Are Participant Training Materials "Necessary?"
We recently had a lively discussion with a group of trainers regarding this statement: Participant "materials" (workbooks, job aids, infographics, etc.) are "nice to haves" but people rarely use them back on the job. The group unanimously agreed that rarely do participants use these items on the job, and, more often than not, they are left behind "in the classroom."
This lack of respect for training materials is quite detrimental to adult learning for a number of reasons:
Most people are visual learners
80% of Americans are visual learners, which means they "understand" information better (and retain it longer) if it is presented in a visual manner. If 80% of your audience spoke "in another language" wouldn't you present in that language? And yet, we often completely ignore providing tangible, visual elements that complement our training offerings.
Seven-to-ten days after training, people remember only 10 - 20% of what was taught them in a training class.
If your "training" consists of providing information, with no reference materials, how can anyone be expected to remember what was taught? Back on the job, it would be helpful to have a job-aid or infographic to refer to in order to do one's job or refresh one's memory about the proper process / sequence / tasks.
Temporal contiguity
Brain research tells us that it is better to present concepts in both words and pictures than solely in text format. Typically, about three days later, text-only information is recalled at a rate of just 15%, but the same information, when presented in both text and visual (a'la an infographic) is recalled at a whopping 65%!
Muscle memory
Muscle memory is not a memory stored in your muscles, of course, but memories stored in your brain (although its origin is related to physical fitness). Providing workbooks or worksheets in which participants actually work (answer questions, complete diagrams, underline pertinent facts in a case study) aid in retention because the body is also physically involved in the learning process.
Solution?
The "problem" is not that participant's don't see the value in the learning materials you provide, but rather, the problem lies with us trainers who do not show people how to use these materials while they are in the training. The solution is to utilize the training materials at the time of teaching. Don't teach a process and then say "Here is a job-aid to take back to your desk," but rather teach the process as participants follow along using their job aid.
The solution to participant materials being "left behind" is to utilize them during the training process so that their usage becomes part of the learner's muscle memory.
Thinking Through Instructional Design Choices (Tailored Learning book excerpt)
Depending on the delivery method, designers must consider how these choices influence design, desired impact on the job, and any assessment plan.
Design Implications
Different delivery methods will change the design of the course. A classroom-based course can be very interactive and can include group activities in the design. However, an asynchronous would determine whether the interaction or activity is crucial to the learning, and if not, then determine how the same learning outcome could be achieved by an independent learner.
Impact on the Job
Ultimately, any training program should enable participants to return to their jobs and implement what they have learned during the training. To accomplish this, the learning must be designed in a way that is immediately applicable on the job, and the participant must be motivated to use the new knowledge and skills.
For example, in a classroom-based training course, a follow-on activity might be for the facilitators to check in with the participants once a week to see what kind of success they are having implementing their new knowledge and skills back on the job, as well as to offer support and coaching. However, if the training course is designed to be offered asynchronously, the coaching may have to be offered by the participant's sales manager or more senior salesperson in the office. While the same objective can be met, the methodology for meeting that objective might be quite different.
The Assessment Plan
If the ultimate goal is to have an individual return to the job prepared to implement new knowledge and skills, then there should be some way of assessing whether the training has been successful in accomplishing that goal. Similar to on-the-job considerations, assessment approaches might differ depending on how the training is delivered. Therefore, the assessment for each objective will be defined once the training approach has been determined.
No, You Cannot Replicate Your F2F Class Online...
What most organizations don't appreciate is that it is impossible to take a classroom-based class and replicate it online as it currently exists. They are two different delivery mediums which require two different instructional design techniques.
Too often organizations simply strive to replicate the classroom experience; so they use the same participant guides, the same slides and the same activities, which fall flat and/or fail to support the learning experience in an online class.
The 4 Learning Outcomes all Training is Trying to Achieve
The Four Levels of Learning
While this month's topic is not directly related to adult learning theory, it is important to understand in terms of designing learning for adults.
Learning progresses "up a ladder" of difficulty from knowledge -which is the easiest way to design and transmit learning - to changed behavior on the job, which is the hardest to achieve through a learning process.
Knowledge is firmly rooted in education. It involves reading, lectures, and rote memorization. It is helpful for providing baseline information, such as facts and rules, and is easy to design because it is simply a collection of information. A learner often can partake of knowledge without any professional intervention.
