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At the World-Changing Ideas summit in 2014, Google's vice president, Alfred Spector, pointed to research showing that even average students can reach the top 2 percent of their class if they have a personal tutor to adjust lessons to individual learning needs.
Source: Chief Learning Officer Magazine, May 2015, Your Brain on Learning
Adults Learn Best Through Experiential Techniques
One of Malcolm Knowles basic premises is that adults learn best through experiential techniques. In other words, hands-on, active engagement in the learning process produces better results.
Sometimes this is not an easy thing to achieve. Since so much of today's work is knowledge-based, how does one teach that in an experiential way? Here are some ideas from designs we have created for our clients:
Teaching a Multi-Faceted Process
This manufacturing client wanted its assembly-line workers to understand how the product was "created" long before it arrived on the factory floor to be assembled. From the inception of an idea in the R+D department, through creating a design + prototype via CAD/CAM, on to requisitioning, provisioning, ordering, acceptance of components, kitting and, finally, arrival at the assembly area. Since many of these steps were esoteric, the design of this content piece was quite challenging. In the end and entire process was re-created in a role play manner, using Legos as the component parts and teams at each stage in the process. We even added in a QC check for good measure.
Teaching Product Knowledge and Service Skills
A retail organization was introducing a new product line which required salespeople to be experts in knowing the particulars of the product. At the same time, the client wanted to beef up customer service and selling skills. The client did not want these taught as separate concepts (e.g. first product knowledge, then customer service skills). The resultant training was in the form of a game-board-grid, with product knowledge along the vertical axis and customer service / selling skills along the horizontal axis. Participants would chose a grid on the board and the trainer would explain how the two intersected or complemented one another and then the learners were challenged to demonstrate how the two might "sound" on-the-job.
Teaching Financial Analysis
A global insurance brokerage firm needed an elite group of salespeople to be able to understand financial documents in order to sell to the C-Suite. Rather than simply explaining the different types of financial reports (profit and loss, cash flow, 10K, etc.) and hoping the salespeople could translate that knowledge to their accounts, the participants were tasked with bringing the annual report for two of their clients. Then, as the instructor taught about each type of report and what to look for as "red flags," the participants looked to their own reports to interpret information that was pertinent to their clients / their work.
When tasked with designing training, always ask yourself, "How can I make this more experiential and participative? How can the learners really engage with this content?" This is not an easy task but is always worthwhile (nay, essential) for better adult learning outcomes.
Online Learning Conference Coming Up!
Have you checked out the Flipped Classroom concept that Training Magazine is promoting for their upcoming Online Learning Conference (Oct 6 - 8)? Check it out - it has some great resources that you can check out even without being a registered participant for the conference such as 8 recorded webinars on topics such as social media, video, eLearning and more.
If you are attending - be sure to visit the site and access the great handouts and videos being posted by the speakers. And if you are registered - we'll see you there!
Quotable: Marcus Buckingham
We've studied the best team leaders, and they don't write performance reviews, they don't give feedback. I don't want feedback. I want attention.
And the best team leaders seem to understand that what we really want is coaching attention. Don't give me feedback. Don't tell me where I stand. I want to know how to get better. Coach me right now. Help me get better next week.
As quoted in HR Magazine, June 2015. Business as Unusual.
Guest Blogger: Margie Meacham
The Neuroscience of vILT
The Society of Applied Learning Technology (SALT) reports that “the vast majority” of companies plan to expand their use of VILT in the near future. Yet only 20 percent of these same companies find this delivery medium to be very effective.
So why do they keep doing it?
The survey respondents say the primary reason is to save money. The next most-frequent response is reducing time away from the office, while the third reason is the ability to train large numbers of people quickly.
If you want to avoid investing time and money in training that is economical but ineffective, you might want to apply a little bit of science to your VILT programs. In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of design.
Design for engagement
Many VILTs follow a very predictable format. The first few minutes are spent getting organized and positioning participants online, followed by introducing the instructor and the topic. At the end of the class, there is usually a brief quiz or poll. The predictability of your programs may be causing your learners to tune out or multi-task instead of focusing.
This behavior occurs because the brain has developed pattern recognition as a survival mechanism. Our brain tends to relax in familiar surroundings and shifts into high alert in unfamiliar surroundings. Somewhere between feelings of boredom and anxiety is the highly productive level of attention. To help your VILT participants pay attention to you, design your VILTs for maximum engagement.
Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Jump into the content right away.
Have you ever walked into a class or meeting a few minutes late and felt yourself scrambling to catch up with the conversation? If you start with content right away, your participants will be forced to pay attention immediately. There’s also a secondary benefit: people will start logging in early to be sure they don’t miss anything. This approach, on many television programs, attempts to engage views immediately so that they aren’t tempted to switch channels while the predictable credits are showing. The credits eventually appear, several minutes into the program. You can do the same with your standard introductions.
Ask a challenging question in the chat window.
While polls have their place, you’ll get a lot more interaction from the use of the chat window. Pose a question that doesn’t have a clear right or wrong or answer; then sit back while participants share their opinions. This simple tool helps your VILTs become social learning events in which participants learn from one another, not from the “the sage upon the stage.”
Promote a participant to a presenter.
