That Word Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

This is a short post with a big impact.

After spending two weeks scoring Chief Learning Officer Learning Elite submissions it's imperative that I inform you that the word blended does not mean what you think it means.

It's not just the Learning Elite submissions either, I have run into this confusion many times when talking to training and development professionals. For some reason, T&D professionals believe that if you offer a course in the classroom, and via e-learning, and via a virtual platform (or various other delivery methodologies) you are offering “blended learning.”

WRONG

What you have is a menu. 

Here is an easy way to remember what blended is vs. what a menu of options is: Do you like your potatoes baked, mashed, or French-fried? All three are potatoes. You could eat all three “potato delivery methods” at the same meal, but you’d still be consuming the same fundamental thing.

The same holds true for training courses. Three different iterations of the same class are still one course. 

What a blended course looks like is offering different portions of one course in different formats which are utilized to best achieve maximum learning.

For instance, if you were teaching how to use graphic design software, you might have the learners first review a glossary of terms such as font, pixel, saturation, etc. You would not need to waste valuable classroom time teaching them terms and their definition. They could have a handy resource to do so prior to coming to the class, as well as to use throughout the class as a reference tool. The next portion of the blend would be to have students come together in the classroom, to use the software hands-on. The next portion of the blend might be to give each learner an assignment to complete, asynchronously (on their own time, not with others) over the next two days and to bring it back for review and critique. During those two days, you might offer “office hours” so that learners could contact you with any challenges they were experiencing during the independent assignment.

That is a blended learning experience. It utilizes four different training methodologies which, in total, create the entire course. 

1. Independent study (reviewing terminology)

2. Classroom

3. Independent activity (practice over two days)

4. 1:1 coaching 

You don't need to take valuable classroom time teaching people terminology nor do you need to keep the group together for them to complete an independent assignment. So a blended course is divided into chunks, each of which uses a different teaching or learning methodology, to best achieve the learning outcome.

Which takes longer to teach – how to launch a missile or how to sell insurance?

We often work with 2 and 3 clients simultaneously. It helps with productivity because sometimes you just hit a wall in your thinking when focused on one industry or topic and switching to another helps to get your creative juices flowing again.

One year we were working with both the US Navy and a large insurance company that sold disability insurance through employers (if you were an employee, you could elect to add this disability insurance through your employer).

The Navy project involved radar, sonar and firemen on a nuclear sub, working together to determine when it was appropriate to launch a missile – all three roles must work in unison.

The insurance company project involved training new-hires, right out of college, to sell their employer’s policies to companies.

The Navy required 6 weeks of training.

The insurance company required 40 weeks of training.

It is a dichotomy that has stuck with us for decades. It only takes 6 weeks to learn to launch a missile, but 40 weeks to learn to sell insurance?

Some of the explanatory factors may include:

• Launching a missile is based on very matter of fact yes/no decisions.

• Insurance sales is based on personal interactions – can you get past the gatekeeper? Do you have something viable to offer? Can you answer questions that will not be the same from prospect to prospect?

To teach sales you must teach a lot of variables and how those variables might present themselves. Every interaction will be different.

To launch a missile the people who execute are not the people who make the decision to execute – once they get the order, they combine their data and within very narrow parameters, choose the best opportunity to launch.

Take away – when determining the design of your training or how long it will take to learn – consider how many variables will be in play and how many you can account for in a learning environment.

How are we preparing our future workforce?

Young people don't want jobs... apprenticeships aren't a "thing" anymore... and EDUCATION is not enough to create a skilled workforce. We need to change the system and the handoff from school to work. 

3 Ways "We" Have Destroyed Young People's Ability to Think

Here are three ways education has undermined thinking in theyounger generations:

The primary education system has changed quite a bit in thelast 50 years and many of those changes have resulted in young people'sinability to think critically and instead to rely on cues and memorization.

1 - Memorization

For decades we’ve been lulled into believing that memorizingand recalling information is learning. And perhaps, in anindustrialized world, recall was all that was necessary. When theindustrial age was ruled by manufacturing and work was repetitive, perhapsremembering the steps in a process and executing them properly was "theskill." We are now in a knowledge economy (and have been for at least 20years!). We pay people to think. We pay people to make decisions,solve problems, innovate and synthesize. In direct opposition to this, oureducational system (and generally our corporate training system) focuses onteaching learners to memorize information so that, with the proper prompt, itcan be recalled; educating/training does not teach us how to useinformation in a variety of ways and circumstances or (heavens!) use it in away that wasn’t taught at all (extrapolating).  

