Now You See It... Now You GET It - The Power of Visuals in Learning
First, some important factoids regarding our vision:
Vision is the hardest working process in our bodies
Vision takes up 30% of the brain's processing capabilities
Neuroscientists know more about our vison than any other sensory system in our body
We don't see with our eyes, we see with our brains
As important as vision is for survival (is that a saber toothed tiger I see charging toward me?) it also trumps all our other senses when it comes to learning, interpreting and understanding the world around us. Vision is probably the best single tool we have for learning anything, so says John Medina author of Brain Rules (check it out at www.brainrules.net).
One of the reasons that vision (and thereby the use of visuals) is so powerful is because something that we see is easy to label, identify, categorize and recall later. What's the circular thing with buckets that twirls at the carnival? Oh right. A Ferris Wheel.
Visual input is so important, neuroscience has given it a fancy title: Pictorial Superiority Effect (or PSE). In one experiment, test subjects were shown 2,500 pictures for 10 seconds each. Several days after the exposure to the pictures, the subjects were able to recall 90% of the pictures. The same type of experiment, utilizing words, fell to an abysmal 10% recall three-days after exposure. But the RIGHT words can help learners create visuals.
Words Create Pictures
The very tall man folded his body, in order to fit in to the sports car, then sped away.Did you "see" those words in your mind as you read them? Everyone did. And everyone saw a different picture. Very tall is relative. Sports car is generic. But you have a picture in your head related to what you just read. We don't see with our eyes - we see with our brains. You did not physically see the scenario that was described but you have a picture of it in your mind. Amazing.
Pictures Create Emotion
Additionally, pictures can evoke emotion, which helps with retention and recall. Think about the image of the Ferris Wheel a few paragraphs back. You pictured a Ferris Wheel in order to help you recall it's name, didn't you? Many of you also remembered experiencing a Ferris Wheel in some way - either the glee (or terror) of riding it, looking up at it all colorful and bright, or being at the carnival - with the smells and sounds - where you encountered it. You have a vivid memory of a Ferris Wheel. That memory is defined in a picture.
Important Ways to Incorporate Visuals in Learning
Because using visuals is so crucial to understanding and remembering, it is imperative that we give just as much thought to the visuals we use in training, as to the content we are creating. Here are some ways you can utilize visuals in your training:
Slides / Photos - include pictures - especially photos - especially photos of people - on your slides. Photos are more realistic than graphics or clip art and therefore more engaging to the brain. Photos of people are especially memorable. We like to see people "just like us."
Physical objects - whenever possible, include a real representation of the visual. Sometimes you'll have to stretch to make it work - but the stretch will be worth it because it will sear the message in to the learner's brain. More than 2 decades ago I attended a presentation given by a man. I have no idea who he was. I have no idea what his topic was. I DO remember that we were in a hotel meeting room (visual) and I DO remember that he said "Many years ago a computer would fill a room of this size, and now that same computing power can fit in something as small as this little pink packet." And he held up an artificial sugar packet. The room was large; the little pink packet was hard to see. It's a bit of a stretch from computer processing power to sugar packet... but the image (and the point he was making) has remained for decades. That's powerful.
Mental imagery - sometimes it's just impossible to find a photo or physical object to represent your message. Perhaps you are teaching virtually and there is no way to show the physical object (or the object is too big, or too small, or doesn't actually exist yet). Instead you can help learners to create a visual in their "mind's eye." (Definition: To see something in one's visual memory or imagination. Bet you always wondered what that phrase meant. Now you know. The first known use of the term dates back to Chaucer, in 1390. By the time Shakespeare used it in Hamlet, the phrase had been around for over 200 years! )
In Medina's book, Brain Rules (see link above), he talks about DNA and how long and complex it is. He says fitting a strand of DNA in to the nucleus of our cells is like trying to stuff 30 miles of fishing line in to a blueberry. IMPOSSIBLE! But memorable. I may not remember much about DNA in the future, but I will always remember that it is long and complex.
