My employer has recently created a training unit to coordinate and standardize external trainings. There is reluctance to change and just general questioning from SMEs who have trained and presented. We need to define what falls under training and what falls under presenting. How would you make the distiction?

Very little difference. Think about the purpose of presenting vs. training. If you really think about it you want the people to be aware of something in a presentation whereas you want people to be able to do something in training. Both sometimes address providing information so better/different decisions will be made. So, when presentations are done right, they have all the earmarks of good training - performance objectives, structure, chunking, audience involvement, ... Many times people will say that a presentation just presents information with a sole goal of informing the audience. But that I think is short-sighted. Why are you informing the audience? What is the end purpose? Usually to have them make a different decision down the road. So, you are back to performance objectives, "To decide to ..." As you can see, I see very little difference. Too many presentations are simply lecture with no chance for the audience to be involved and truly absorb the information. But I ramble.

Ben makes a good pint that a Good presentation is well structured and organized to fit the purpose and the audience. As is Training. However, even with the Q/A aspect, in a presentation the emphasis is on 1-way communication.
Good Training includes designing for content dissemination, discovery and application of new information/learning. It is dependent on a 2-way communication.

Cheers,
Anne
www.hullstrategies.com

Hi Gogirl:

The answer to your question is a matter of intent. A presentation can be given for a variety of reasons. For example, presentations can be given for awards, to sell a product, or art. A presentation intended to impart or enhance knowledge and skill with the expectation of the application of the knowledge and/or skill (usually on the job) is training. Training is the outcome. A presentation is one of many modes to achieve training.

So the distinction comes with the intent of the presentation.

Good luck!
Cj

Hi there,

We use SMEs for knowledge transfers (technical presentations) - although experts with the topic, it's understood that the SME doesn't have the training background to consider this 'formal' training.

Training usually has the full gammit of instructional design, content development, evaluation, etc. I suspect most presentations don't include all this.