2 - Cramming

Somewhere along the line, we have lured young learners intobelieving that “cramming” is a proper methodology for learning. Duringexam week at colleges, the libraries and dining halls stay open around theclock to accommodate the learners who are staying up around the clock studying– this only reinforces the idea that the last-push to learn is a crucial time.

Typically young people prepare for a test or exam the day beforethe exam – which means that they are simply working from short term memory,which generally is good enough if the measure of one’s learning is being ableto spot the right answer on a multiple-choice test - but not enough if weexpect them to use that knowledge "out in the real world."

Real-world application is built from learning over multipleexposures to a concept or process, not a cursory review of the keypoints. 

3 - Testing

Thanks to the introduction of Scantron Bubble Sheets in the50's and 60's - everything became a multiple-choice test. The bubble sheetswere extremely helpful to teachers and administrators as class sizes grew andrecord-keeping became more stringent.  Unfortunately, they took morethan they gave. This type of testing fueled the usage of the 2"learning" strategies discussed above AND undermined the value of theteacher's input into student's testing.

Prior to a machine grading tests, teachers had to read eachresponse, giving the answer critical thought. Very often they would addcommentary to the grade, rather than simply marking an answer wrong. They mightremind the student where the correct information was found or help them toremember how the concept they got wrong was similar to what they werethinking. Sometimes they would give partial credit if the student was onthe right track but then veered off before their final summation (this is theonly way I passed geometry, believe me).

Prior to a machine grading tests, even when a student got ananswer wrong - they were learning. They had coaching, correction andrefinement from their teacher based on how the teacher graded thetest. Once the Scantron bubble sheet became de rigueur in public schooleducation, students simply received their grade with little to no explanationor intervention.

Unfortunately, I can spot factors that led to the demise of thinking skills (and there may well be more that you are thinking of!) but I am not sure what the remedy should be to reverse the trend. Given class-size and teacher pay, it's not reasonable to take efficiencies away from public school teachers. Instituting "study skills" classes in college is smart - but it's usually an elective and addresses a small population of the students (plus, by the time students are in college, it is remedial - we should be teaching study skills at about age 11 and continue it until the end of high school - see my article on 3 Keys to Ensuring Learning for more on this topic).

I think the rise of AI and machine learning will make theseshortcomings even more apparent in coming years, as all of the "easy tospot" answers will be gobbled up by robots and the critical thinking willbe the domain of humans.

Your thoughts?

Note: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-ways-we-have-destroyed-young-peoples-ability-think-miner-ed-d-

Is it Worthwhile to Learn a Useless Skill?

A few months ago I was facilitating a conversation with a group of CLOs (Chief Learning Officers) and two got in to an almost-heated discussion about the "worthiness" of learning to drive a stick-shift vehicle. The conversation started around the premise of the demise of thinking skills and one attendee postulated that society's ability to think for itself has been comprised by things that make life easier and allow us to be on "auto-pilot." The example he gave was of his son who was just learning to drive and refused to learn to drive a stick shift. The son's argument was that it was a useless skill. In fact, he argued that learning to drive at all might be a useless skill given the numerous alternatives (right now limited to on-demand car services, but soon to be enhanced by self-driving and autonomous vehicles).

When my children were in elementary school we lost power one day. My daughter looked at the microwave and stove and finally asked "what time is it?" I slowly and incredulously pointed to the clock on the wall, over my head, and she said "I don't know how to tell time on that." Did she think it was hanging there as decor, I wonder? There is one "level" of utility in knowing it is 2:10, but an entirely different level of utility in knowing where 2:10 occurs in the "space" of a 12-hour time-frame. (And also, how is it possible I didn't teach her to read a clock?!)

One of my own favorite articles is one I wrote a few years ago about the over-reliance (in my opinion) on GPS devises and how they not only can get you in to trouble (go ahead and Google "GPS Fail") but also how they are a great example of how people are developing an inability to think. Personally, I have a certain level of self-confidence because I can read a map but... do they make maps anymore? And if yes, why? Maps have gone the way of the Encyclopedia Britannica, have they not? By the time they are published they are obsolete, and they don't provide the "added value" of alerting you to a traffic-jam up ahead. So perhaps the key word here is obsolete.