Here is a challenge for you: Go back through the courses you already have and re-evaluate the visuals you are using. Can you add visuals to slides? Can you associate the content with physical objects? Can you make an analogy or tell a story that causes the learner to create a mental image in his "mind's eye?" If you can - I guarantee - recall and comprehension will increase. You will also see test scores go up. Your learners will become brilliant - thanks to you (and visuals).
Updated May 15, 2017: Nelson Dellis, the USA Memory Champ, was recently a guest on Lewis Howes' podcast, discussing how he can easily remember things. One of his tricks is to make abstract things - such as numbers - in to visuals that are easier to remember. For instance, the number 32 is Charlie Brown and the number 95 is Tom Brady. Associating those images with others helps him to combine numbers more easily - so Homer Simpson fighting a sword battle becomes a 4 digit number . This type of visualization technique earned him the record for the longest string of numbers committed to memory - 201. If you have an hour, listen to the podcast and learn about the power of Mind Palaces as a visualization / memorization technique as well.
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.
Could they do *it* in the past?
Here are two questions that should be asked during a needs assessments to help ensure that you are not designing and developing training unnecessarily, and also to ensure that the training you ARE creating is appropriate for the "gap" that needs to be augmented.
Question #1: Have the learners been able to do ____ in the past?
Question #2: Have the learners had training on ____ in the past?
Let's look at why each of these questions is important to ask.
Have they been able to do ________ in the past?
Typically, if an individual or group has been able to successfully complete a task in the past, and suddenly are not able to, it is not because they forgot how to do it. It's more likely that conditions within the work environment have changed. Look at factors such as:
Have new metrics been put in to place? (causing people to do their work in a less thorough manner?)
Has a new process been added which conflicts with the standard operating procedure?
Are people incentivized to do the job differently / poorly?
For instance: In a call center environment, CSRs can be incentivized to solve a consumer's problem on the first call or they can be incentivized to complete as many calls per hours as possible. Typically, those are two competing end goals. So, if you have workers who have been able to do a process or task in the past, and suddenly they are not - the last thing you should assume is that the fault lies with the workers.
Have they had training on this topic in the past?
If the answer to this is "yes," then the next question is: Why didn't that training stick? Or... did the company forget they had a training program already in place?
Any new skill will fritter away if it is not used. Often people go through training but then get back on the job and have to catch up on a backlog of work. In order to catch up quickly, they will resort to their "old way" of doing things. This aligns with the bullet points above - are trainees incentivized to "keep up the pace," or to do things in the "new and improved" way? If the latter, they will need time to practice and become proficient.
In other instances the newly trained individual simply isn't given the opportunity to put in to practice what they have learned. Example: One of our clients put learners through a 12-week, job-specific training program but then assigned them to a starter-job for 6 months before they were allowed to do the job they were just trained to do. It was "efficient" for the company to give people the 12-weeks of training right after they were newly hired, rather than take them off the job later on. But the newly trained individuals weren't allowed to actually put their skills in to practice until they had "paid their dues" by being on the job for 6 months or more.
It's tempting to jump right in and solve the problem - but first step back and ask "why does this problem exist?"
*Credit to Bob Mager for the basis of these questions.
Case Study: Bite-sized Instructor Led Training
telephone
When we think of bite-sized learning, we often think of something that is self-paced, just-in-time, mobile or e-Learning.
We recently visited with a client that is providing bite-sized learning (10 minutes or less) delivered by live instructors. Picture this: a room of 40 trainers who sit in cubicles wearing headsets, at desks with two computer monitors. The trainees call the trainers when they are ready for their lesson. The trainees go in to a queue and any trainer can pick up the call and teach any topic thanks to a script that pops up on one screen. On the other screen they document the learner, the lesson, and the advice / next steps prescribed for that learner.
In a 10-minute-or-so conversation, the trainer and trainee discuss how the last lesson has been working for the learner, practice a read-through of the new lesson, role-play the new lesson, audio-record the new lesson and listen-back for a self-critique as well as a trainer critique.
Lessons are meted out, one-per-week, for a period of weeks depending on the topic. The learner is expected to practice one minute technique during the week and then the next technique is introduced, the following week.
Bite-sized learning? More like crumb-sized learning! And SUPER effective. Just ask their 850 clients!
