Multi-tasking, multi-media, and our future...
A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young learners, aged 8 - 18., spend more than 7.5 hours a day engaged with computers, cell phones, TV, music or video games - and more often than not, they are using these devices simultaneously (at least two at a time).
Studies have shown that multitasking can lead to faster response time, improved peripheral vision and a greater ability to sift through information quickly, BUT it also leads to a diminished ability to focus for long periods.
This worries us in regards to future doctors, researchers and other professions that require long and intense periods of concentration. What if our doctor gets bored in the middle of our arthroscopic surgery? What if our budding researcher ALMOST finds the cure for AIDS but then the coffee cart goes by?
Smaller is Better When it Comes to m-Learning
When creating mobile learning (consumed from a smart phone or similar), keep your content to 4 to 7 items and your goal should be for the learner to read it, watch it, and be able to understand it well enough to feed it back,in 3 – 5 minutes.
You Can't Argue with Free Training - can ya?
PwC Open University (Pricewaterhouse Coopers) has offered 150 of their courses to the public. The topics range from the evolution of global business services to disaster preparedness in healthcare systems. All topics are delivered via webcast, podcast or eLearning. Check it out at www.pwc.com/OpenUniversity
The Training Doctor offers $2100 scholarship!
The Training Doctor offers 2 scholarships per year, for the fall and spring semesters, each in the amount of $500. You must be a working professional and working toward an advanced degree in the field of Training or Organization Development.
BUT THE NEXT AWARD WILL BE IN THE AMOUNT OF $2100 in honor of our 21st anniversary!
In many cases $2100 doesn't help you pay tuition - it IS tuition for the semester.
Deadline is Dec 1 for applications. Award will be announced by Dec. 20, 2011.
Go to the training doctor website > About Us > Philanthropy for the application form. Good luck!
Ain't That The Truth?
SMEs are often fixated on two topics [when they design training]: The coolest thing you can do and the most difficult thing you can do.
The Importance of Reinforcing Training
Yes it's a sales pitch, but here's a great little tutorial on the need to reinforce training http://tinyurl.com/3ze2424
SC Midlands Chapter of ASTD - Thanks
We spoke at the ASTD Midlands chapter (SC) last week at their 2nd annual conference and expo. What an outstanding and professional job they did! Highly recommend you check them out next year!
On-the-job training: An interview with training expert Diane Walter
Diane Walter, of OJT, is the author of the book, “Training on the Job” published by ASTD in 2002; and has written numerous articles for professional, trade, and academic publication. She’s a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and has helped all types of organizations to implement successful on the job programs.
T/D: Diane, let's start with a definition - what is on-the-job training?
DW: On-the-job training is basically any training that occurs at the work site using real equipment, real material and whatever else you would use to do the job. You can train two to three people at once, but usually it’s one-on-one and the training is conducted by a fellow employee or supervisor. It’s the oldest type of training and the most common type of training used in companies., However, it’s often the most misused and misunderstood type of training.
T/D: You say there are two types of OJT. How do they differ?
DW: One type is unstructured and informal OJT and the other is structured OJT. I’m sure that everyone has experienced unstructured OJT at one time or another. Probably at every job you’ve had, you’ve had to learn something that somebody else had to show you how to do; we call, “The Buddy System.” This really is not a good system and usually the one you don’t want, but is the one that most people tend to use because they don’t know about structured OJT.
The problem with “The Buddy System” is that one person teaches another person and that person then teaches another person and what happens is a lot of details are left out. There are no written training materials, there are no plans for the training, there are no regularly scheduled training sessions, and it just tends to be haphazard.
A better approach is structured OJT. Structured OJT is different in that it is a formal approach. It includes regularly scheduled training sessions, appointing a designated trainer, who may be a coworker but will be someone designated to perform OJT, who will have a systematic method for delivering the OJT. This is important because you want to be as consistent as possible from trainee to trainee.
A very important thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that you really need written training materials. You also need to have performance objectives so that the trainee and the trainer know exactly what needs to be done and how well they have to be able to do it.
Structured OJT utilizes small chunks of information which is something you can teach in approximately half an hour or less and you can train on basically anything from how to properly operate a fax machine to overhauling a jet aircraft.
T/D: Really? How do you manage a big training task such as working on a jet engine, in an OJT format?
DW: The (training) job is accomplished by breaking down the different tasks. I'll give an example of a project I worked on. The overall job task was overhauling the entire engine. The task was broken down after answering two questions: What do you need to know and what do you need to be able to do to overhaul a jet engine?
The team then proceeded to list the different tasks and then break that up into pieces, such as disassembling the jet engine, making the needed repairs, testing the engine once the repairs were made, cleaning it once it was tested and reassembling the engine. Those were the main categories to focus on.
