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This chapter focuses on what the key decision makers in organizations decide after having received information on the current state of the organizational performance. Because of strong attributions to success and failure, it is impossible to predict in advance which concrete actions will occur. We can however find out what kinds of actions are decided upon by means of an organizational learning model that focuses on the hastenings and delays after performance feedback. As an illustration, the responses to performance signals by trainers and club owners in Dutch soccer clubs are analyzed.

This study examines the implementation of a community-level Sustainable Broadband Adoption Program (SBA) under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), a national public policy program meant to expand broadband deployment and adoption under the American Recovery Act of 2009, and administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The California Connects Program (CC) was administered by the Foundation for California Community Colleges (FCCC).

This chapter focuses on one part of CC’s efforts to expand broadband adoption among the most underserved Californians through collaboration with the Great Valley Center (GVC). CC-GVC provided basic computer and Internet classes to disconnected populations with low-literacy levels, and primarily in Spanish, through community-based organizations, public schools, public libraries, small businesses, and others in the Central Valley, an 18 county rural region with a high concentration of digital destitute populations. The program worked with under-resourced local community institutions with a range of poor technology resources and that operated under variable set of social, economic, political, and institutional conditions. Through inductive, process-oriented, and explanatory case study research, the structure, strategy, and training approach of CC was examined. Content and theme analysis of primary and secondary qualitative and quantitative data involving the program’s leadership, direct service providers, partners, participants, and nonparticipants was conducted. This involved a sample of 600 in-depth and short, structured and unstructured interviews and focus groups, archival and participant observation notes.

It was found that CC-GVC was able to meet uncertainty and operated with low institutional resources and paucity of linguistically appropriate teaching resources for new entrants through a flexible leadership approach that adapted to the social situation and was open to innovation. Community technology trainers were also able to engage those without or little direct experience with computers and with low-literacy levels with a linguistically appropriate and culturally sensitive step-by-step teaching approach that empowered and met people where they are. The author expands non-adoption models to include structural barriers in the analysis of the disconnected. It is argued that non-adoption is a result of evolving inequality processes fueled by poverty and under-resourced community development institutions and that teaching and learning is a social and institutional process that takes trust and time.

CC shows that even the most disadvantaged can be empowered to learn-to-learn to use computers and can begin to function online and gain benefit under the most extreme institutional and economic conditions, but it takes more time and resources than providers expected and the Recovery Act provided.

This chapter examines the role of gender training in the context of gender mainstreaming in Vietnam to illuminate how gender shapes and is shaped through development practice. Through thick description of a week-long gender training designed to mainstream gender into a rural development project, the author examines the role gender and development practitioners play as teacher–trainers in moving gender-mainstreaming policies beyond national development planning and rhetoric to affect local and cultural change. As they teach their students how to “think gender” they transform abstract gender equality policy commitments to fit the needs of different local constituents, who are themselves embedded in a complexity of gender, class, ethnic, age, and urban–rural power relations. In the process, training becomes a key political space, place and process where development subjects are produced, and gender expertise is negotiated. It is where teacher–trainers and their students actively negotiate the meaning of gender, equality, and development. It is a place where power and knowledge are constructed (and contested), and where trainers and trainees make visible their own political commitments and intentions as “insiders” and “outsiders” to the development process. As a result, training serves as an important site of engagement and contestation over the cultural and political meaning of gender mainstreaming, gender equality, and development in Vietnam, and as such has become an important space for feminist activism.

Entrepreneurship education is being taught to undergraduates in tertiary institutions and fresh graduates in youth programmes to encourage start-ups and create employment as a strategy to stem youth unemployment. As such, entrepreneurship education programmes are expected to include rigorous processes of programme design, implementation and evaluation so as to achieve changes in behaviour, attitude and action of participants measureable in terms of start-up and jobs created. Two entrepreneurship education programmes implemented in Nigeria are evaluated to ascertain the level of effectiveness in design, implementation and evaluation and the outcomes in terms of start-ups and employment created. Research methods adopted in the two programmes combine observation techniques with content analyses, action research in case study and focus group interviews. In addition, test-retest techniques in a quasi-experimental design, with a structured questionnaire is adopted in programme number two only. The findings are that while it is suspected that the design stage is jumped in programme number one, in programme two, the design is poorly done. Implementation is ineffective in the two programmes because objectives did not arise from programme design as they ought to and evaluation methods are inappropriate and so ineffective. The recommendations include review of the design of the two programmes to generate appropriate and measurable objectives; adopting implementation strategies that will achieve the measurable objectives generated from revised programme designs and adopting appropriate evaluation techniques that has capacity to measure outcomes and impact in addition to outputs.

The effectiveness of different types of adult learning practices for promoting practitioner and parent use of different kinds of assistive technology and adaptations with young children of 18–105 months of age was the focus of a research synthesis described in this chapter. Six operationally defined adult learning methods and between two and five practices for each method were used to code and analyze the results for both adult (practitioner and parent) and child outcomes. The assistive technology and adaptations that were the focus of training included speech generative devices (e.g., CheapTalk), computers (e.g., adapted keyboards), and switch-activated devices and toys. Results showed that a combination of five or six of the most effective adult learning method practices were associated with the largest differences in both adult and child outcomes, but that few studies included the most effective practices. The relationship between the number of practices and the study outcomes was moderated by the type of training (individual vs. group) and whether the training included in vivo use of the devices with children with disabilities. The results point to at least several factors that explain non-use of assistive technology with young children with disabilities and highlight the need for better designed and implemented training.

Each of the four objectives can be applied within the military training environment. Military training often requires that soldiers achieve specific levels of performance or proficiency in each phase of training. For example, training courses impose entrance and graduation criteria, and awards are given for excellence in military performance. Frequently, training devices, training media, and training evaluators or observers also directly support the need to diagnose performance strengths and weaknesses. Training measures may be used as indices of performance, and to indicate the need for additional or remedial training.

Changes in the format of library materials, increased amounts of information, and the speed at which information is being produced have created an unrelenting need for training for library staff members. Additionally, library employees are retiring in greater numbers and their accompanying expertise is being lost. The purpose of this study was to document evaluation practices currently used in library training and continuing education programs for library employees, including metrics used in calculating return-on-investment (ROI). This research project asked 272 library training professionals to identify how they evaluate training, what kind of training evaluation practices are in place, how they select programs to evaluate for ROI, and what criteria are important in determining an effective method for calculating ROI.

Investments in gender training for agricultural researchers have not attained expected outcomes, bringing into question the efficacy of training approaches used. New approaches for transformative gender training need to draw on lessons learned from previous courses. This chapter analyses short gender training courses identified using a scoping methodology. Selected courses offered between 2005 and 2015 for scientists in Eastern Africa were critiqued against a theoretical framework for transformative gender training. Also shared is a training model (Gender Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation course) that addresses gaps in previous courses. The chapter identifies critical lessons for facilitating transformative gender training for non-gender research practitioners which include the need for inter-disciplinary grounding in the disciplines of gender and agriculture, having a phased course delivery and the value of continuous technical support during and after training. Gender training models should also allow for the deepening of gender awareness and consciousness by providing safe spaces for personal reflections on the root causes of gender inequalities and for the questioning of the internalized norms and biases.