"Useless" might be a matter of personal need but obsolete changes the need to learn. Recently I was talking with another consultant about this idea and he suggested that a skill is not useless if the learning is transferable. He offered up the example of learning Latin - even though no one speaks it - as helpful in understanding grammar and other languages. So perhaps learning to drive a stick-shift is important in understanding how an engine works, and reading a map is useful in understanding space and time and distance. But parallel parking will become obsolete soon (some vehicle manufacturers are already making cars that can do the job for you) as will thousands of other skills replaced by technology or artificial intelligence.

So I'm putting it out there for discussion: Is it worthwhile to learn a skill that is useless at face-value but may hold the key to deeper understanding in other areas?

Got 5 minutes for professional development? Here are 3 resources.

Would you like to be in charge of your own professional development rather than waiting for a formal training process to be offered (and without even having to sign up for one!).  Here are 3 easy, free, and GREAT ideas:

Your local library (radical, right?) 

If you haven't been to your local library since high school, it's time for a visit. Believe me, it's probably more up-to-date than the training department in your company.  My favorite part of the library are the LIBRARIANS.  They are a fount of information and know where to look for information if they don't know it themselves.  They can point you in the right direction, request resources for you, pull reading lists, and more. I use one particular librarian as my personal research department; she is awesome and she loves the work because she doesn't have many customers asking her for corporate research.

Deep dive in to podcasts 

Would you like to be "better educated"? Find a podcast on an "academic" topic (finance, economics, astronomy). You'll be surprised at how much a topic you knew nothing about informs your present-day life.Maybe you'd like to increase your business acumen. Look for podcasts that focus on engineering, logistics, marketing, human resources, etc. Give yourself a bigger perspective on the work that you do, or the industry that you are in.

One of my favorite podcasts is Freakanomics, because, it turns out, economics plays a role in everything; and it can be fun!  I especially like that this podcast has a transcript of all the shows on its website.  Earlier this year they did a series on the "Secret life of a CEO" and had hour-long interviews with Jack Welch, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg, and Indra Nooyi, among others.

Look at LinkedIn

One of the things I love about LinkedIn Learning is that you can filter for exactly what you want. You can choose an industry, and then a field, and then the type of learning (video, full blown course), what level of knowledge you are looking for (beginner, intermediate, advanced), and finally how long it takes to complete. Often, when I get that :15 minute reminder that I have a meeting coming up, I have time to fill. I love looking up 5 minute or less nuggets to expand my knowledge on all sorts of topics. How can you not spare 5 minutes to expand your thinking? 

(Note: If you are a paid member, LinkedIn Learning is free AND if you scroll down the right side of your "home" page, you'll find a new suggestion for a course, every day. It learns your preferences and will start to suggest shorter lessons in topical areas you've shown an interest in.) 

Happy Learning!

Why Testing is Detrimental to Thinking

We all know that just because you've passed a test, you haven't really learned anything (when I passed the test to get my motorcycle permit, I had never even ridden a motorcycle!).

But did you know that testing processes can actually INHIBIT your thinking and learning ability? Read on to learn more...

Do you remember the Scantron bubble sheet from your school days? It's the familiar number-two-pencil- fill-in-the-circle-which-corresponds-to-the-answer-you-have-chosen test. The filled-in card is then run through a computer which compares your bubbles to the correct answers and scoreds your test in mere seconds. When it was first introduced in the 1930's, the Scantron bubble sheet was extremely helpful to teachers and administrators as class sizes grew and record keeping became more stringent.

Unfortunately this technological wonder has been quite detrimental to developing the ability to think for two reasons:

1  Lack of teacher involvement in grading.

Prior to a machine grading tests, teachers had to read each response, giving the answer critical thought. Very often they would add commentary to the grade, rather than simply marking an answer wrong. They might remind the student where the correct information was found or help them to remember how the concept they got wrong was similar to what they were thinking. Sometimes they would give partial credit if the student was on the right track but then veered off before their final summation (this is the only way I passed geometry, believe me). Prior to a machine grading tests, even when a student got an answer wrong - they were learning. They had coaching, correction and refinement from their teacher based on how the teacher graded the test.

Once the Scantron bubble sheet became de rigueur in public school education, students simply received a grade; rarely did you get the bubble sheet back. And, let's be honest, there is no youngster motivated enough to follow through on a wrong answer and figure out why they got it wrong.

