Here's How You Can Create Training Without Knowing a Thing About the Topic

Have you ever had to design a training program for a topic you just didn't get? Us too!

The wonderful thing about being a professional instructional designer is that you don't actually have to understand the topic, but you MUST understand the process of how people learn.

If you understand how to design learning - the topic is irrelevant.

For instance, we created Row, Row, Row Your Family Feud Boat (download, here) when we were charged with helping financial planners to overcome client objections to moving to a new platform.

At first, we referred to it as a "product" and we were quickly corrected: It's not a product, it's a platform.

When then changed our wording to "service." Wrong again. It's not a service, it's a platform. How could we design training to overcome objections to a platform if we didn't even get what that WAS?

Easy - you design a learning process and have the learners themselves fill in the content.

Check it out here. You can use this design for all sorts of topics.

The Limits of Working Memory and Training Effectiveness

learning

In this fascinating blog post from Patti Shank on the ATD site, she discusses the reasons we can't have a one-size-fits-all approach to training.

Aside from the typical learning styles excuse, Patti explores an interesting point related to neuroscience: knowledge and experience dictates the way we can present the content and further impacts the way the learner is able to work with it.

The crux of the difference is working memory vs. long term memory. When newbies are learning a topic, everything they "know" is in working memory - and they are paddling madly to keep processing and applying that information to the learning process. But when a more knowledgeable or more experienced employee has long-term memory associated with a topic, we can work with that topic in deeper and more meaningful ways for the learner.

This chart is an excellent comparison of working memory approaches to training vs. long term memory approaches.  This chart may cause you to rethink your training designs altogether.

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

The "Problem" With Virtual Learning

We recently read this blog post which really made our blood to boil!

In a nutshell, the writer, a college professor, finds himself stranded at the airport and decides his situation should not impede his regularly scheduled class. He can simply use the virtual technology his college supplies, to fulfill his teaching obligations.

After experiencing an unsuccessful "class," he wrote a lengthy diatribe about how virtual technology will never replace face-to-face teaching. Here are some things he failed to consider (and, quite frankly, most people who are new to virtual technology or use it occasionally, also fail to consider):

1.  Choose the right technology for the job and be sure you know how to use it. We recently received a directive from a client telling us to not use the highlighter tool to highlight text on the slide because "it doesn't work, it scribbles all over the slide."  In fact, the "breakdown" was with the Bamboo tablet in our office.

2.  You cannot decide, on the spur of the moment, that you will teach using virtual technology.  A delivery of this type must be planned for (see next article).  The writer bemoans: Tonight was going to involve role playing, discussions, presentations, and even interactive trivia.

3.  If you have a limiting belief that you can only "lecture" while using virtual teaching platforms, and that cannot be as successful as you would have been in the classroom - you will be correct. His sentiments exactly: Tonight I am subjecting my students to this hollowed-out lesson. I do so out of necessity. I know it is not the best experience for my students, or for myself..

The server and the virtual platform have little to do with one another other than being the "power cord;" would you say that your electric company was horrible if your lamp shorted out? We'd be frustrated too: I am now on my third attempt at uploading the lecture. During the two previous attempts a prompt came up, saying  "server failure." The program crashed and nothing was recorded or could be recovered. An hour lecture up in smoke - three times over, but it has nothing to do with the virtual classroom.

Virtual classrooms ARE the training room of the future. We recognize that not everyone will be comfortable there, and that's ok (not everyone is comfortable standing in front of a room speaking, either); but don't blame the technology for a lack of forethought, planning, or skill on the part of the human.

5 General Rules for Workplace Tests Part-5

Rule #5

Ordering Questions

You may wish to group evaluation questions by topic or you may mix them up. Back on the job, the work people encounter won't show up in any kind of logical sequence – so mixing questions up has its merits.

On the other hand, keeping questions grouped allows you to easily spot if a learner just "didn't get" a particular topic. If all the questions on a similar topic are grouped together and the learner answers all or almost all of them wrong, either he needs retraining or the topic itself was poorly presented. If your same-topic-area questions are interspersed throughout the exam, it might be harder for you to spot a problem.

5 General Rules for Workplace Tests Part-4

Rule #4

Use Key Words

Key words assist the test-taker in figuring out the answer.

• Who triggers the respondent to look for a person or position

• What triggers the test taker to look for a thing or a process

• Where triggers them to look for a place or location

• When triggers them to look for a date or a period of time

• Why will signal them to look for reasoning.

5 General Rules for Workplace Tests Part-2

Rule #2

Give Adequate and Specific Instructions

Instructions are critical. Do everything you can to make sure test takers know WHAT to do, and WHEN and HOW to do it.