Interview with Learning Expert: Will Thalheimer
Measuring Learning Results
T/D: You've written a research in practice report called Measuring Learning Results which is an understanding of learning and focusing on measurement. Can you tell us more about that?
Thalheimer: Over the years I've been immersed in learning and looking at the research on learning. One of the things I noticed in our field is that there are some leverage points - things that affect the whole field, things that drive us to do what we do. One of those is measurement. How we measure affects how we practice instructional design. So I'll share with you a couple of things that I found. One thing is that smile sheets aren't good enough.
T/D: Right, don't we know that at a gut level?
Thalheimer: We may know it at a gut level, but we keep doing it. I did some research with the e-learning Guild and we looked at how it's the most popular method, after completion rate, for an e-learning program. So they've done like a research meta-analysis on this, and they found that smile sheet ratings don't even correlate with learning results.
T/D: Interesting.
Thalheimer: They correlated like 0.09 - which is…
T/D: Negligible.
Thalheimer: Negligible. Smile sheets don't correlate with on the job performance either.
T/D: What does your opinion have to do with your performance? Nothing.
Thalheimer: Right, so that's intriguing. So one of the things we're trying to do when we measure stuff is to get better. There are really three reasons that you might want to measure learning - one is to support learning, to give the learners feedback. The other thing is to improve the learning interventions we create. So improve our learning designs. The third thing is to prove our results to our organization; our certification, grading, that kind of thing. So three main reasons there. If we're going to improve our learning designs one of the things that we need to do is make sure that our learning metrics are predictive of people's actual performance. If our smile sheets aren’t predictive, then they're no good at doing that, they're no good at giving us good information.
I've been playing with trying to improve my own smile sheet so I'm going to recommend a couple of things. One - let's not ask people just overall questions. Let's put in some real learning points that we wanted to get across, because people aren't very good at remembering everything after a session, right? So if you ask them in general did you like it you're going to get general responses. Instead; this is one of the learning points that we talked about, how valuable was that to you?
Then I ask them - what's the likelihood that you're going to use this within the next two weeks? I have from a zero to 100% in 10% increments.
T/D: That's brilliant.
Thalheimer: I also ask them - what's the probability in the next two weeks that you'll share this with one of your co-workers? I also really focus on the open ended comments. I find that those are really some of the most valuable feedback that you can get to improve your course. I've gotten a lot of bad feedback too, but I've gotten some really good feedback on smile sheets that has told me - you really need to improve that exercise. Or, have more stuff going on in the afternoon that's fun because people were tired - stuff like that. Okay, you hear that over and over - you better change it.
Thalheimer: Another thing I do with smile sheets is I also like to follow up two weeks later. I follow up and I do a couple of interesting things. One is I ask the same question on the same six point scale about how valuable you thought the training was. Now they've gone back to the work place. They now really know how valuable it is. So it gives a better anchoring.
I’ve learned a couple of other things from looking at measurement from a learning fundamental standpoint. One thing is, if we measure learning right at the end of learning, what is it we are measuring? We're measuring the learning intervention’s ability to create understanding. Which is fine, that's good, but we're not measuring the learning intervention’s ability to minimize forgetting. You have a full day session or you have an e-learning program and you measure people right away - everything is top of mind.
T/D: You should be able to recall it.
Thalheimer: You can easily recall it and not only that, but you feel confident that you can recall it. So that's a really biased way to get information. That's one of the reasons that make it a bad proxy for your ability to remember it on the job.The final mistake we make is to measure something in the same context that people learned it. That context is going to remind them of what they learned and because of that they're going to get better results than if we measured them in a different context. So we need to do one of two things - we either need to know that our results are biased because we're in the same context that they learned in. Or we need to change the context and make it more like the real world context so that it's more realistic. It's more predictive of that real world environment.
T/D: Great points! Thank you Will.
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
Powerpoint Slides are not Participant Guides
The content and design of a participant guide is critical to its effective use by the learner. Too often, reproductions of PowerPoint slides are considered participant guides. There is absolutely no point in providing participants a reproduction of what they are already looking at. A slide is simply a visual representation of a concept or a reminder of content - it is more for the faciltiator than the participant.
