One of the goals of organisational training is to prepare employees for the workplace, improving their knowledge, attitudes and skills to enable them to apply in practice what they have learned in the training programme. The present study investigated the lived experience of training coordinators and trainers in designing learning tasks. The authors employed a qualitative approach, analysing a single case study. The research setting was one of the major companies affiliated with the metropolitan Ministry of Energy in Mashhad, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s second-largest city. The participants were trainers and training coordinators selected through purposive sampling. The findings indicate that trainers mainly relied on the deductive teaching method, working from theoretical information to tasks, and assigned tasks as homework exercises to reinforce learning. They mainly used authentic (real-world) tasks in their teachings, paying attention to their motivational aspects. Trainers tended to teach the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects separately rather than holistically. From their perspective, the challenges of a task-centred approach, working from tasks to theoretical information, included a teacher-centred culture; intensive training programmes; lack of required amenities, equipment and space; and lack of teacher competence in applying the holistic approach. The authors conclude that, given the current state of learning assignment design, trainers focus mainly on deductive approaches, which have made it difficult for trainees to transfer their learning. This seems to suggest that a more task-centred approach in a holistic learning environment might be more conducive to learning transfer.

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