Examples:

• If there is a time requirement, state it. e.g. you must finish this section in 30 minutes

• If a tool or resource is allowed, state it. e.g. you may use a calculator for questions 11 – 20. The opposite is true as well - you may NOT use a calculator to complete this section. For each item in column A there is ONLY ONE correct answer in column B.

• It's also quite helpful to read the instructions out loud at the start of the test even when they are clearly written on the test itself. This will ensure that everyone hears, sees, and interprets the directions the same way and allows for questions before anyone begins.

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.

Interview with an Expert: Susan Boyd

How to Make Learning Stick in Online Courses

T/D: Susan, why is there the perception that e-learning doesn't stick and what can we do about it?

Boyd: I think there are a variety of challenges that can cause an e-learning program to fail.  One in particular would be technology barriers which result in the trainee/learner not having the proper access to get to the course. Often a trainee/learner gets to the course only to find the content is really not pertinent to their job needs or find they have to go through 100 page turning screens just to find a small nugget of content that is pertinent.  It’s quite possible  the training will not stick because it's almost as though we're hiding the forest with the trees.  Trainees are not getting the overall picture.

Some trainees/learners really just want to get through the content thinking the ultimate purpose to e-learning is to get to the end. Many are only looking to find the “next” button and continue to push it until it’s at the end of the session.

T/D: What are some tips that can make this better?  Are your tips coming from the perspective of instructional designers who are the ones who create the training or are there tips for us as learners?

Boyd: Most of my tips have to do with content - I think that's the instructor and designer.  How to break up the content into chunks of learning, how to make it as job specific as possible.  Try to give the learner control of the content, make it interactive - those are things that instructional designers can do.

Preparing the learners and preparing the managers are also really key.  Many managers thought e-learning was just this magic button people push on their computer and, through osmosis, people would instantly learn the topic.  Managers don’t often invest enough time in following through:  Did people do it?  Do they understand it?  And are they applying it?

The key thing for the learners is to ensure, they can access it.  We have a generation of learners today that are more internet savvy - so that's wonderful.  But their computers at home are typically better than their computers in the office.

We need to make sure we're preparing them by whatever wizards they need to test their system.  Whether it's a webinar they're going to attend or it's how to get to the learning management system to enroll in the online course.  It needs to be made as easy as possible.  Maybe some frequently asked questions, or getting started guides are helpful.

T/D:    That’s not  as much making the learning stick as making the environment more accessible for the learning to stick.

Boyd: Right. Learning can't stick if you can't get to the course. Good point.  I look at this as a multi-faceted problem.  Part of it is the content design with the instructional design; part is working with the learners; part is working with the managers - providing them the right support material for what they need to do.

In terms of making learning stick, it’s important to make it real world.  People can relate to it and find the information in the course, but can also find it outside the course.  If there's a reference card or frequently asked question which can only be found in the course, that becomes the challenge because these are the types of things people need to access outside the course.  So there ought to be a way that they know where to find those same types of online references.

T/D: What tips do we have for training designers then?

Boyd: I think it's engaging and having the learning relate to something - hopefully it's a real world example.  Making some connection ia key part of it.  Using graphics and pictures - for example in safety courses - I worked with one client and the pictures we use are pictures of people on the factory line.  This particular client is a manufacturing company and there are examples of them where something is unsafe.  Maybe they're not wearing the proper protective equipment or there's a tripping hazard.  You're taking these real pictures and saying, what's wrong?

T/D: That's fun!

Boyd: Or saying, there are six things wrong with this picture, can you define them or click them.  In that case defining them sometimes is actually click in the area where you think there's a problem.  So it is forcing the learner to do something – we want the learners to do more than click on the “next” button.

TD: What I hear you saying, is in order to make e-learning stick, you have to understand how the learner is  going to use the content and support them through the process.  It's about managing the manager's expectations on how the learning will  be used or what the end result of the learning is.  Then designing it so that it's mentally stimulating and engaging for the  participants, which is a design process. It's pulling the learning from the participants which is what we normally do in the classroom, but we don't think it can be done online in my estimation.

Boyd: That's the challenge. E-learning was supposed to be able to get the right content to the right person at the right time.  They were equations that we had trouble with in the classroom - we could never deal with the right place and time - e-learning kind of takes away that barrier.  But we're still struggling with the content.

The design of the content has to understand the environment in which the content is going to be used.

T/D: Thank you Susan, The most powerful thing you said to me today was that when we take the learners out of the equation, we design bad e-learning.  That's really powerful because I think too often we think of e-learning as the 'e' part and we have to start thinking about it as the 'learning' part.

