Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

Lesson 01 set out the systems approach to training and the rule that every course should be traceable to a real need. This lesson is where that rule becomes work, because analysing the need is the first stage of the cycle and the stage that every later stage depends on. Design, development, delivery, and evaluation can each be done with great care and still produce a course that serves no purpose, if the need was never properly analysed. Get the analysis right and the rest of the cycle has something true to build on; get it wrong and you have built a fine course for a problem nobody had.

The analysis turns on a single, plain idea: a gap. There is a level of performance the Army requires, what a national must be able to do, and the level they can reach now, and the distance between the two is the gap. Training exists to close that gap, but only when the gap is genuinely a training problem and not a problem of kit, manning, or motivation wearing the disguise of one. Once you are sure the gap is a training problem, you turn it into training objectives, each stating performance, conditions, and standard, and you decide, just as deliberately, what to train and what to leave out. This is the discipline of a course designer: not to teach everything that could be taught, but to close the gap that actually exists.

This is the knowledge layer of training needs analysis. The real skill is built by doing it on a live requirement under a more experienced designer, and the analyses you draft are reviewed and signed off in person where supervision allows, because an objective that reads well on the page can still mistake the need until someone who knows the job tests it against reality. By the end you will be able to explain what a training need is and frame it as the gap between required and current performance, test whether a gap is genuinely a training problem before reaching for a course, write a training objective stating performance, conditions, and standard, distinguish a clear objective from a vague aim, and decide deliberately what to train and what not to, so that the course you scope closes the real gap and no more.

Key Terms

Training need: a shortfall in performance that training can close. It is the reason a course exists, and a course that cannot point to one should not be built.
Training needs analysis (TNA): the first stage of the training cycle, the work of finding and defining the real need before any course is designed, so that what gets built is traceable to a genuine requirement.
Required performance: what a national must be able to do, to what standard, in the role or task the training serves. It is set by the job, not by the trainer.
Current performance: what the nationals can actually do now, before training. Honest measurement of this, not assumption, is half the analysis.
The performance gap: the distance between required performance and current performance. Training aims to close it, and the size and nature of the gap shape the course.
A training problem: a gap that exists because people do not know how, or cannot yet do, the task. Only this kind of gap is closed by training.
A non-training problem: a gap caused by something other than ability, such as missing kit, too few people, unclear orders, or a motivation that no lesson will fix. Training will not close it.
Training objective: a precise statement of what the trained national will be able to do, written as performance, conditions, and standard. It is the output of the analysis and the input to the design.
Performance (of an objective): the task itself, the observable action the national must be able to perform, written with an active verb you can see being done.
Conditions (of an objective): the circumstances under which the performance must be done, what is given, what is withheld, the setting and any constraints.
Standard (of an objective): how well the performance must be done to count as met, stated so plainly that two assessors would agree on a pass.
Scoping: deciding the boundary of the course, what is in and what is out, so that the training closes the gap and does not sprawl into teaching what is not needed.

What a training need is

Start with the word, because it carries the whole lesson. A training need is a shortfall in performance that training can close. It is not a topic somebody finds interesting, not a subject the College happens to be able to teach, and not a course that exists elsewhere and could be copied. It is a real shortfall in what the Army's people can do against what the Army needs them to do, and it is the only honest reason to build a course. If you cannot name the need a course closes, you are not designing training, you are filling time, and a small humanitarian home-defence force has neither the hours nor the instructors to spend on training that closes nothing.

The work of finding and defining that need is training needs analysis, the first stage of the cycle, and it is analysis in the true sense: you do not assume the need, you investigate it. Where did the requirement come from? Who says the nationals must be able to do this, and on what authority, a new task the Army has taken on, a change in doctrine or kit, a weakness shown up in an operation or an exercise, a register that says too few people hold a skill the force depends on? What exactly must they be able to do, and how do you know they cannot do it now? These questions are the substance of the analysis, and rushing past them to the lessons is the commonest way a course goes wrong before it is even designed.