Psychomotor skills are a bit more complex because they involve teaching someone to physically manipulate something such as a cash register or a fork lift. This type of instruction requires hands-on practice and a skilled instructor to demonstrate or coach appropriate behavior. This type of training takes longer to design because it includes both information and skill, and it takes longer to teach because an instructor is often required, and practice time should be included.
Proceeding up the ladder of difficulty, critical thinking skills are significantly harder to teach because they require teaching someone to think in a different way. For instance, teaching a loan officer how to determine if someone is eligible for a loan, includes both facts and rules (knowledge) - and applying those to some type of standard -in order to make a decision. Often, when teaching critical thinking, numerous scenarios must being practiced in order to have confidence that the learner will make the right decision no matter the variable stimuli.
Teaching critical thinking - within itself, can have many degrees of difficulty; from "easy" decision making - such as whether or not to grant a loan, to life or death decision making such as performing surgery. This type of learning process requires multiple exposures to information and situations (in other words, it takes longer to teach thinking skills) and is difficult to design in order to ensure that the trainee changes their thinking process permanently.
Finally, ultimately, the goal of training in the workplace is to get people to change their behavior on the job. This requires actually leaving the training and helping people to transition their new knowledge and skills to their on-the-job responsibilities. That can take a few days to a few months - especially if you're organization intends to do a level three evaluation in order to determine if changed behavior actually has occurred.
Before designing any training program, assess what your desired outcome is (from the four categories above) and invest the appropriate amount of time necessary for both the design and the successful completion of the training.
Blended Learning Uses the Best of all Training Methodologies
Organizations have displayed an increased interest in blended learning, which takes the best of all training methodologies from the perspectives of demographics, economics, and instruction.
Demographics
For the most part, the demographic factors affect learning in the workplace and concern the population of learners. Especially in today's globally diverse work environments, organizations need to make adjustments for multiple languages, various time zones, multiple generations, and cultural differences. While the content of the learning program may be the same (basic selling skills, for example), the design or delivery may have to be altered to accommodate varying demographics of the audience.
Economics
Often, training delivery options are dictated by the economics involved. For example, classroom-based training will require travel expenses, maintaining or renting classroom space, and the printing and reproduction of materials. Computer-based training options are more economical in many ways; however, they require their own set of economic decisions such as adequate server space, the hosting of a web site, and secure access and record keeping.
Instruction
The design of the actual instruction can vary greatly based on things such as individual learning styles, how immediate the need is for the training, or what access learners have to instructional methodologies. Do they have individual computer workstations? Are they able to leave their jobs to attend a 4 hour or 8 hour training class?
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Collective Differences equal Better Learning Outcomes
Research now tells us that what makes a group truly intelligent and innovative is the combination of different ages, skills, disciplines, and working and thinking styles that members bring to the table.
Scott E Page, professor and director of the center of the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan has demonstrated that groups displaying a range of perspectives and skill levels outperform like-minded experts. He concludes that "progress depends as much on our collective differences as it does on our individual IQ scores."
Source: Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Instituted and Scott E Page, "The Difference," published by Princeton Press
What's the Difference between Gaming and Gamification?
Game-based learning is the use of a game to teach. Gamification, on the other hand, only uses a few elements of games. A learning game is a self-contained unit. There is a definitive start, game play and ending to the game. In a learning game, the learners know they are engaged in a game activity and at the end there is a “win state.”
Source: www.trainingindustry.com/magazine Training Industry Magazine-Spring 2014
Here is a sample of a "game" we use to teach overcoming objections in a sales curriculum - feel free to copy!
Step 1 - Divide your group in to three: Team A, Team B, Team C
Step 2 - Each team is given 5 minutes to discuss among themselves and come up with the 5 "hardest" objections they have encountered when selling "x" (this assumes a group that is already selling a product or service and you are enhancing their abilities).
Step 3 - Conducted as a round robin. Team A "announces" one of their Top 5 Hardest objections. Team B has a few moments to discuss among themselves and come up with what they believe to be an appropriate response. Team C also discusses among themselves because they have the ability to "challenge" Team B's answer
Team B then provides their answer to Team A. If Team C thinks their answer is better, they can say "we would like to challenge that" and provide THEIR answer to Team A. Team A then decides "the winner" and a point is awarded.
The process then repeats with Team B providing one of their objections to Team C and Team A having the ability to challenge.
This should take about 45 minutes to conduct. The Team with the most points "wins" and everyone wins by having at least 2 great rebuttals to all the tough objections.