When we watch someone else solve a problem or learn a new skill, mirror neurons fire in our brain in the same way as the person we’re observing. We visualize ourselves in their place. A fascinating study demonstrated that students who watched others practice proper basketball free-throw techniques improved almost as much as those who were actually practicing. A very effective VILT technique is to have participants take turns trying a new skill. Let the rest of the class, rather than the instructor, provide help as needed to maximize the effect.
VILTs are here to stay. Designing them to be more engaging will help you get better results from your investment.
About Margie Meacham: Brain-aware Instructional design and performance improvement consultant Margie Meacham, “The Brain Lady,” is a scholar-practitioner in the field of education and learning and president of Learningtogo. She specializes in practical applications for neuroscience to enhance learning and performance. Margie’s clients include businesses, schools and universities. In addition to her Brain Matters Blog on learningtogo.info, she also writes a popular blog for the Association of Talent Development (ATD) and has published her first book, Brain Matters: How to help anyone learn anything using neuroscience. Her next book: The Genius Button: Using neuroscience to bring out your inner genius will appear in November, 2015.
Quotable: Alice Kim, Ph.D.
It's a misconception that trying to match knowledge delivery to someone's personal learning style or perceptual preference translates to better learning.
Dr. Alice Kim, Rotman Research Institute for the study of human brain function
How Do You Define "Competence" In A Job?
Very often when we design training we also want to design some type of test or certification which helps us to assure the organization that learning truly did take place. What most training departments struggle with, however, is how do you define competence? How can you ensure, through some type of test, that the trainee truly does understand what they've learned and can apply it on the job?
Very often when clients of ours ask us to create a Level 2 evaluation (a test) they ask of us: “So what should be the level of success?” In other words, what is a "passing grade?" Often, we fall back on the standards we learned in grade school - an 80 or better would be considered "passing" and better than average. But, in the reality of the workplace, do we really want someone who performs 20% less than they optimally could? It is not logical for us to churn out marginally capable individuals.
A solution to this dilemma is to secure a comparator. A comparator is essentially the standard of excellence or competency which we want a new trainee to be able to replicate. A comparator can be established through identifying those individuals, already on the job, whom the organization deems to be the best at their job. That might be the best salesperson, the machinist with the lowest quality defects, or the collections agent who has the best collections rate.
Don't look to just one individual because you have the potential to miss excellent practices which that individual might not employ. Judith Hale, of Hale Associates, even suggests NOT choosing your best performer but instead your B+ performers. Her philosophy is that the A+ performers don't even know what they do anymore; they are on autopilot and have forgotten what it is like to be new and still thinking through the process and applying rules.
Develop the comparator by conducting a time and task analysis of how your chosen performers do their job. This is a detailed observation of their day-to-day responsibilities: how they complete their responsibilities, how they organize themselves and what period of time it takes them to complete their job correctly and competently.
Once you have those comparators identified, you can then determine what the level 2 - or potentially level 3 - evaluation would seek to determine/establish. (Note: once you have the comparators, you can also establish your objectives.)
Rather than pulling a "level of excellence" out of thin air, instead, take the time analyze your best performers and establish a truly defensible expectation for competence and excellence on the job.
Quotable: Bob Pike
When performance is the question, training is the sixth answer.
When we have deep conversations with managers about performance and help them focus on all the possible barriers to performance first - systems, policies and procedures, recruitment, placement, and coaching - but using some or all of these still does not provide the performance and results we want, then it is time to look at training.
Bob Pike is founder of The Bob Pike Group
Quotable: Tom Gimbel
Our Training leaders don't provide the answers... they help people get to the answers themselves by posing thoughtful questions. They listen, observe, and think before reacting or responding.
Tom Gimbel, founder and CEO of LaSalle Network
Quotable: Michael Lee Stallard
Managers organize, leaders engage. People follow managers because these individuals have the authority to hire, fire, and promote them. People follow leaders because they are inspired to.
Quoted in Connect to Engage, published in TD, April 2015
Quotable: Leah Matthews
Distance education is bringing about a new revolution where students are putting together their own playlist of curriculum.
Leah Matthews, head of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission
WebEx Tip
In a recent poll of Training Doctor newsletter subscribers, the majority estimated that they only used 20 - 50% of their synchronous platform capabilities. So each month we will offer you a tip or "trick" - alternating between WebEx and Adobe Connect, the two most popular platforms.
WebEx Tip: Do you find that text "falls out" of your tables or you have weird line breaks on your slides once loaded to WebEx? Stick to Helvetica or Ariel for your slide font. WebEx gets persnickety otherwise - especially if your organization has its own custom font because it simply doesn't know how to translate it.
How is training predominately delivered?
training hours via method
Results of an eLearning! Magazine Group survey conducted Jan – April 2014 of 408 individuals in corporate, government, and educational institutions. Most respondents were non-managerial, trainer / teachers.
Online Collaboration MUST be Designed
All virtual classroom platforms pledge that their product enables your organization and your learners to work collaboratively. And it is true. All virtual classroom platforms allow for learners to interact verbally, via chat or instant messenger, through the use of feedback symbols or emoticons, and often through breakout rooms which enable smaller discussions and group activities to occur.
This doesn't just happen spontaneously, however. It is imperative that the training be designed to be collaborative.