Be clear, too, that analysing the need is not the same as designing the course. The temptation, especially for a capable instructor, is to leap from "we have a problem with first aid" straight to a list of lessons, because the lessons are the part an instructor knows how to make. But a list of lessons is an answer, and you cannot judge an answer until you have stated the question precisely. The analysis states the question: this is the performance required, this is the performance we have, this is the gap, and this is what closing it would mean. Only once that is settled does it make sense to ask what lessons, in what order, by what method would close it, which is the work of Lesson 03.

The performance gap

The clearest way to hold a training need is as a gap. On one side is the required performance, what a national must be able to do, to what standard, in the task or role the training serves. This is set by the job and not by the trainer: the relief task, the home-defence duty, the equipment in use, the law the Army operates under, all of these dictate what the national must be able to do, and the designer's first job is to find that requirement and state it honestly rather than guess at it. On the other side is the current performance, what the nationals can actually do now, today, before any training. The distance between the two is the performance gap, and that gap is the training need made visible.

Two disciplines make this honest. The first is to define the required performance from the job, not from the syllabus you would enjoy teaching or the course that already exists: decide the required level by asking what the task actually demands, not by what is convenient to teach. The second, and the one most often skipped, is to measure the current performance rather than assume it. It is tempting to declare that the nationals "cannot do" something and reach straight for a course, when in truth some of them can, or the real shortfall is narrower or wider than supposed. Ask, observe, test on a small scale: what can these particular people already do, and where exactly does it fall short? The size and shape of the gap all come from measuring the current performance and not from a hunch. A gap measured is a gap you can close with a course the right size; a gap assumed is how a course ends up too long, too short, or aimed at the wrong thing.

   THE PERFORMANCE GAP
   The training need, made visible.

   REQUIRED PERFORMANCE  ........ what the national MUST be
   (set by the job)               able to do, to what standard
        ^
        |
        |   <-- THE GAP -->   This distance is the
        |                     TRAINING NEED. Training
        |                     exists to close it.
        v
   CURRENT PERFORMANCE  ......... what the national CAN do
   (measured, not assumed)        NOW, before any training

   +-----------------------------------------------------+
   | Define REQUIRED from the job, not the syllabus.     |
   | MEASURE current; do not assume it.                  |
   | The gap's size and shape set the size of the course.|
   | No gap  ->  no need  ->  no course.                 |
   +-----------------------------------------------------+

The figure is worth holding in mind for the whole of TRG 410, because the gap is the thing the rest of the cycle serves. Notice the last line: if there is no gap, there is no need, and there is no course to build. Sometimes the honest result of an analysis is that the nationals can already do the task, or can do it with a short refresher rather than a full course. A designer who reports "no course needed here" when that is the truth has done the work well, not failed at it. The gap, not the wish to teach, decides.

Is it really a training problem?

Here is the test that separates a competent analysis from a careless one, and it is the most important idea in the lesson. A gap between required and current performance is real, but it does not follow that training will close it. Training closes one specific kind of gap: a training problem, where the people do not yet know how, or cannot yet do, the task, and teaching them would let them. Many gaps are not of this kind. They are gaps where the people could do the task, or already know how, but something else stops them, and no lesson, however well taught, will close a gap that is not made of missing ability. Reaching for a course to fix a non-training problem is one of the commonest and most wasteful mistakes a College can make, and the designer's duty is to catch it before a course is built.

So before you accept a gap as a training need, interrogate its cause. Is it a problem of kit? If the nationals fail because the equipment is missing, broken, or the wrong tool for the job, the fix is the kit, not a course; you can teach a national to operate a purifier perfectly and they will still fail if there is no purifier. Is it a problem of manning? If the task fails because there are too few people to do it, or the wrong people are posted to it, training the few who are there will not fill a gap made of numbers. Is it a problem of motivation or conditions? If the people know how and are able but do not do the task, because the orders are unclear, the task is not actually required of them, nobody checks, or morale and welfare are poor, then a course teaches a skill they already have and changes nothing, while the real cause sits untouched. Each of these can masquerade as a training need, and each is closed by a different fix entirely.

