Table of Contents

What if nobody does the pre-work you assigned before a training class?

Sometimes pre-work is an essential piece of a training program. How do you hold your learners accountable?

Have you ever assigned pre-work for your participants to complete prior to a workshop only to arrive at your session to find that most people haven’t completed it? 

There are a variety of reasons to assign pre-work.

Perhaps you want to make sure that everyone in the room has at least a minimum amount of familiarity with your topic before you begin.

Perhaps you have a limited amount of time to spend with people in person and you’d like to use that time to focus on skill building, but there is some basic knowledge that your learners need to acquire first.

Perhaps your participants need to travel from near and far and you need to cut down on the expenses of a lengthy in-person program.

Whatever your reasoning, your participants have just as many reasons to not complete the pre-work.

They’re busy doing their jobs.

The pre-work email got buried in their inbox almost as soon as it arrived and they forgot about it.

Maybe their colleagues even told them they weren’t going to complete it, so why bother being the only one?

I have spoken with some colleagues who are able to run reports from their Learning Management System (LMS) and deny entry to the training program for anyone who failed to complete the pre-work in advance of the session. But what’s a trainer with less authority to do?

Recently, we’ve designed several programs for clients who are in just this position: they can assign pre-work, but they really have not direct authority over the learners and cannot deny access to the in-person training programs in the event people did not complete the prerequisite assignment(s).

Begin with an activity that incorporates the pre-work

I’ve never liked asking people to raise their hands if they finished the pre-work. As I mentioned, there may be good reasons that someone didn’t complete the pre-work – perhaps they already knew all of the information or perhaps they had a family emergency.

One activity that has worked quite well recently is a review-style activity that kicks off the training session. We’ve designed both a board game and a card/trivia game in which participants break into small groups and need to answer questions that come exclusively from the pre-work.

pre-work card game

Messaging goes to all participants in advance that they will be asked to apply what they learned during the pre-work in the very early stages of the training workshop.

Those who have completed the required elearning prior to the course score more points and find more success during the activity, and those who didn’t complete the pre-work have an opportunity to gain exposure to the content. Participants have found these activities to be non-threatening (nobody is shamed in front of the larger group for not having completed the pre-work), engaging and effective discussion-starters.

Let participants share key learnings from pre-work

Another activity we’ve used with significant success as a way to hold learners accountable for completing the pre-work is a “poster session”. Participants are given several minutes at the beginning of the session to create a flipchart through which they can share their key learnings and take-aways from the pre-work. Again, participants are made aware of this activity through messaging in advance of the in-person session.

Though they couldn’t provide us specific metrics, one client commented that the number of participants who completed their pre-work after we rolled out this activity rose “dramatically”.

Have you found any secrets to holding people accountable for completing pre-work prior to a training session, especially when you don’t have direct authority over your learners? We’d love to hear your ideas and experiences in the comment section.


Still looking for that perfect Valentine card for your training colleagues? Come back on Monday and we’ll have four new Valentine’s Day Cards for that special L&D professional in your life. Can’t wait until Monday? Here are the five Valentine’s cards we shared with you last year.

Articles Similar to What if nobody does the pre-work you assigned before a training class?

Nate Martin on Escape Room designs for training
Instructional Design
Brian Washburn

Instructional Design & Escape Room Design

If you’ve ever been to an escape room, you can observe what a group of highly engaged people look like for 60 straight minutes. Is there a way to harness escape room design elements and bring them into the world of corporate training?

How to create a training plan in under 10 minutes

Using a lesson plan template (which is the most downloaded resource from this blog) can help give you structure. Using Soapbox can save you all sorts of time (and still give your presentation some structure)!

Does training actually change behavior?

Does training actually change behavior? It’s a question we should be able to answer honestly. (And the answer is: No, not 100%… and yes, but seriously, not 100%)

Hybrid Learning: When to use it

Recently I had an opportunity to talk with the folks at Mimeo about hybrid learning and when to use it. In today’s post, I share a link to that podcast, which is one in a series of podcasts they did with industry leaders on hybrid learning strategies.

L&D Lessons Learned from Being a Parent (Part 5 of 5)

Once we get into a comfortable routine, how easy is it to want to try something new? Erin Clarke shares a few ah-ha’s about what she discovered and how she became better when she decided to leave her comfort zone and try something new.

Subscribe to Get Updates from Endurance Learning

Brian Washburn, Author

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll send you the latest updates from our blog. Thanks for following!

activities cookbook

Download the Training Activity Cookbook

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Endurance Learning Activity Cookbook.

Find Your L&D Career Path

Explore the range of careers to understand what role might be a good fit for your L&D career.

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the What’s Possible in L&D Worksheet.

What's possible in L&D

Let's Talk Training!

Brian Washburn

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll get back to you soon.

Download the Feedback Lesson Plan

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the lesson plan as a PDF.

feedback lesson plan
MS Word Job Aid Template

Download the Microsoft Word Job Aid Template

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the Word version of this template.

Download the Free Lesson Plan Template!

Enter your email below and we’ll send you a Word document that you can start using today!

free lesson plan template
training materials checklist

Download the Training Materials Checklist

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Training Materials Checklist.

Subscribe to Endurance Learning for updates

Get regular updates from the Endurance Learning team.