2016 Annual Conference

This session provides a comprehensive review of training transfer literature and identifies a unique approach of training design for adaptive transfer that allows application of learned knowledge and skills from a training to employee's job setting that may be different from the training context or setting.

The target audience will be trainers and instructional designers of profit and non-profit organizations who need more advanced training design techniques facilitating training transfer. Those people who conduct training evaluation in the corporate and public sector organizations may be benefited from this session's content. Instructors of vocational educational settings will also find some useful instructional methods and activities for learning transfer from this session.

Current research on transfer of training has paid less attention to adaptive transfer, and empirical evidence has just begun to uncover some of the complex mechanisms that exist during the process of adaptive transfer. In this session, first, a review literature on training transfer including learner characteristics, training design, and organizational variables will be presented. For further discussion of the issue of adaptive training transfer, a conceptual model that serves as an organizing framework for this proposed study will be presented. Building on the work of Smith, Ford, and Kozlowski (1997), this session attempts to expand the understanding of adaptive transfer and to identify how factors such as training design and individual characteristics influence learning outcomes and adaptive transfer. This study suggests the conceptual model that describes the process through which training design activities result in adaptive transfer. The training design strategies include three components: learning principles, training methods, and training practice. Lastly, future research directions will be suggested.