Perhaps the idea of slide-as-participant-guide is the reason participant materials are so often ineffective and therefore often are not provided at all.
Participant guides should include, at a minimum:
The purpose and objectives of the course. Why am I here? What is the point of this training?
The must-have, need-to-know concepts, so you can ensure the learners left the training with the essentials (facts, rules, procedures)
Instructions for any activities they will participate in during class (Note: instructions should include both technical ( you will have 30 minutes to work with a group of 4) as well as instructional (your task is to identify three ways we use XYZ in our business and how that differentiates us from our competitors)
Instructions for any exercises you may want them to complete post-training or instructions for how to begin to implement their new knowledge and skills back on the job (e.g. In the next 2 weeks you should X, Y and Z and report your results to your team lead)
Any resources they may need on the job like links to web pages (internal or external), reports, books, contact information, etc.
The participant guide should be just that, a GUIDE for the learning process; not a picture book of what you are presenting in class.
The Key to Outstanding Learning Outcomes: Design Learning Processes
Designing training programs can be an arduous process if you take on the responsibility for designing all the content yourself. You can lighten your load and also achieve a much greater learning outcome by designing learning processes rather than learning content.
In this article we will share three ways to design learning processes.
1. Use real work.
Learners prefer to accomplish real work while they are in the learning process. So rather than create a contrived situation or a case study scenario that is “representative” of real life, instead have the learners work on real work tasks. For instance, a financial services firm wanted to teach its sales people to read financial statements in order to find cross-selling opportunities in their current client-base. Rather than teach the sales people how to read “generic” financial statements and then leave them to transfer that knowledge and skill to their own client's financial statements, the learning session required them to bring the annual report from two of their current clients. While they learned to read a financial statement (such as a cash flow statement or a profit and loss statement) the learners were working and reviewing the actual financial statements of their own clients. This not only resulted in a better understanding of the learning but it also resulted in the learners being able to have actionable findings be the end of the training class.
2. Create the learning in real time.
Rather than teach your learners a new concept or skill in a large block of time and then expect them to be able to transfer all of that information to their real work responsibilities, break the training up into smaller, actionable learning objectives and on-the-job tasks. That will allow them to implement their new knowledge and skills in smaller chunks and result in more successful implementation on the job.
For example, a sales organization was training their sales people to listen for cues from prospects to better gauge if they could ask for an appointment or not. After a period of time in the classroom, in which the sales people/learners learned the 5 types of responses which would either open a door for them or not, they were then given an hour to return to their desks and make up to 10 phone calls from their personal prospect list; making notes about types of conversations they had and whether they were able to secure an appointment or not. This approach not only allowed the salespeople to accomplish some real work during the training process, but also created a rich discussion upon returning to the training room because they each had real-world experience implementing their new skills and were able to compare and contrast their outcomes and ask additional questions of the instructor.
If they had simply completed the training and then returned to the job to (attempt to) implement what they had learned, when would they have ever had those rich discussions that serve to cement the learning for adults?
3. Have the learners contribute the content.
A third sales organization wanted to teach overcoming objections in relation to a very complex product that their sales people sold. Rather than try to anticipate all the objections and give the sales people pat answers in reply, the training was designed to first solicit the “5 toughest objection you've encountered when attempting to sell xyz” and then a game was created, dividing the larger group into 3 teams and giving each team the opportunity to craft an appropriate rebuttal to the objection.
The learning process went like this
Team A stated an objection to Team B~Team B had a period of time to craft an appropriate response~Team C had the opportunity to challenge Team B's response~Team A chose what they thought to be the best response and awarded a point to either Team B or Team C accordingly.
This learning process continued in a round-robin style, with Team B next sharing an objection, Team C getting the first opportunity to reply, and Team A being given the opportunity to “challenge” team C’s response, until all of the 15 toughest objections in regard to that topic had been addressed.
This process allowed the learners to share their real-world problems and to get the best and the brightest to assist them with being better prepared the next time they heard that objection.
The next time you are attempting to design learning content take a step back and see if instead you are able to design a learning process that better assists the learners in working with and assimilating that content.
