formal, non formal, informal education
• Practical / Theoretical
•  Teamwork / Individual
•  Skills and competencies: vertical/horizontal/t-shape
•  Mentoring and Coaching
•  Challenge- / Work- / Project-/ Event- based learning
•  Rat race / Hackathon / 24-hour sprint / academic course
•  Curricular / Non- curricular
•  Incubation / Acceleration
•  Community based learning (P2P, CoP…)
•  Sector-based / Interdisciplinary based
•  Itinerant trainings (in collaborative spaces and innovation communities spaces)
•  Online / Offline

According to the MTA these are the most important learning pillars where the MTA methodology is based on and needs to assure that is achieving:

• Real Learning: experiential learning in a real world setting
  Learning by doing happens in real world settings. Learning cannot be created in an artificial or simulation based environment. In this sense work and training are associated with each other, and cannot be separated; the classroom becomes a laboratory of constant sharing, learning and creating, so to be applied in real business and company context.
  To maintain motivation and commitment for action, skill development is connected to real entrepreneurship, not simulations or case studies. The way learning is assured in MTA is through real projects, put into practice. And with the technical skills brought by different team mates and through basic subjects and workshops at disposal for any entrepreneur, plenty of ideas for new entrepreneurial projects are developed.
• Team Learning: the importance of team and team learning.
  The team is the main vehicle for enhancing personal growth and learning. Not all groups are teams, there are several differences between a team and a group. Teams develop over time. Its members learn new skills and the team’s collective capability to operate as a team develops. Understanding the development cycle can help team members to understand their current phase and anticipate future challenges (“the team performance curve” created by Katzenbach and Smith, 1993).
• Individual Learning: learning based on personal development and individual needs.
  Although the team is the main learning vehicle, the learning journey or experiential learning path is different for everyone. Every individual brings different expectations, needs, personal goals and challenges. An alignment of those elements, or at least a basic understanding of them, is needed for a team to find a common purpose. Inner motivation comes from personal ambition, aspiration and passion. In this learning approach, personal commitment is crucial and a core ingredient in the individual learning process which informs, supports and ensures the team learning process.
•  Shared and Community Learning: learning as part of a community.
  Learners commit to their own, the team’s and the community’s objectives. And customer visits to other companies, agents or institutions help to build up the network which is essential to work as a member of the community.
• Knowledge Creation: the importance of reflection in moving from tacit to explicit knowledge
  The Knowledge Creation Model from Nonaka and Takeuchi is a reference for understanding learning and knowledge creation. (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Experiential learning implies the evolution from tacit knowledge, based on experience and observation, to explicit knowledge, which is all the knowledge which becomes tangible, written, quantified, clearly communicable and transferable.