Making Training Engaging with Gagné’s Nine Events

Huge lecture halls full of students. Low engagement. Death by slides. What’s the solution with limited L&D resources and high expectations for engagement and results?

Gagné’s developed his Nine Events as a way of clarifying the process humans experience when learning. Amy Miner and colleagues at the University of West Virginia aimed to address increased enrollment and decreased effectiveness of the university’s nursing program. After applying Gagné’s model across the program, Miner found a marked increase in course evaluations and a slight uptrend in course grades.

Effectively gaining learner attention, establishing clear training goals, connecting to prior learning, presenting new content in active, engaging ways, providing practice with supportive coaching, and then evaluating learning, following up to measure workplace impact is the foundation of effective training.