Learning processes can often lead to greater learning outcomes because the learners are more engaged with the content, identify with it more clearly, and have less trouble transferring what they learned in the classroom to what they do on the job. An added bonus, from a logistical standpoint, is that designing a learning process requires much less updating in the future should the content itself change.
Use your Network to Create + Supply Employee Training
Too often we isolate ourselves and think that we are the only organization that has a particular problem; for instance, quality control issues or the need for sales training on a particular piece of equipment that your company resells. We put a lot of time and effort in to creating a “customized” training program when, in all likelihood, that training program has already been created by somebody else.
Suppliers
Many suppliers already have training programs in place to train their own workforce. Simply ask if you can borrow their programs or perhaps pay a fee to use them with your employees. Often, it is possible to have your supplier-company salesperson or another representative provide the training for you. Case in point: a retail organization wanted to train its store clerks in athletic footwear construction and the best use of each brand or style of footwear so that they could be more responsive to customer needs. The first thing the operations manager of the retailer did was call all eight salespeople at the athletic footwear, manufacturers, and ask what resources were available that the retailer could have or borrow. All eight footwear manufacturers were eager to provide information and assistance with the training project. In fact, all eight salespeople came in on the same day, in one-hour blocks, to present what they felt the clerks should know about their particular brand of footwear and how it was different from the other manufacturers.
Another example comes from a restaurant trying to increase its dining checks by increasing the level of liquor sales per party. The focus was on wines and how they complemented the various menu items. One liquor salesman, in particular, had a passion for wine and was thrilled to be asked to provide a 90-minute workshop for the restaurant's employees on the different types of wines and the different menu items that they complemented. The salesperson did the training on his own time, certainly with the expectation that his sales would increase if the restaurant’s retailing of wine increased, but also because he was thrilled to talk about something he really loved.
So first: think about how your suppliers can provide you with training or training resources.
Client Companies
Another approach is to look to your client-companies – perhaps your clients have already solved the challenge of lean manufacturing in their organization and would be happy to include your employees in the training that they already offer, or to loan their trainers to your organization to conduct the same type of training. Don’t think of yourself as isolated and trying to solve a problem that is unique to your organization because 80% of the time it is not unique – pick up the phone and call a few of your clients to see if they have faced (and surmounted) the same challenges.
Cooperative Relationships
The last suggestion is to actively seek out similar companies in your industry. As an example, a southeastern state found itself with under-qualified bridge and road inspectors due to an early retirement package offered by the state. The employees that were left did not have as many years experience on the job and no longer had mentors from whom to learn. The state realized it had to create a new training process, but was wise enough to realize it could not be the only state in the nation with that need. So the state’s transportation commissioner called 30 of his colleagues across the US and asked them if they had encountered the same challenge. Of the 30 colleagues contacted, two offered their training program (materials) in their entirety to use as a model or to use carte blanche.
Before attempting to solve a “training problem” in your organization think creatively and cooperatively about who else might also have the need and has perhaps already solved it for you. Very often you will find that you have resources and support at your disposal, quite in abundance, simply for the asking.
Does Anyone Work “In the Office” Anymore?
The term "telecommuting" seems like such a quaint, 1990s anachronism, but the fact is worker mobility is playing an ever-increasing role in where and when people work. Today's workforce is more mobile and wired than ever before. How millennials commute to work is becoming less of an issue than where they decide to live.
A [US] Federal Highway Administration report noted that as of 2010, 26 percent of millennials - that's more than a quarter of our [workers] who fall into the age range of 17 to 32 - don't have a driver's license. It's also somewhat of a wakeup call that a Deloitte study notes that 46 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds would choose Internet access over owning a car.
Time for us to rethink: Who we are hiring, where they will work, and how will they be trained? Things that make you go: hmmmmm. No?
Note: This article based on a column by Rick Bell, Workforce Managing Editor.
5 Questions to Ask a Stakeholder Before Designing Training
Performance problems can be caused by a myriad of things. Perhaps your organization has undergone a downsizing, or perhaps a department is understaffed or their equipment is unreliable. Unfortunately many managers and organizations assume that poor performance is directly linked to a lack of skill or knowledge which can be solved by training.