The honest question to ask of every gap is the diagnostic one: if these people had to do this task tomorrow, with everything else right, with the kit present, the numbers there, clear orders, and reason to do it well, could they do it? If the answer is no, because they do not know how or cannot yet do it, you have a training problem, and a course is the right tool. If the answer is yes, they could, but something else is in the way, then you have a non-training problem, and the right response is to name the real cause and pass it to whoever owns it, not to build a course that will absorb instructors and hours and leave the gap exactly where it was. This is not the designer dodging work; it is the designer protecting the Army's scarce training effort for the gaps that training can actually close, and protecting the College's credibility, because a course aimed at the wrong cause solves nothing and teaches everyone that courses do not work.

   IS IT A TRAINING PROBLEM?
   A gap exists. What is causing it?

   "Could they do the task tomorrow, with everything
    else right, if they simply HAD to?"

        NO, they don't know how / can't yet do it
                |
                v
        TRAINING PROBLEM  --->  a course is the right tool.
                                Take it to the objectives.

        YES, they could, but something stops them
                |
                v
        NOT A TRAINING PROBLEM. Find the real cause:
          - KIT:        missing, broken, wrong tool
          - MANNING:    too few, or the wrong people
          - MOTIVATION  unclear orders, not really
            / CONDITIONS required, no one checks, poor welfare

        ---> Name it. Pass it to whoever owns it.
             A course will NOT close this gap.

   A course aimed at a non-training cause wastes the
   Army's instructors and hours and closes nothing.

Writing training objectives

Once a gap is confirmed as a training problem, the analysis produces its output: training objectives. An objective is a precise statement of what the trained national will be able to do, and it is the hinge of the whole cycle, at once the result of the analysis and the input to the design. The design (Lesson 03) builds lessons to meet the objectives; the assessment plan (from TRG 310) tests whether they are met; the validation (Lesson 05) asks whether the students reached them. All of that depends on the objectives being written well, which means written as three parts: performance, conditions, and standard. Hold those three together and an objective is precise enough to design, teach, and assess against. Drop any one and it sags into a vague aim that two reasonable people would read two different ways.

The performance is the task itself, the observable action the national must be able to perform. Write it with an active verb you can actually watch being done: apply a dressing, replace a magazine, send a contact report, purify water, read a map and give a grid. Beware the verbs that name a state of mind rather than an action, "understand", "know", "be aware of", because you cannot see understanding and therefore cannot design or assess to it. If the real requirement is that the national understands something, ask what they would do that shows it, and write that doing as the performance. The performance answers: what, exactly, must they be able to do?

The conditions are the circumstances under which the performance must be done: what is given, what is withheld, the setting, and any constraints. The same action is a different requirement in different conditions. Applying a dressing in a warm classroom with good light, unhurried, with all the kit laid out, is a far easier performance than applying the same dressing outdoors, in poor light, under time pressure, with only the contents of a personal first-aid kit. Neither is wrong, but they are different objectives, and the conditions tell the designer how hard to make the training and the assessor what to set up. The conditions answer: under what circumstances?

The standard is how well the performance must be done to count as met, and it is the part most often left vague and most needing to be sharp. It is the line a pass must reach, and it must be written so plainly that two different assessors watching the same national would agree on whether it was a pass. "Apply a dressing correctly" is not a standard, because "correctly" hides every disagreement; "apply a dressing so that the wound is fully covered, the dressing is secure, and bleeding is controlled, within ninety seconds" is a standard, because it can be seen, timed, and judged the same way by anyone. State accuracy, completeness, time, or sequence, whatever the task demands, in terms you could check. The standard answers: how well, judged how?

   A TRAINING OBJECTIVE, BROKEN INTO ITS THREE PARTS

   "Given a personal first-aid kit, outdoors in poor
    light and under time pressure, the national will
    apply a field dressing to a limb wound so that the
    wound is fully covered, the dressing is secure, and
    bleeding is controlled, within 90 seconds."