Then we began with the first step of the process: what do you need to know and be able to do when disassembling an engine? The team I was working with brainstormed all of the tasks involved, which were approximately 75 to 80 different tasks by the time they completed the project. Those each could be taught in a structured on-the-job, format.
T/D: That's a great example. But, should every company have a structured OJT program? I can see the benefits for a large company but if you bring it down to a smaller sized company how would that apply? Why should they have a structured OJT program?
DW: Actually it has nothing to do with the size of the project. It has more to do with the day-to-day job tasks, and most job tasks are not that large even in big companies.
The main reason you should have a structured OJT program is due to the fact that research has shown that 90 percent of any employee’s job knowledge and skills is learned through OJT. That has been documented in numerous books and studies but it’s a little known fact.
Therefore, 90 percent of the knowledge and skills that employees are out there learning occurs on the job and it’s quite scary when you realize that the majority of that is learned through “The Buddy System” type OJT.
On top of that, research also shows that companies spend six times more money on OJT than all other training combined and this money is not budgeted for because it's typically not considered “formal training.”
If 90 percent of the job is learned that way, and your spending six times more money on a haphazard process, that just doesn’t make sense.
For more information you can reach Diane at www.teamojt.com or email her at diane@teamojt.com.
Harnessing Informal Learning
In the late 1990's the Institute for Research on Learning sent anthropologists to companies to look at how people do their work. They discovered that most learning occurs on the job. In fact, they determined that 80% of learning occurs informally by trial and error or by asking a co-worker.
Jay Cross was fascinated by these findings and has dedicated a large part of his professional career since then to getting the word out about how effective informal training can be if we just harnessed it in some way. Here is an excerpt from an interview with T+D journal from Sept 3, 2011.
Chief learning officers who continue to let informal learning happen by accident are leaving money on the table. There's plenty they can do to make it better. For example, they can make expertise more accessible through profiles and social networks. They can replace lots of classroom training (frequently forgotten before it has a chance to be applied) with on-demand learning. They can replace wordy courses with intuitive graphics. They can replace cumbersome workshops with coaching sessions..."
One of the other things Jay endorses, which we at The Training Doctor have been saying for years, is "If people are going to learn on their own, you've got to give them time to talk. Conversation is the most important learning technology the world has ever seen."
Adults learn best through collaborating with others while they learn - so allow them that time, not only "at work" but also "at training," to work through their learning with their colleagues and determine how to make it apply on the job.
Peter - meet Paulette. Namesake of The Paulette Principle
Dr. Laurence Johnston Peter (September 16, 1919 – January 12, 1990) was an educator and "hierarchiologist", best known to the general public for the formulation of the Peter Principle.
He became widely famous in 1968, on the publication of The Peter Principle, in which he states: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."
The Peter Principle became one of the most profound principles of management from the University of Southern California.(fromWikipedia)
Peter, we'd like you to meet Paulette. Paulette is Peter's cousin. The Paulette Principle (coined by The Training Doctor, circa 1991) states "Most people who are good at what they do, are terrible at training others to do the same." Some of the sub-principles associated with The Paulette Principle are:
Just because someone is good at what they do, doesn't mean they can explain it to others.
Just because someone is good at what they do, doesn't mean they even KNOW exactly what they are doing.
Most people who are really good at what they do, can't remember what it was like to be "new" and skip over very basic, crucial, introductory information.
Most people who are really good at what they do, know too much and fill their trainees heads with lots of cool stories and fascinating asides that are exciting (for the SME) to talk about, but leave the learner confused about what is the crucial information to know and what is "nice to know."
Example: An individual, who was involved in helping to create a proprietary software product for his company, then became the trainer of the field service representatives who were charged with installing and customizing their software at the client's sites. Within the first 45 minutes of class the Subject Matter Expert / Trainer explained the difference between a comma-delimited file and a non-comma-delimited file and explained how the tables worked behind the scenes to manipulate the data. What the trainees really need to know was, "What is the appropriate format for entering data in to the system? Do you put commas between items or not?" The class went on for 4 more days and the trainees were bombarded with much more 'extraneous' information.
Needless to say - no one was able to pass the test at the end of the training.
Lessons from Games we can use in Training
Fascinating article in T+D (ASTD's journal) from May 2011 regarding three important lessons to be learned from games / game designers / gamers - and how they can be applied to training.
1 - Define a starting point and objective, but not the path to be taken
The author (Ben Betts) correctly points out that in a video game there are many ways to "get to the next level." Some will get you there faster than others. Some will be better than others. But each path the gamer takes is a lesson learned. So repeated exposure to the environment, while they are trying to figure out how to get to the 'answer,' is a great way to developing reasoning, problem solving and decision making - things that we are sorely lacking in most employees, you'll no doubt agree.