In my 20 plus years of consulting experience, I’ve found that what is initially presented as a training problem is often something else entirely.
Before embarking on any training program it is imperative that a needs analysis is conducted in order to pinpoint the exact cause of poor performance and to ascertain if the poor performance can be solved by applying training. Unfortunately, most organizations skip the needs analysis, assuming that they already know the cause.
The following 5 questions will help you to pinpoint the true cause of a performance problem and also help with the design process by ascertaining what training truly needs to be created. Ask these questions of the individual in the organization who is requesting that you design and develop a training program to address an assumed training issue.
1. What is the problem you are experiencing?
Often you'll hear a request along the lines of, “My sales team needs training on teamwork." Well that’s putting the cart before the horse, isn't it? Ask the requestor to give you a big picture view of the factors they see as contributing to the poor performance. Do not accept their definition of the performance problem (in this case, lack of team work) until you hear more about the work environment, the intended audience, their job related duties, etc.
2. What are the symptoms that led you to believe this was a problem?
Notice the key word “symptoms." Very often what presents itself to be a performance problem is truly a symptom of a deeper or related organizational problem. For instance, a large publishing company believed it needed customer service training because it came in dead last in the customer service category in a survey published by its industry magazine. When more investigation was done, it was determined that the organization was suffering from an inadequate technology system that led to the symptom of poor customer service.
3. Why do you think this is a training need?
Remember, the person requesting you to design and deliver training has their own perspective on the situation. When this question was posed to a retail executive his response was that a particular department's reports were consistently wrong and therefore they must not know how to use the reporting software. The executive made a huge leap from the evidence of erroneous reports to employee’s lack of skill or knowledge. The intended trainees will also have their own perspective and it's a good idea to ask them, at some point, if they feel a need for training based on the evidence at hand. When further investigation was done with the intended trainee group, from the above mentioned retail organization, it was discovered that the employees lacked basic math skills but knew how to use the software quite well.
4. What organizational factors might be playing a role?
When organizations are in flux, a sense of ennui trickles down to every individual's performance. If the organization has been talking about an acquisition or merger, it can cause people to change their work habits. If a downsizing has occurred and more work needs to be accomplished with less people, it’s logical that poor performance will follow. Perhaps the department has had three different managers in the last 18 months, and every manager has a different perspective on how the work should be done; eventually people start to second-guess their abilities and perform at a minimal level in order to “play it safe.”
5. What training already exists?
Often you'll find that a “training problem” is a frequent issue within the organization, and one that has been addressed in the past. Determining what training already exists is helpful in two ways: 1) it helps you to determine what training people have had in the past and alerts you to look for reasons why that training did not “stick,” and 2) it should minimize your need to reinvent the wheel because it's probable that you can repurpose the existing training content.
Keep It Suitably Simple
While there is still a need for formally-packaged courses, these are for special occasions, when we or our employers require some formal record of achievement (or at least of participation). In the meantime, there's a job to be done, and that's far better achieved through access to videos, PDFs, forums, blogs and simple web articles. These are much easier to produce than highly-structured e-learning and just as easy to consume. Nothing lasts more than five minutes and the emphasis is strictly on practical application.
Excerpted from Clive on Learning - Clive Shephard's blog. You can read the full text here: ttp://tinyurl.com/cc9kwhn
Bring Your Wii to Work!
Too often, e-learning modules end up being glorified PowerPoint presentations. The learner reads through the information in a linear, beginning-to-end format, and is tested for knowledge retention at the end. As detailed in 5 Gaming Elements for Effective E-Learning (Training Industry Quarterly, Fall 2012), there are five takeaways from video games that can take e-learning to the next level.
Contextualization takes the e-learning out of the void, and puts it into a time and place, such as a scenario or story that provides the back bone for the training.
Curiosity draws the learner into exploring the e-learning module, enticing them to completeness.
Control allows participants to direct their own learning, driving the direction of the training, and causing them to retain more information due to engagement.
Cooperation / Socialization integrates a very popular factor of many online games, removing feelings of isolation and fostering teamwork.