   +-------------+---------------------------------------+
   | PERFORMANCE | apply a field dressing to a limb wound|
   | (the task)  | -> active verb, an action you can see |
   +-------------+---------------------------------------+
   | CONDITIONS  | given a personal first-aid kit,       |
   | (the        | outdoors, poor light, time pressure   |
   |  circum-    | -> what is given / withheld / the     |
   |  stances)   |    setting and constraints            |
   +-------------+---------------------------------------+
   | STANDARD    | wound fully covered, dressing secure, |
   | (how well)  | bleeding controlled, within 90 seconds|
   |             | -> two assessors would agree on a pass|
   +-------------+---------------------------------------+

   Drop the CONDITIONS and you don't know how hard to
   train or assess. Drop the STANDARD and "pass" means
   whatever each assessor decides. All three, every time.

A useful test of a finished objective is to read it back and ask whether someone who had never met the task could design a lesson to it and set an assessment from it without asking you a single question. If they would have to ask "how well?" or "under what conditions?", the objective is not finished. Keep objectives at the level of the real task, too: not so broad that they hide a dozen separate things to train, and not so fine that you drown in trivial sub-steps. Each objective should name a meaningful piece of the gap, written so the design that follows has something solid to close it against.

Deciding what to train, and what not to

The last discipline of the analysis is the one that most distinguishes a designer from an enthusiast: deciding what to train and, just as important, what not to. Once the gap is defined and the objectives are written, there is always a temptation to add more, to teach the related thing, the interesting thing, the thing the instructor enjoys, the thing that "might come in useful". Every addition costs hours the Army does not have, instructor effort that is scarce, and student attention that is finite, and every addition that does not close part of the real gap dilutes the course and lengthens it for no return. Scoping is drawing the boundary deliberately: this is in, because it closes part of the gap; that is out, because it does not, however worthy it might be in itself.

The rule that holds the scope honest is the same gap that opened the lesson. A topic earns its place in the course if, and only if, it serves a training objective that closes part of the real performance gap. If it does not, it does not belong, no matter how interesting, how traditional, or how much the designer would like to teach it. This cuts both ways. It cuts out the worthy extras that have crept in from habit and turn a tight two-day course into a sprawling week, and it cuts back in the unglamorous essentials that close the gap but that nobody enjoys teaching, which is just as much a failure of scoping if they are left out. The question for every candidate topic is the same: which objective does this serve, and which part of the gap does that objective close? A topic that cannot answer is out.

Deciding what not to train is not laziness or corner-cutting; it is stewardship of the Army's training effort, the same stewardship the logistics speciality teaches about money. A small force has very few instructor-hours and very few student-hours, and every one spent teaching what was not needed is one not spent teaching what was. The designer who scopes tightly to the gap gives the Army a course that closes the need in the least time and keeps it short enough that people can actually be released to attend. The designer who cannot say no produces a course that is longer, harder to staff, and harder to fill, and that closes the same gap a tighter course would have closed in less time. Scoping to the gap is how the analysis ends: with a clear, bounded set of objectives that say exactly what this course will close and, by their silence, exactly what it will not.

In Practice: Scoping a Casualty-Drills Refresher

A staff officer of the College, a Second Lieutenant holding the Training and Instruction speciality, is asked by a section commander to "run a first-aid course" for his section, because two of them froze when a national turned an ankle badly on a recent exercise and the section was slow and clumsy in dealing with it. The easy response is to take the request at face value and stand up a full first-aid course. The Second Lieutenant instead does the analysis the request skipped.

She starts with the gap. The required performance, she establishes from the task the section actually does, is that every national can apply immediate care to a common field injury, control it, and get the casualty moved or held safely until more help arrives. Then she measures the current performance rather than assuming it: she talks to the section commander and the two who froze, and watches a quick informal run-through. She finds that all eight nationals passed a basic first-aid course within the year and can, in a calm classroom, apply a dressing and a splint perfectly well. The gap is not in knowing how. It is that under the surprise and pressure of a real incident the drills fell apart, nobody had clear roles, and the people who knew the steps could not bring them to hand fast enough.

