Reflections on Training People in Implementation Practice
By Dr. Sobia Khan, Director of Implementation
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Anyone who is familiar with the work we do at The Center for Implementation is aware of our commitment to training people in implementation practice – that is, teaching those who have to implement in the real world how to do so using evidence of what works in implementation science. Julia Moore, the executive director of TCI, and I have spent years building out content that would teach people the fundamentals of implementation practice. This has resulted two very in-depth courses - Designing for Implementation, and Implementation, Spread and Scale. In addition, we decided to offer a free mini-course, Inspiring Change, that provides a high-level overview of the key concepts in implementation. Many of our students are also tasked with building capacity in implementation practice within their organizations, projects or regions. Therefore, we thought it would be helpful to share what we have learned over past 6 years that we have been developing and delivering courses to thousands of professionals.
1. When teaching people about implementation, there is something both familiar and unfamiliar to everyone
The problem with the field of implementation science is that it is often positioned as the “new” thing to do. While the field might be new, the concepts foundational to it are not. Implementation science borrows from other fields like change management, psychology, and communications, among others. What makes implementation science unique is that it evaluates how best to engage in the process of implementing – which is something that we had not been doing for a very long time. Knowing this, when teaching people how to apply implementation science to their work, some might be familiar with the concepts presented to them (for example, individual change theories or evaluation principles). There may also be many things that are unfamiliar to them (for example, implementation quality or measuring organizational readiness). This is an important point: for many people, learning about how to apply implementation science involves transforming the beast you know into an animal that you can understand, tame, and manage with the right knowledge, resources and tools. This point has become something that helps people understand what it is they are trying to learn, and also helps us, as course developers to know that we are often transforming prior knowledge and mental models about how to implement while also teaching something new.
2. Training needs to be responsive and flexible
We have built our courses over time with participant feedback on what is working and not working for them. Continuously monitoring course quality means that you are being flexible to participant needs. We have also learned to be self-critical and adaptable to the context in which we are working, which we think is equally as important. Let’s take our mini-course, Inspiring Change, as an example. Without having had experience in online courses, Julia and I developed the course content, and Julia filmed the course in 2019 with zero knowledge about how to produce good quality videos. The result was a mini-course that had some room for improvement, but which ended up being extremely popular and successful. With over 4000 people being enrolled in Inspiring Change, and with our evaluations being overwhelmingly positive, there was objectively no need to re-film the course. But we knew we could do better. This year, we planned a re-shoot that involved higher production quality and embedded principles that facilitated improved adult learning in an online format. Then COVID-19 hit – which necessitated a pivot in how we filmed and edited the videos. What you will see in the new Inspiring Change 2.0 is Julia and I filming in our respective homes, and managing the shoot together through a Zoom call occurring on off-screen computers and headphones hidden under our hair so we could hear each other. While we almost scrapped the re-shoot entirely, we decided to push forward because of our need for improvement. What you will see in the new Inspiring Change 2.0 is a labor of love, informed by your feedback and by our own reflexivity.
3. Approaches to train more people comprehensively are much needed
We now understand the demand for better training, and the need to move away from approaches that are one-off workshops towards those that provide skills building and mentorship opportunities. For example, we have added coaching models to the Designing for Implementation and Implementation, Spread and Scale comprehensive courses. We have also been in touch with, or have worked with, other groups who are looking to build implementation practice capacity within their organizations and across the system. The wide-spread training of professionals in implementation practice is fast becoming a priority for many.
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