Engagement / Interactivity puts the learners in situations where they are participating in the training from the start, rather than at the end of a module.
And with the growing popularity of BYOD (bring your own device) we could have everyone bring their Wii controller to work! <grin>
Formalize Informal Training in Your Organization
About 80% of the training that occurs in the workplace doesn't occur in a formal training program. About 80% of the training that occurs is just one person assisting another in an informal way. You stand up and look over your cubicle and ask your cubicle mate, “Do you know how to take text out of table and just make it into a paragraph?” Or, a sales manager decides he's going to take his administrative assistant out on the road for a day so she can actually meet the customers and better understand what their customer's needs are.
This interview, with Dr. Nanette Miner, will discuss ways to formalize informal learning in your organization.
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Miner: Most of new-hire training is what we consider “follow Joe around” training. This means that you hook a new person up with a more experienced person - follow Joe around and he'll show you how to do your job. Although this is efficient, there are many problems with this style of training. If you have more than one person who is “Joe,” in this case, the training can be different from individual to individual because every trainer is going to emphasize what they think is important or perhaps show shortcuts, or “their way” of doing things which may not be the prescribed way of doing things. So while it is efficient and it doesn't take a formal training process, in the end you can actually have some pretty poorly trained new hires.
One of the things you can do to keep that process in place while making it a little more formal is to create check lists of training so that you have some kind of assurance that everybody's getting the same training process. For instance, in the retail industry there's a lot of turnover. Organizations tend to hire clerks on an individual basis. If you had a new hire training checklist you could at least ensure that everybody was getting the same training on the cash register. For instance you’d show them how to ring a cash sale, how to ring a charge sale, how to run a coupon, how to process a refund – these are a the topics any new hire would need to know, but you could “formalize” the training by prescribing the order of learning from easiest (cash sale) to hardest (refund).
Another way to formalize the training would be to recruit individuals who are interested in training. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people in organizations who love to transmit their knowledge to others and would be happy to do it for free. Recruit those people to serve as mentors or coaches for everybody, not just new hires, but everybody. They can be the go-to person when a new process needs to be created or a process runs into a problem; this person can be the one who figures it out and then trains everyone else in the “new way.”
Another idea would be to make training the responsibility of everybody in the organization. Require everyone to take on new learning and then share it with others. What we often do, as individuals, is figure something out on our own and say, “Oh cool, now I know how to do that,” and we don't ever share it with anybody else. I remember reading about a software company that made it everybody's responsibility to take on new learning to the point where it was in their performance review every year. What did you learn this year and how did you disseminate it to the rest of the organization? So, the employee might run a lunch and learn or they might write something up in the company newsletter.The point is that everyone is learning all the time, and we should formalize a way to share that learning.
T/D: Thank you Dr. Miner, those are great tips in making it everyone's responsibility and sharing the knowledge. Next month we will finalize this interview by focusing on Accessing Employee Training through your local College or University.
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Dr Nanette Miner has been an instructional designer for over two decades. She is President and Managing Consultant for The Training Doctor which specializes in working with subject matter experts to take the knowledge from their heads and design learning in such a way that others can adopt and implement the training immediately. She is also the author of The Accidental Trainer and co-author of Tailored Learning: Designing a Blend that Fits.
Tips for online learning
A recent Edudemic article titled 20+ Tips from the Most Effective Online Teachers provides a wealth of good information, not only for those who are teaching online, but also for those organizations that are considering offering courses online. For all the business factors that make distance learning or virtual learning a plus - there are some weighty considerations as well.
We highly recommend reading the full article - it will really give you something to think about. If you don't have time - here are a few of the things we consider to be "gems" in the article:
What the students can teach each other is just as important as what the instructor teaches
Online does not mean easy
Online courses take much more time to develop and facilitate than classroom courses
Being an online educator is more a life style than an occupation
Be proactive about course management
Incentivize your training - a great model
On September 29 a concert was held in New York City's Central Park to bring awareness to worldwide issues such as disease, poverty and lack of drinking water.
The concert was free and 60,000 people attended BUT they had to earn the right to attend. First, they had to register at a website. Then, they had to earn points to get in to a lottery to be awarded the free tickets. They earned points by watching various videos on the issues above and / or then forwarding those important messages to their friends via Facebook or Twitter.
