Stop Teaching So Much! Learn to Chunk.
frustrated-with-computer
We recently reviewed a day-long course on coaching which was actually an excellent class, the only thing it suffered from was the typical: Too much content!
The course taught 4 different coaching techniques and their best-use given a particular type of workplace situation or a particular type of worker, and then participants were given some time to choose one of their own workers with whom they thought the technique might work. Finally, they were divided in to trios to practice the technique.
This learn-and-practice process was repeated four times for each of the four techniques. The problem with this course was that the learning outcomes were just not going to be that great. It is impossible to learn four different techniques, and remember when they apply, and the nuances of usage, when you get back on the job when you've been taught them all in one-fell-swoop.The expected learning outcomes for this class just weren't being achieved, despite excellent content and a "reasonable enough" teaching strategy.
While it certainly takes longer to teach in chunks, and allow participants real-world practice and application, it does lead to better learning outcomes.The next time you are designing a course - especially one that requires practice in order to master - ask yourself: Will people really be able to do Skill #1 when they are back on the job if that information and technique has been "over written" by additional knowledge and skills by the end of the day?
Chances are, you can achieve much better learning outcomes by chunking the content and the periods of teaching, and allowing your participants to have time to not only reflect on what they learned, but also put it in to practice, and then reflecting on how effective that practice and its outcomes really were.
You're Probably Wondering Why I Invited You To This Training
As our newsletter subscribers know, one of the services The Training Doctor provides is "Training Triage," that is, helping companies to redesign training they already have in place, but which doesn't hit the mark, for some reason.
One of our more recent projects highlighted one of the more typical situations we encounter: there was not much point for the trainees to be there. It was a three-hour class - delivered online - which was strictly lectured. This approach violated a number of learning principles - both general, classroom principles, and more specifically, online learning principles.
One of the easiest ways to determine if you are designing a quality learning experience is simply to ask yourself: What is the audience doing during this class? If the answer is "nothing," then you really have not designed a class at all!
One of the wonderful things about technology is that it freed us from having to bring people together to simply transmit information. We now have the ability to create e-Learning, podcasts or videos which allow for self-study.
So, if your audience is truly doing nothing during your class time, then you need to take "classtime" out of the equation. Look to an alternative means of relaying your content. The adult learning principle that was violated in the course that we were assessing as that it was strictly lectured and there was no purpose to having the learners gathered together. The online learning principle that was violated was that live and online learning should be reserved for those topics which truly benefit from having "minds together."
The benefit of bringing people together is to achieve more creative ideas and benefit from the collaboration and synergy which results from having many thoughts on one topic. A simple question to answer, but a hard objective to achieve: What is the audience doing during this class?
How Organizations Set Themselves Up for Training to Fail
In the past year (2014), companies that wanted to do business with us asked us to do the following egregious activities in order to sabotage their own training effectiveness. These are the types of situations we don't want to be a part of:
Cutting time from the delivery process in order to save time and money.
Many organizations think that the same learning outcomes can be achieved in less time if we could just whittle this class down by 3 hours. In their minds, saving training time equates to saving money when organization's figure they are taking people away from their "real work" in order to attend training. But by not providing adequate time for training (and practice and coaching), people will inevitably make mistakes on the job which will cost money.
Cutting practice time out of the learning process so that participants are simply subjected to new content but have no ability to work with that content.
Most individuals do not make the 'transfer of training' on their own. And in many cases it is impossible to go from learning-to-doing without a period of practice. How did you learn to drive a car? Classroom only? Did you watch a video? I remember helping my niece learn to drive; she had a "habit" of braking right at the stop sign rather than slowing down as she approached it. When I asked her why she said, "That's how I learned - you can't crash the simulator."
No interaction or collaboration.
Companies often rely solely on the delivery of information without any activity or collaboration among the learners, even though we know that adults learn best through collaboration and application of their learning with others. Yes, it might only take 25 minutes to teach the information / skill, but it takes another 60 minutes to "get it" while working with others in order to hear their perspective, practice, get feedback, etc. Try brainstorming as many uses for a brick as you can - by yourself; now try it with 3 other people. Point made.
No time for reflection.
Organizations that want their training delivered in one shot, by default exclude time for observation and reflection which is a key adult learning principle
Adults have a lot of "rules" in their heads and a lot of learned behaviors in terms of how they conduct their job. If we ask them to change those "rules", they need time to reflect on the ramifications of those changes - what's in it for me? is this a good thing or a bad thing? Will I have a better outcome in the long-run? etc. A one-time training session does not allow for this critical need for processing information.
Happy with mediocre designs that sort-of get at the necessary learning.
One client asked us to create "the best design possible," and then, during the design review said "This learning process is too long and we will never get participants to do the pre-work or on-the-job assignments, so cut out the parts that aren't critical" (if this was the best design possible, exactly what parts would not be critical?).
Cut topics to save time.
When redesigning training to accommodate less training time and people's busy schedules, organizations often cut topics or content from their training programs. Our question is: at what point did that particular piece of content become unnecessary? If it was relevant in the original design, how did it become irrelevant in the redesign?