Now she applies the diagnostic test. Could these nationals do the task tomorrow if they simply had to? In the calm, yes; under pressure, no, not yet, because the drilled, automatic, role-clear response is missing. That part is a genuine training problem, and a short, sharp, repeated practical drill under realistic pressure would close it. But she also notices a non-training thread: part of the slowness was that the section's first-aid kit was incomplete and out of date, which no amount of training fixes. So she splits the gap honestly. The training part she turns into a tight objective: given a simulated casualty with a limb injury, outdoors, under time pressure and with roles unassigned at the start, the section will assign roles, control the injury, and ready the casualty for movement, within a stated time and to a stated standard. The kit part she names as a non-training problem and refers to the quartermaster, who owns it. Then she scopes hard: not a full first-aid course, which they have already passed, but a focused casualty-drills refresher built only of repeated, pressured practice on the drills that failed. She leaves out the classroom theory they already hold, and the course is a few hours of drills rather than days of lessons. It closes the real need, refers the part training cannot close, and costs the section the least time it could. That is the analysis done as a designer, not an enthusiast.

Check Your Understanding

Explain what a training need is and frame it as the gap between required and current performance. Then explain the two disciplines that keep the gap honest, defining the required level from the job rather than the syllabus, and measuring the current level rather than assuming it, and say what it means when an honest analysis finds no gap.
Give the diagnostic test that decides whether a gap is genuinely a training problem, and name the three kinds of non-training cause it screens out (kit, manning, and motivation or conditions). Explain, with an example, why building a course to fix a non-training problem wastes the Army's effort and closes nothing.
Write a training objective for a task of your choice, stating its performance, conditions, and standard, then explain what each of the three parts contributes and what goes wrong if you drop the conditions or the standard. Finish by explaining the rule that decides whether a topic belongs in a course, and why deciding what not to train is stewardship rather than corner-cutting.

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson argues that the hardest discipline in analysing a training need is honesty: defining what is really required from the job, measuring what people can really do now instead of assuming it, refusing to call a kit or manning or motivation problem a training problem, and saying no to teaching what does not close the gap. Think of a time you, or someone training you, was given a course or a session that did not match the real problem, that taught what was easy or interesting rather than what was needed, or that tried to fix with a lesson something a lesson could never fix. Looking back through this lesson, where exactly did the analysis go wrong, and how would framing the gap, testing whether it was really a training problem, and scoping to the objectives have produced a better answer?

Summary

A training need is a shortfall in performance that training can close, and analysing it (training needs analysis) is the first stage of the cycle: finding and defining the real need before any course is designed, so that what gets built is traceable to a genuine requirement.
The clearest way to hold a need is as a performance gap: the distance between the required performance, what a national must be able to do, set by the job, and the current performance, what they can do now, which must be measured and not assumed. If there is no gap there is no need and no course, and reporting that honestly is good work, not failure.
A gap is only a training need if it is genuinely a training problem, where the people do not yet know how or cannot yet do the task. The diagnostic test is whether they could do it tomorrow if they simply had to, with everything else right. If something else stops them, kit, manning, or motivation and conditions, it is a non-training problem; name the real cause and pass it to whoever owns it.
A confirmed training problem is turned into training objectives, each written as three parts: performance, the observable task with an active verb; conditions, the circumstances, what is given, withheld, and the setting; and standard, how well, written so two assessors would agree on a pass. Drop the conditions and you cannot judge how hard to train; drop the standard and a pass means whatever each assessor decides.
The analysis ends by scoping, deciding deliberately what to train and what not to. A topic belongs only if it serves an objective that closes part of the real gap; everything else is out, however worthy. Deciding what not to train is stewardship of the Army's scarce instructor-hours and student-hours, not corner-cutting.
This lesson is the analysis stage of the systems approach introduced in Lesson 01. Its objectives feed the design of the course in Lesson 03, are tested by the assessment plan from TRG 310 (Assessment and Course Supervision), and are checked against by validation in Lesson 05 (Maintaining Training Standards) and by evaluation in Lesson 10 (Evaluating and Improving). It connects to ADM 220 (Course Records and Qualification Tracking), which records who is qualified to instruct, and to PME 210 (Basic Staff Duties and Written Orders), in which the course specification is written. The instructional method that meets these objectives, including EDIP for skills, is taught in TRG 301 (Methods of Instruction).

Analysing the Training Need