2  Everything became a multiple choice test.

The only way for the bubble sheet to work is if every question has only one right answer. Not only did this focus make learning seem easy (just look for the right answer) but it eliminated an individual's need to put any critical thought in to the answer. Essays went by the wayside. “Explain your answer," was no longer the final instruction of a test question. Once the "outcome" only had to be one right answer, it was much easier to look for an answer you could recognize than to pull one up from memory or reason it through.

More complex questions, such as "Using your knowledge of bees and migration, how would you explain the Hylaeus bee species on the island of Hawaii?" became impossible.

You can learn more about the demise of thinking skills - and more importantly, how to solve it - here.

Accelerate Learning through On-the-Job Assignments

Giving individuals assignments that complement their work, or allow them to experience new opportunities, abound inside companies, but we rarely ask workers to do anything outside their normal responsibilities. Here are some ideas to provide individuals with more business insight and experience without a formal learning process:

• Train a new hire or develop an orientation process for new hires to help them to be productive as soon as possible
• Develop a ‘calendar of events’ for your role which would enable someone else to take over in an emergency – what are the things that are required daily, weekly and monthly
• Conduct competitive intelligence
• Organize a lunch and learn with a guest speaker in your industry
• Create a master-mind group for your role / function
• Write a blog article “10 things XXX should know about XXX” (such as 10 things patients should know about the in-hospital pharmacy or 10 things patients should know about dietary restrictions)
• Develop a presentation for other departments within the company that explains your department’s priorities and working processes
• Create a workflow chart for your department and look for opportunities

What are the skills that are developed from these very generic on-the-job assignments? Decision making, interviewing, coaching, writing, facilitating, analyzing, planning, speaking and more. With just a little thought you’ll be able to come up with more personalized learning experiences that will benefit both the individual and the company as a whole.

It Ain't Learning if it's Microlearning

Microlearning is the short-term, focused delivery of content or involvement in an activity. Lately I’ve seen a lot of chatter about best practices for “microlearning.” By most standards microlearning should be less than six minutes and often the suggestion is that it is no more than two minutes.

The thinking is that learners have the “capacity” to sit still and watch an informational tutorial for only so long before they’ll zone out, hit pause, or be interrupted by their work. Companies that create micro learning promote it by touting its ability to quickly close a “skills gap” – a learner can learn a new topic or take advantage of a refresher, in a short snippet that they can apply immediately. About to close a sale? Watch this microlearning video on 5 steps to closing a sale. Need to perform cardiac surgery? Look at this flowchart which will lead you through the process (I’m kidding. I hope.).

Another advantage – per proponents of microlearning – is that the learner himself can control what and when to learn.

Pardon my upcoming capitalization: THIS IS NOT LEARNING. This is performance support. How and when did we get these two terms confused?

Silo’d Learning is Limiting Workplace Learning Potential

For years, possibly decades, we have helped people develop expertise around specific jobs, or how to do their current job better. We've kept them learning "up" a topical trajectory, much like a silo.

What was often neglected was the need to expand knowledge, skills, and abilities overall. What we’ve got now are millions of Americans who are very skilled in a narrow area of expertise, but not well prepared for upper management or executive positions because they lack general business intelligence.

While it might seem obvious to only include salespeople in sales-training, what would be the detriment of including the administrative group that supports the salespeople, or the customer service representatives who support the customer after the sale, or the field service representatives who actually see the customer more frequently than anyone else, or manufacturing who will learn how their product works in the “real world?” Wouldn’t each of them learn more about how to do their job well, and learn more about the business as a whole by participating in a developmental topic that is ancillary to their current work?

Estimates are that by 2030, Baby Boomers will be completely out of the workforce. This presents a call to action and an opportunity, because the generation with the most breadth and depth of work experience will be leaving the workforce. We – as L+D departments and professionals – need to quickly rectify the silos of specialists we’ve created by broadening the role-specific training of the past in order to address the workforce needs of the future.

Our challenge is to develop a new generation of company leaders capable of making well-rounded and well-informed decisions based on their experiences in a multitude of business areas. The focus on job-specific training is a thing of the past. Organizations must focus on developing well-rounded individuals who can take the organization into the future. The future success of our companies depends on the actions we take today to develop our future workforce.

Teaching Thinking through Adapted Appreciative Inquiry

If you've been a reader of this blog for any period of time, you know that using questions  is something we regularly advocate for in order to change people's thinking and thereby change their behavior on the job.