What a GREAT model for making your training viral! Especially when you are constrained by having to disseminate your learning through asynchronous methods (in other words, people will engage in the learning on their own time and schedule). Why not have prizes or awards for completing the training and certain tasks along the way?
If you'd like to read more about the concert, click here
Don't forget to cut of the ends of the ham!
Are you familiar with the story of the woman who, for years, cut off the ends of her ham before baking? When her daughter asked her why, she replied, "That's what MY mother always did." When the granddaughter asked the grandmother why she cut the ends off the ham, the grandmother replied, "Because my pan was too small to fit a large ham." <insert chuckle here>
Seems we have experienced the same phenomenon in e-Learning. We've been forced, all these decades, to create "click next to continue" e-Learning because of constraints of Flash and the fact that the scroll wheel on the mouse had not yet been invented.
Now, with the advent of "drag your finger down," technology, the format of e-Learning is ready to be set free from its 800 x 600 box.I
nteresting insight here - quick read.
Quotable: Peter Casebow
"Some would say you can't control or plan for something like informal learning, but you can put a strategy in place. Based on our experience, any strategy for informal learning needs to include three basic areas: improving basic skills, such as searching for information effectively, creating opportunities and encouraging sharing and collaboration."
Quotable: Peter Casebow, CEO of GoodPractice
Graphic tools for instructional designers
Here's a great blog posting with a collection of graphic tools we should possess as instructional designers. Remember the addage: a picture is worth 1,000 words. We'll add a caveat: only if it's a good picture. <grin>
Create a web page for exclusively for your next training class
We've been hearing a lot lately about the need to use different modalities in our learning (aka blended learning), the need to optimize technology, and the need to bring social learning to corporate America. Well, now you have the chance to try all of those things, risk free.
At www.Weebly.com you can create a website and host it for free "in the cloud." It has an easy drag-and-drop user interface which is very intuitive and doesn't require any skill or knowledge about web design. You can add pictures, audio, video, documents (such as uploading your slide set after a classroom training, for instance) and even create a blog so that you can post assignments, reminders and coaching tips, and ask for your learner's feedback and response.
Truly amazing - considering this service is free - is that Weebly automatically creates a mobile-friendly version of your site so your learners can connect via their smart phones, as well.
Give it a try for your next course and send us your web page - we'd love to share it!
When does the learning occur?
Let’s preface this article with two assumptions:
Most people who design training are not schooled in how to design training, these days. They are more typically subject matter experts.
Most people who ARE schooled in training still are not schooled in adult learning theory.
Over the years, we have noticed a recurring fault: designers (and facilitators) of training often equate participating in an activity with actually learning from it. Not so. Here are two examples:
A course in sales training, that we designed for a client, required a breakout group activity. At the end of the activity, each group was to present back their outcomes. As each group finished their presentation the facilitator replied with “good dialogue, good dialogue” and then moved on to the next group. The facilitator spent NO time asking for further interpretation of their decisions or outcomes, he spent NO time comparing one group’s response to another, he never asked any other group to respond to or ask questions of the presenting group.
A training design that we reviewed for a client included a 10-minute, independent, web browsing activity in which learners were to research the “key selling features” of a particular product. Once the activity was over, the course moved on to the next topic. There was no discussion of what people had found. There was no compare and contrast. There was no knowing if you did the activity right or not!
So the question we pose is this: When does the learning occur?
Lucky for you, we’ll give you the answer as well: It occurs in the debrief. The debrief happens after the activity. Rarely, if EVER, do participants get the ah-ha moment from simply participating in an activity. Ninety-nine percent of the time it occurs during the debrief when they are asked to process, sort and supply their findings. When they hear what others, or other groups, have come up with and compare it to their own. When they are asked “so what does this mean for you, on the job?”
Simply designing or facilitating an activity is not sufficient. The REAL learning comes after the activity. Discussions with peers, working collaboratively or competitively, all help to ensure that learners actually process what has just occurred and gain meaning from it.
Ensure that you think that far ahead when you design for your learners.