2 - Measure the experience, not the journey
Too often we are are consumed with how long the training has taken to accomplish. As trainers we say "this should take 30 minutes to learn;" as learners we say "only 20 more slides until I am finished!" These "goals" aren't learning goals at all. Instead, by tracking progress against accomplishing objectives or against peers, we can keep the focus on the journey and the experience. Games often award "experience points" - you actually earn more points by taking longer to play the game, because you encounter and experience more things in the environment. Using this methodology helps to prevent people from finding the shortest route to "the end."
3 - The learning process is you "against" a peer - not you "against" the computer
The learning process needs to have a social element. Once you beat the computer you can say you have won. But when you are competing against another person, or multiple persons, there will be an element of the unknown. Different players bring different strategies one has to adapt to. The process you used yesterday may not be the process that works in your favor today.
It all makes sense and is very exciting... now, how to put it in to practice?
You Talk Too Much!
In our observations over the years we have found that online facilitators often commit 2 common errors:
1 - They talk too much.
It seems they do not think through, in advance, the instructions they want to give or how they want to transmit information to their learners, so they say the same thing, but in a variety of ways, as if they are trying to find the "best way" to express themselves at that moment. Here is a case in point from a session we recently observed:
Facilitator:
I'd like you to find 2 blank piece of pieces of paper. They can be blank pieces of paper from the printer. Or, it can be the back of your intersession assignment - if you printed it out. It can be the blank back-sides of the pages from your workbook and if you only have one piece of paper, you can turn it over for the second activity - so therefore, you have two pieces of paper.
Really? You have to supply that many suggestions to find a blank piece of paper?! When teaching online, it is imperative to be very specific in your language and only give your participants exactly the information they need to be successful in the class or at the task you are preparing them for. Learning by listening is the hardest way to learn - do not overwhelm your learners with a bunch of extraneous information that they have to "weed through" to get to the important message. "Please, take out a blank piece of paper and indicate when you are ready" is sufficient.
2 - They are afraid of silence.
This is not a phone conversation when dead-air indicates someone is no longer engaged in the conversation. When we are learning online - - we need to expect that people are thinking and processing - - and they do that quietly. When you ask, "Think of a situation that exemplifies X and write it in chat" don't panic when nothing shows up in chat for 90 seconds or more. People are fulfilling the task you just assigned them. If you begin to talk again, you simply stop their processing and then you truly get nothing in response. Ask a question and be quiet, please.
More on Informal Learning
Interestingly, right after our post below on Informal Learning at Work, we came up on the September T+D (by ASTD) profile of Jay Cross - one of the most vocal champions of informal learning at work. He discusses how he first became aware of the power of Informal Learning and offers some great ideas for CLOs to harness the power of informal learning rather than "leaving money on the table."
You can read his profile here: http://post.ly/34sFe
Informal learning at work - at work
"Social learning" and "informal learning" are among the training industry's hottest phrases these days, according to Jane Bozarth, Ph.D. And we saw informal learning at work, working, just this week.
A client of ours has approximately 80 work at home CSRs. Their managers and support people are in the "corporate" office. The work at home CSRs work part-time schedules - 3 - 4 hours a day - so not everyone is at work at the same time and, of course, there is no central gathering place for them, except... there is!
The workers, and their managers, keep an open "chat" dialogue box on their screen throughout their work day. When they have a question such as "Are we allowed to tell the customer X" they can quickly get an answer - from a co-worker or a manager - while still on the phone with the customer. When a policy or procedure is newly updated or issued, they can get the information as quickly as the CSRs who are working in the brick-and-mortar office building. And best of all, for those who are not online at the exact time that any of these learning opportunities occur, the chat keeps a history - so they can review what happened while they were away.
What a useful addition to their work lives!
FR~EE on-demand webcasts
ASTD is offering a free (if you are a national member) webcast, on-demand webcastfrom Dr. Nanette Miner - managing consultant of The Training Doctor, LLC.
Topic: https://www.td.org/membership/profdevwebcast
Enjoy!
FR~EE Synchronous Delivery Platform
We recently came upon AnyMeeting which seems to include all the features you may want in a synchronous platform, without all the money! We have not checked it out yet. If you do, please post a comment. They say they offer:
Meeting size of up to 200 ppl
Email invites and registration
Screen sharing, polling, chat and Q+A
Web cam broadcasting
Their integrated con call # (probably a charge, but we don't know) or VoIP
Recording and hosting of the recordings
Ability to export attendance and survey results
And all of this is free; the site is supported by advertising revenue
GREAT Phrase for us Trainers to keep in mind
Not sure if he orginated this phrase, but we saw a recent article of Bob Pike's in which he states...As a trainer, if you haven't caught it - I haven't taught it.