Cut feedback.
One of our clients has an independent assignment which learners have a month to complete. In its original incarnation, that assignment was then graded by an expert and feedback was provided to the participants. It was entirely possible to fail and be requested to re-work the assignment.
In an attempt to save money the grading of the assignment was eliminated, which of course, trickled down to the learners asking, "Then what is the point of doing the assignment?" or "Why do a quality job?"
Training is both an art and a science. It is much more than providing information and saying "good luck with that!" Transmission of information is only half the battle; in fact, it may only be 1/3 of the battle (with the other two-thirds being practice/collaboration and on-the-job application/coaching)!
If you want your organizational training efforts to succeed, please, don't fall victim to the missteps just discussed!
Tell us YOUR "fail" story here !https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XXMBCZX
Training Triage
One of the things The Training Doctor specializes in is Training Triage -that is- why doesn't training work?Throughout our 20+ years in business, we've discovered the answers to this question.
This month, we share with you one of the reasons: SME designed training.
SMEs (subject matter experts) are a fount of information. We couldn't do our job without them. Which, if you rephrase that, would be better stated: We should do our job with them (and not have them do our job).
Too often we are called by an organization which has training in place but it is not achieving the results they wanted and they cannot figure out why. Here are some recent examples:
Project management training
New hire insurance sales training
Field service representative (computers) training
Medical imaging technician training
The list goes on and on. Inevitably, upon reviewing the current training materials and process, we say to our client / prospect: The content is good. It's all in there. It's just not designed in a way that anybody could learn from it.
Information does not equal knowledge. It most certainly does not equal skill or ability. Yet, most subject-matter-expert-designed training is a fire-hose of knowledge, delivered (more often than not) via lecture. One client DID provide a very helpful 70-page, single spaced, typed "learner guide," as well. The learners not only didn't get it in class, they couldn't find it after class either.
Interestingly, as we were deciding upon what topic to feature this month in Training Triage, we came upon this blog posting by Clark Quinn. In it , he laments about a project he is working on which is based on a "design" from an SME. He labels it, "too-rote, too-knowledge dump." Two of Quinn's comments are both humorous and insightful:* SME's don't know how they do what they do*
Learning design isn't for the wimpy.
Training Triage – Pick One
One of the things The Training Doctor specializes in is TRAINING TRIAGE - that is - why doesn't training work? Throughout our 20+ years in business, we've discovered the answers to this question. This month, we share with you one of the reasons:
PICK ONE:
Very often, especially when teaching a psychomotor skill (how to manipulate something) there is more than one way to complete the task. For instance, when copying text from a Word document in order to insert it somewhere else - one can use the keyboard (Ctrl+C), the ribbon (Home>Copy) or right click and choose from the drop-down-menu. While the variety of options makes for a very user-friendly software it does NOT make it learner-friendly. When something is new to an individual, it must be taught in one way and one way only; offering multiple techniques only leads to confusion and a lack of mastery of any one.
Two solutions for solving this common problem are:
Officially choose the ONE way to be taught and
Document the one way in your learning materials - both facilitator materials and participant materials.
The latter solution is particularly important because we all have our "favorite way" of doing something, so it is imperative that all trainers understand, that for the sake of learning, the ONLY way that can be taught is the documented way. It is OK for the trainer to say "There is another way of completing this task, and once you have mastered THIS way, we can teach you the others," but do NOT allow them to say "I know it says XYZ in your participant guide, but let me show you an easier way."
Imagine that you had three driver's ed instructors when you were learning to drive - one in the front seat and two in the back seat all shouting out different ways to approach an intersection. Would you have mastered any of them? Would you have remembered any one of them? The key to efficient learning is to teach only one way. The others will come on-the-job through informal learning, or can be documented in an appendix for the 'advanced' learner.
Training Triage
One of the three things that The Training Doctor specializes in is TRAINING TRIAGE; that is, figuring out what is "wrong" with a training program that is currently in place, but does not accomplish its intended goals, and then developing a 'treatment plan' to make return the training program to health.
Bob Pike, in a recent Training Magazine article, noted one of the key elements for why training fails:
"There should be a proper blend of content and process. Too many trainers I've observed focus on one or the other. The key is to focus on both. It is not either content (the right stuff) or process (the right delivery method) - it is both content and process.
Too much information in too short a time equals information overload. As trainers, we may be covering the content but delivering it so fast that it doesn't allow our participants to capture much of it in a useful way. We all need time to process, integrate and apply what we learned. On the other hand, too much focus on process leaves people wondering, 'Where's the beef?' There just isn't enough practical take away value to justify the time and energy each participant is expending - let alone the money the organization is investing in making the training possible."
Maybe Your Training Failed - Because Your Process Failed
One of the things that The Training Doctor specializes in is something one of our clients dubbed: Training Triage. Another client once said, “You fix sick training.”