But what if your learners have no preconceived notions on a topic to begin with? What if we don't want to change their thinking, we simply want to e x p a n d their thinking? That's when Appreciative Inquiry  can be an excellent tool for teaching thinking skills.

Appreciative Inquiry, in its purest sense, is used as a change management /problem solving tool. Rather than gathering people (managers, workers, etc.) together and asking "What's going wrong, and how do we fix it?" Appreciative Inquiry instead asks, "What are our strengths? What are we great at? How can we maximize that and build on it to achieve excellence?"

Appreciative inquiry has been around since the late 1980's but hasn't been "in the news" much in the last decade or so. Perhaps it's time to revitalize the approach, with a different spin - let's use it to teach thinking. The way we envision using the technique is through possibility summits which help newer or younger associates within a company to help set the course for the future. Too often, when individuals have been with a company 20, 30 or 40 years, they are set in their ways. Why change? Things are working great.

But organizations that rest on their laurels are organizations that will ultimately fail. Younger associates may have great ideas but no knowledge of how to advocate for them or execute them. Appreciative Inquiry can help individuals and organizations to thrive. Here's how....

Adapted Appreciative Inquiry Process

Allow the "younger generation," if you will, to help envision the future and empower them to create it by utilizing an adapted Appreciative Inquiry Process:

First, craft questions that help to open up future lines of inquiry, such as "What is your vision (not expectation) for our company in five years?" "What do customers love about us?" "What are our strengths in __________ area or department?" Questions should be crafted to get at opportunities, competencies, and business ecosystems (such as working in conjunction with suppliers, competitors or customers). A more inspirational or free-flowing question might be: "It's 2025 and Fortune Magazine has just named us the most _______ company in America. How did we get there?"

Next, assign people who are newer in the organization to interview those with more tenure - using the questions created in the first step. This accomplishes two things: It devoids the idea that those at the top of the organization know best and opens up channels of conversation - It helps to develop relationships between people who might not normally interact in their day-to-day roles (for example, the CEO of the company being interviewed by someone in the shipping department), and the results of that can be amazing, not only for inspiration but for goodwill and long-term relationships.

Third, those who have conducted the interviews report back on what they've learned, and themes (strengths) and actions items are culled from the results.

Finally, the action items are prioritized (what can be done most quickly, what can be done most affordably, what will get us to our ultimate vision for the future, etc.) and assigned. Ideally, multi-tenure teams will be assigned to work on the action items, which helps to establish mentorship even if the company doesn't have a formal mentoring program.

Note: You may choose to focus these steps on a theme in order to keep the process more manageable. The theme might be #1 in Customer Satisfaction and the steps would then focus on that vision for the future. For instance: What is possible, in our billing department, to ensure we are #1 in Customer Satisfaction?

Benefits of Appreciative Inquiry Integrated with a Curriculum

When this type of activity is integrated with a Teaching Thinking curriculum, it exposes those enrolled in the curriculum to new ways of thinking that they simply would not come up with on their own. It also exposes them to real-world experience and capabilities, rather than contrived activities with expected outcomes. Finally, it unites the organization because everyone has a hand in the creation of the future (there are elements of social constructionism in this type of learning activity).Combining vision and experience enables an organization to reach new heights.

Want to test your cognitive abilities?

TestMyBrain is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to collaborating with citizen scientists throughout the world by providing measurement tools that allow people to engage in science and learn about themselves.  Currently the organization has tested over 1.5 million individuals in over 240 countries / territories. 

Recent findings have identified that our cognitive abilities change as we age - and can tell you when you'll be the smartest.

If you'd like to participate, you'll not only be advancing research but you'll receive personalized feedback too (you'll see how you compare to the "average" person) !Tests change frequently, depending on the research being conducted and, sometimes, as the tests are being refined, the test itself may change from one day to the next.

Currently the website has tests for facial recognition, the ability to concentrate for periods of time and multiple memory types, among others.  Begin testing YOUR brain today at: www.TestMyBrain.org

Note: this research was started by Harvard University but is now supported and managed by the nonprofit Many Brains Project, the Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Health Technology at McLean Hospital & Harvard Medical School, and the Human Variation Lab at Wellesley College.

Interview with Connie Malamed: Visual Design Solutions

Malamed

What motivated you to write this book?

There are many wonderful graphic design books in the world, but none that teach visual design to learning professionals. I see many instructional materials that fail visually simply because most learning professionals are not trained in this area.