The Importance of Using Questions in Training
There are two types of questions we can use in training: Those that make people repeat back what we just taught them and those that make people think. If you really want to get people to the point where they have learned, and not just memorized, you need to incorporate the latter type of question in to your training tool kit.
Example: Memorize: When do we file the G39 reports? Learn: Why is it important that we file the G39 reports?
Questions that help people to learn are always open ended questions: What if? When will? How is? Why would? These types of questions require learners to explain their thinking, their opinion and their perspective on a topic. They allow you, the trainer, to better understand if the person "got it" and to correct or provide additional information if necessary.
So the next time you allow for Q+A in your training, be sure to create questions that require the learner to do more than regurgitate what it is you just told them.
You Are What You Say
On December 16th, 2010, a team spanning the Cultural Observatory, Harvard, Encyclopedia Britannica, the American Heritage Dictionary, and Google published a paper describing the Culturomics approach online in the journal Science, and at the same time launched the world's first real-time culturomic browser on Google Labs.www.culturomics.org
= = = =
What’s fascinating about this field of study is that through data crunching, we can identify how society and human behavior is changing over the years. For instance, in the last 20 years in pop music, more artists are referring to themselves (me, my, I) than they have in the past.
The ongoing study referred to in the above website has also determined that the English language is 70% larger than it was just 50 years ago! Over 8,000 words were added in the year 2000 alone. Why does that concern us trainers? It’s just one more example of how what people “know to be true” is in constant flux and changing rapidly. It should make you stop, at least for a moment, to ponder if “creating training” is really a smart move.
Perhaps it’s smarter to harness the informal ways that training occurs in the workplace. Perhaps it’s smart to teach people to fish than to provide them with the fish. In other words, perhaps it’s time we concentrate on creating training processes and less on creating training content.
The Benefits of Training Virtually
We created this for a client as sort of a "thought piece" - and we thought you'd like to see it too...
Too many organizations look at offering virtual learning simply from a cost-savings perspective. And while virtual learning can save both time and money – the most important reason for incorporating it in to your learning delivery methodologies is because it has significantly better learning outcomes for the learner.
Adult learning principles, tell us, among other things, that adults prefer to learn collaboratively, prefer to learn things with immediate applicability to the work that they do, prefer their learning delivered in chunks, and learn best through application and reflection. Each of these outcomes are achieved via virtual training because participants can join a group of learners, even if they are the only person at their location who needs a particular training topic (collaboration), and, since the training is offered in smaller chunks than a classroom based course would be, participants have the ability to immediately apply their new knowledge or skills and bring back their experiences to the next session with a better understanding of the topic due to having the time to apply and reflect between virtual sessions.
Classroom Asynchronous Synchronous
Small group work often wastes time due to physically needing to move people together; if all small groups are in the same room, the volume can be overbearing; the facilitator can move to only one group at a time to monitor or assist. No collaboration.
Small group work occurs seamlessly by moving participants to ‘breakout rooms’ with their own audio lines; the facilitator and producer can easily move between rooms to assist instructionally or technically, as needed; all groups can be monitored simultaneously from the host/presenter view
Typically 4 or 8 hours, one class session.
Often what is taught at the beginning of the session is “lost” by the end Smaller (20 – 30 minute) chunks for better retention and the ability to review Typically 1 – 2 hour chunks which allows for between-session application and better retention Can teach knowledge and skills Typically only teaches knowledge Can teach knowledge and skills BUT knowledge is typically relegated to offline work so that the online time is focused solely on application and collaboration among the learners in attendance Limited time for reflection and analysis Allows for reflection and analysis but one is limited to what one knows – no ability to test one’s ideas against others Reflection and analysis occurs defacto due to multiple sessions.
Participants are able to come back (in the next session) to the facilitator and their peers with experience and questions Most group activities occur serially. For example, when participants introduce themselves only one person can speak at a time and the activity can take 40 minutes or more. Those who speak first become disinterested and impatient
No group activities
Group activities can occur concurrently which speeds up the amount of time needed to conduct the activity and ensures participation and collaboration from all. For example, during introductions participants can be asked to share their years on the job or their experience with the topic by answering a poll, responding in chat, or writing on the whiteboard –all of which can be done concurrently, and the responses can be reviewed in three minutes or less Often attendance is limited to who is ‘on site’ – participants often work with peers they already know No collaboration with others Participants can come from any area of the globe which broadens learner’s insight and perspective in to the company as well as creating broader networks of peers / colleagues