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Susan Boyd has over 30 years' experience in training and computer education, with extensive experience in planning and managing computer training projects. She has directed and participated in all phases of the projects including needs analysis, course development, train the trainers, course delivery and follow-up.  Susan has developed and delivered training in a variety of formats including instructor-led classroom, virtual training sessions using a webinar, and online asynchronous e-learning courses. You can learn more about Susan and contact her at www.susan-boyd.com

Accessing Employee Training through your local College or University

Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of an interview published in December 2012.

Miner: Another way that you can provide employee training and not do it yourself is to take advantage of colleges, universities or community colleges that are in your local area. Many people don't realize the wealth of information and the wealth of training opportunities that exist in their local colleges. They think of a college as a formal degree granting institution, but every college has a continuing education division which offers loads of professional development topics such as PowerPoint or supervisory skills.

I have a colleague that runs the Continuing Education division of a university near me. He's making money hand over fist by teaching lean manufacturing techniques to local manufacturers. Small manufacturers in our area who need the training and don't want to develop it themselves - don't have the savvy, don't have the time, don't have the money to develop it themselves - but it would benefit their business to learn about lean manufacturing techniques. So he created this whole week-long curriculum and his classes are always filled by individuals from the local manufacturing community.

That's one of the benefits of using a local university. It's not cost effective to develop training yourself if you only have one or two individuals who need a particular topic. You can buy customized training for an individual. If you have a Director of Operations that needs to learn about lean manufacturing techniques, you can send him to the university for that kind of training and not have to develop it yourself.

Local colleges are very cost effective - you can spend $79 for a short course or maybe $1000 for a week long course, which is much cheaper than you would ever be able to develop training yourself. And it's right in your backyard, so it really doesn't disrupt your worker’s life.

In addition to the Continuing Ed division, almost every community college has a Business and Industry division, but it might be called something different in your local area. In our local area I know we refer to it as the Business and Industry division. That division is actually a consulting-type division that is tasked with providing training to the local community. They do offer courses very similar to what the Continuing Ed division might offer, but in addition they will send facilitators to you if you have critical mass. So if you have 12 people who need to learn Microsoft Office 2010 and you have enough people, they'll send a facilitator to you. Not only do you not have to develop the training, you don't even have to send your people off to the local college - they'll send the instructor to you!

In addition, what's really beneficial about the Business and Industry division is that they will sometimes customize an offering for you. For instance, I had a client that wanted to teach their employees coaching skills. The “off the shelf” product that the local business and industry division offered wasn't geared toward my client’s industry, which was retail. They felt their employees wouldn’t really grasp it or identify with the concepts if it wasn't more specific to the retail industry. So they asked the Business and Industry division of their local Community College to tweak it, which they did for a minimal fee.

You can also ask your local college or university to develop a course or curriculum specifically for you. One of the most incredible examples that I have witnessed is a community college that developed a new hire data processing training curriculum for a local insurance company. The school opened a new division of the community college – in a small office building - right next to where the insurance company was located. Everybody who got hired by this insurance company went right to the community college for their first month of training. So, basically, the college was the de facto data-entry training program for the insurance company and the insurance company didn't have to do anything other than pay a monthly bill. They didn't have to design a curriculum, they didn't have to provide the facilities, they didn't have to provide the instructor - it was incredible.

So look to the resources that are right in your own backyard because a lot of times they're just there - ready to help you.

T/D: It sounds like even if you're a small or one-person training department you shouldn't feel overwhelmed by all your training responsibilities - 99% of the time the training's already happening informally or it's available in your backyard. All you have to do is take advantage of it.

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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.

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.

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

Your "smart phone" will make you dumber

Have you ever obligingly followed your GPS even though you were pretty sure it was steering you wrong (pun intended)? Have you ever followed your GPS to a location and, shortly thereafter, when you had to return, you realized you needed the GPS to do it?

While having the technology to save us time and save us from mistakes is wonderful, it also "saves us" from having to think. The more we don't have to think, the less capable we become of it.

Here is a simple experiment: pretend you are teaching how to tell time, on a clock. to a 7 year old. We have become so used to digital displays of time - on our microwave, cable box, telephone and car dash - that it is a struggle to explain how the hands and the numbers on a dial indicate the time.  And that is just one, very simple, example.

More and more in our professional journals we see articles about mobile technology. With every person (practically) in possession of a smart phone or tablet, the field of training is increasingly obsessed with ways to "push" information and answers to the learner, rather than teaching people how to think, investigate, reason or create an answer on their own.

Smart devices may save us time in the short term, but in the long run, they will hobble our learners' ability to actually learn.

Educational achievement in the US goes down

The US ranked fourth-worst among 29 developed countries for children obtaining a higher level of education than their parents, According to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In the US, only 21.6% of those  25 - 34 years old achieved a higher level of education than their parents. That compares to the OECD average of 36.8%.

Source: WSJ.com

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

The futility of tests

Sorry - no idea where this came from. Was forwarded on to us by a colleague.