A little known secret is that trainers, instructional designers and educators can become competent in visual design by learning the foundation principles of design and applying them through practice. Since I have degrees in art education and instructional design, I wanted to write a book that closes this gap. I wanted to clearly explain the basics of design and demystify what professional designers do and how they solve visual problems.

If you could distill your message down to just one - what would it be?

The message I want to broadcast to all learning professionals is that aesthetically pleasing instructional materials can enhance learning and improve motivation. People make instant judgments as to the credibility and value of a learning experience. Well-designed materials are one critical signal that a learning experience is worthwhile and that the creators care about the learners.

How can training use this book to assist them in the work that they do?

Visual Design Solutions can be read in its entirety as a course in visual design with a learning context. Or it can be used as a reference for design advice and inspiring ideas. The book is divided into four sections and it's easy to start at any point:

1. The first section will help readers learn to think and work like designers.

2. The second section explains how to use the three basic elements of design: visuals, text and graphic space.

3. In the third section, readers will learn how to apply the power principles that will most impact their work (color harmonies, visual hierarchy, unity, etc.)

4. The final section provides solutions and inspiration to common visual design problems, such as how to transform bullet points into visuals or how to tell a story in visuals.

Do you have a personal motto that you live by (related to the book or your area of expertise)?

The audience is the most important factor in the work we do. When we care about the audience, we will find creative and innovative ways to solve problems and support learning in ways that are well designed and aesthetically pleasing.

Connie Malamed, Learning Strategy Consultant and publisher of The eLearning Coach. 

What happened to the "L" in L+D?

L

L+D stands for Learning and Development. In years past it was referred to as T+D which stood for Training and Development. We guess at some point there was a shift towards sounding as though we were doing more for our constituents than simply training them.

Unfortunately, the truth is, we are still T+D. Where is the L in L+D?

In the last decade-plus, training budgets have been cut, time allowed for training has been drastically reduced, coaching has been all but wiped out, and "learning strategies" have become self-service, self-directed, eLearning in many organizations (choose from this menu of management classes).

But true learning requires a long tail. It requires interaction with others in order to vet multiple ideas and arrive at the best one, or perhaps a hybrid-NEW-best idea. It requires coaching. It requires experience that informs future experiences and what one "knows to be true." Learning and development is a misnomer and perhaps a sad relic of what we thought this profession would become during the rise of corporate universities (see Where Have All the Corporate Universities Gone? below).

Organizations are consistently announcing that their businesses are suffering from a lack of skilled employees and a lack of bench strength for management, and yet there is little being done to ensure that our role in L+D is actually focused on the L. This truly requires the L+D department to have a seat at the table, to help organizations strategically plan their future through their people, but that vision is, sadly, far from reality in many organizations. 

Reading for Fun - and Comprehension

reading on tablet

Do you prefer reading from a printed page or a digital screen? Do you comprehend more when reading from paper than from a screen (or vice versa)? Does your age play a role in your preference? What about your attitude? These are all questions which have been studied in the last 20 years or so - in other words - in the "digital age." While definitive results elude us, here are some of the more common findings:

• People approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than they approach reading from paper

• E-readers prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way

• People report that when they are trying to locate a particular piece of information, they can recall where it appears in a text - not so with digital displays of the same content

• These navigation difficulties subtly inhibit reading comprehension

• Reading digitally leads to more difficulty in comprehension because it is more physically and mentally taxing

• When reading from a screen, people spend more time browsing, scanning and hunting for key words

• When people really like an e-book they go out and buy the paper version! According to research by Microsoft, people see e-books as something to use, but not own

Makes you re-think the delivery modality of your training materials, no? Learn more about the research in this area by reading this Scientific American article (on line, of course).

Which Type of Learning is "Best?"

According to a survey of 422 employees, spanning all generations, the #1 "preferred" type of learning and the one deemed "most helpful" is one-on-one mentoring.

The other top vote-getters, in order:

1.       One-on-one mentoring

2.       Traditional classroom learning

3.       Team collaboration

4.       Online courses (they did not specify if this was asynchronous only)

Source: Jones/NCTI survey

You can view the full report, "What Gap? Generational Views on Learning and Technology in the Workplace," here.

The Next "Generation" of Learning

Generation means that people need to make their own meaning, literally generating their own links while learning, not just passively listening to ideas. We need our brains to create rich webs of links to any new concept, linking ideas to many parts of the brain.