Yes, very often we find ourselves re-designing training that is already in-place, but isn’t working so well. Because we specialize in adult, workplace oriented learning, we can analyze the training process without getting caught up in the topic. But this isn’t an article about us – it’s a cautionary tale about the fact that having correct content or a knowledgeable presenter isn’t enough to ensure that your workers will learn anything; the correct content, supplied through an appropriate learning process, will help them to grasp your concepts and transfer their learning to on the job.
Here are a few examples from our work in the past year:
A software product being taught to field technicians –- The training was 4 days of “how to” but the final “exam” was paper and pencil- The participant guide was 70 pages single-spaced, typed- There was no leader guide yet 4 different facilitators were teaching the topic (only one facilitator consistently enabled her students to pass the final exam)
A project management course that had been shelved for four years because “nobody is actually able to do project management after they take the training;” yet it contained ALL the“right” stuff - Turns out that participants were missing a crucial component: How to manage a team of people who don’t actually report to you.
A 2-week “residency” sales training program for which participants had to prepare on their own. The client reported that participants were not as prepared as they expected them to be once they got to the face-to-face portion of the training -Some of the training process issues identified:
No curriculum plan so participants had an idea of what they should do and when and why – they simply got a list of to-do’s
No idea how long any of the to-do’s would take to accomplish
No contact with the training department prior to attending the face-to-face week – you were absolutely left on your own to train yourself for the first 8 weeks
Vague instructions like “review the rules associated with XYZ”
No correlation between what one was learning and how it applied on the job
By reviewing these mini “case studies” you can see the vast variety of process issues that can affect an otherwise great training program. Take a step back from your own content and consider: do our participants have everything they need to be successful? Have we thought about what support they need or what questions they might have before they encounter them, so that they are fully prepared to be successful?
Why Your Training is Failing
One of the things The Training Doctor specializes in is Training Triage. In other words, we fix sick training. We figure out why it isn't working and then provide solutions to fix it. Over the years we've identified a number of typical reasons why "your" training isn't working. Often it's because it was designed by a subject matter expert - someone who is expert in the content, but who doesn't know how people best learn.
Here are the typical mistakes we see, in no particular order:
There's too much information - it becomes a fire hose of information for the learner who does not know how to apply importance to what is being presented to them.
Example: A software trainer explained the difference between a comma-delimited file and one that was not. This explained how the software worked, but now how the worker was to do his job. Someone could easily do the job without understanding what a comma-delimited file was.
A SME designed the training and it includes all sorts of information that is fascinating to the SME but not necessary to do the job.
Example: A project management course taught a way to manage projects that we had never heard of. Upon further research we found one example of this method in a Harvard Business Journal dated 1991. This was not a 'standard operating method' for project management but it was a nifty nuance that the SME/designer threw in because it fascinated him.
The person designing the training is a SME who doesn't remember what it was like to be new and needing "just the basics." When designing training ask yourself, is my audience in need of 'basic,' 'advanced,' or 'expert?' And design the content accordingly. If you give people too much information at the beginning, they haven't had the opportunity to master the basic skills yet so there is no way they can advance to more difficult work.
Tip: It's often a good idea to design your training and then have someone else review it. Preferably someone who doesn't know the topic at all. They will help you to see the gaps.
You have no idea how you do what you do. This is a constant challenge for subject matter experts. At some point one becomes so expert they can't even explain what they do - it's intrinsic to them and they can't imagine how to explain it, so large parts of "why" and "when" are left out of the training.
Example: An instructional designer was hired to teach a 3 day grad school course in instructional design but jumped from topic to topic without starting at 'step 1' because he really couldn't remember what step one would be for a newbie.
Trainers can't imagine why their audience "doesn't get it." Typically this is because the training doesn't include any practice and no repetition of the content (people rarely understand something simply because you've told it to them once) OR because there is an inadequate learning process applied to the content.
Example: A participant guide designed for a software training class was 70 pages long, single-spaced text. A helpful guide would have included facts, step-action-result tables, practice exercises, problems to solve, etc.
Worst Training I Ever Attended
During a training session today we were discussing "the worst training I ever attended."
For us, it was a 4-day training course we were auditing for a "training triage" project. In training triage, we help organizations figure out why their training isn't working. In this case there were a number of factors:
The training was designed and delivered by an SME (typically this equals too much information)T
The training was intended to teach people to DO something (psychomotor skills) yet it was all lecture (teaching them 'about' stuff, but not how to 'do' stuff)
The participant guide was 70 pages, single spaced, text. There was absolutely no way to find anything in the guide, if you needed to.
It contained a lot of information that was fascinating to the SME / instructor but made no difference to the learner (for instance, he explained how the tables in the software did their parsing, when really, what the learners needed to know was whether they were to press enter or tab)
They were given a test at the end of the training (which most of them flunked, which is why we were called in to figure out what was going wrong) which asked them to demonstrate what they had just learned (but there was never any practice exercises, so really, taking the test was the first time they had an opportunity to "do" the job)
Finally, there were 4 different trainers teaching the content, but there was no leader guide. So each instructor did it his or her way, teaching what s/he felt was the most important.
What is the worst training YOU'VE ever attended - and why?