Using different types of neural circuitry to link to an idea is the key. Meaning, we should be listening, speaking, thinking, writing, and other tasks about any important ideas.

Source: Your Brain on Learning, published in Chief Learning Officer, May 2015

Most Kids are EXPERT Gamers by Age 21

By the age of 21, kids have spent 10.000 hours playing games. This correlates with Malcolm Gladwell's position in Outliers, which says that 10.000 hours of practice makes one an expert - interesting and thought provoking...

Online Collaboration MUST be Designed

One of the most wonderful things about the online classroom is the ability to bring learners together who may otherwise be geographically separated. If one individual in New York and one individual in Arizona need the same training, the virtual classroom not only allows them to partake in that training without travel, but also to take that training with fellow learners.

Too often, however, the virtual classroom is used in presentation-mode rather than in collaborative-mode.

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.

One of the basic tenets of adult learning is that adults prefer to learn collaboratively; in other words adults prefer to learn with others. Therefore, it is imperative that the focus of the learning process is on the learners working together, discussing, questioning, problem solving, and in general, contributing to the learning process and the learning content.

As Instructional Designers, we must put quite a bit of thought into how we can ensure the learners work together to achieve the learning outcome, rather than sitting at their individual sites being passive recipients of a presentation.

Interview with Learning Expert - Will Thalheimer

Will Thalheimer is a learning professional and researcher whom The Training Doctor recently interviewed

T/D: Let’s focus on learning design and the research that you've done in this area.

Thalheimer: One of the things that I think a lot of us forget is that we're not really trying to create learning as much as we're trying to help our learners remember what they've learned.  We’re trying to make sure that not only do they learn it, but they're able to retrieve it from memory at a later time. We not only want to increase learning, making sure they understand, but we also want to minimize forgetting. Minimization of forgetting is something a lot of us don’t think about.

When I looked at the research there are three things that are very powerful in allowing people to minimize forgetting.  I'm going to go through the list. The first term is 'retrieval practice'.  That means giving learners practice retrieving the information from memory like they would in the real world.  Too often we present information that helps them learn, but that doesn't help them practice retrieval.

T/D: We assume that they'll remember it at the right time. That’s a good point.

Thalheimer: If people go down the forgetting curve and they can't remember it, which often happens after learning, the training was a waste of time.  One of the things is retrieval practice.  The second thing is 'context alignment'.  People have to perform in a context - in a real situation.   In the environment there's visual cues, noise cues, there's smell, there’s all kinds of things.

T/D: Things that brought you to this point - something that led you to now make a decision, right?

Thalheimer: Absolutely, all these environmental cues trigger memory retrieval, bringing information into working memory.  One of the things that researchers have found is by aligning the learning context with the performance context. You have some of the same cues in the learning context that are in the performance context.  When people go back to the performance context they are more likely to remember what they learned.

T/D: Can you give us an example?

Thalheimer: Absolutely.  It's interesting, the army knows about this and pilots and people in dangerous situations - we need to scaffold them up to the place where they can deal with the stress of their jobs AND still make decisions.  They may need to develop an understanding of things in a non-stressful situation, but in order for them to be able to retrieve the information in that real world stressful environment, we can maximize that retrieval if we put them in that kind of stressful environment.

T/D: What does scaffolding mean?

Thalheimer: Well, scaffolding means start slow and progress to more difficult.

T/D: Until it's as realistic as possible.

Thalheimer: Correct, as realistic as possible.  That's why the army has people with real bullets flying over their heads because that's a real world situation

We've gone through retrieval practice and context alignment. The third thing is 'spacing' or the spacing effect. It’s one of the most studied phenomenons in all research psychology.  It's the notion that if you space repetitions over time they're much more powerful than if you space them over less time.  Those three things enable people to remember over a long period of time. They minimize that forgetting curve.

T/D: The fact that we send people to one training class and then send them back to work is fruitless.

Thalheimer: Fruitless may be too strong, but it's certainly not the best design.  One of the things that people need to be able to do as a trainer is not only  help people understand and learn, but also minimize forgetting.  That's what we're all about, helping them remember on the job.

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Will Thalheimer founded Work-Learning Research which is a consulting practice that helps clients build more effective learning interventions.  He’s been in the learning and performance field since 1985.  His professional focus is on bridging the gap between the research side and the practice side. Visit his excellent blog here: http://www.willatworklearning.com/