Quotable: Fletcher Kittredge

Given the ever increasing rate of change, companies need to structure themselves so that they can adapt quickly to changing conditions. It is neither practical nor economical to be constantly hiring new employees to meet the new needs caused by rapid change. The only feasible strategy is to hire talented people of good character and constantly train them in new skills. Education and training will have to be a fundamental competency of any company that wants to be successful over the next decade.

Quotable: Fletcher Kittredge CEO and founder of GWI

How much do you really know about learning?

Parade Magazine recently had an informative back-to-school quiz  focused on learning facts.  Follow this link to see how much you really know. After you answer each question it will tell you the research behind the answer.  We'll give you a few clues because they are important to training:

Testing doesn't simply measure what you know-it reinforces what you know, says psychologist Henry Roediger III, Ph.D., of Washington University in St. Louis. Every time you summon facts from memory, you strengthen your brain's hold on the material. (Editor's Note: this is why, at The Training Doctor, we always say that the quiz is just the final part of the learning process.)

Research on what's known as the "spacing effect" shows that we form stronger and more lasting memories by exposing ourselves to information over time. Repeated cycles of learning, consolidating, and then re-encountering material fix it firmly in our minds.

It's much more effective to "interweave" different types of problems - mixing them up so you learn how to quickly identify which approach is needed to solve each one. For example, a study of baseball batters found that when different types of pitches - fastballs, curveballs, sinkers-were mixed up unpredictably during practice, the players became more adept at scoring a hit.

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

Seeing is.... comprehending

You know the phrase "seeing is believing?" There is much truth to that, it turns out. However, in our world, the phrase should be, "seeing is comprehending."

Although it is our eyes that take in visual stimuli, it is our brains that make sense of it. John Medina has a chapter (#10) in his book, Brain Rules, which includes some interesting examples of patients who have perfect sight but damage to their brains, in one way or another, that prevents them from understanding or interpreting what they see.

The brain processes shapes and symbols by putting them together in an 'organized' way and thereby making sense of them and making a connection to them. The brain works hard to make these connections.  One of the reasons optical illusions work so well is because they purposefully interrupt the making of connections.

What is the lesson to be learned here in terms of training? Only one that we have been trumpeting for years: use visuals in your learning materials.  The brain will naturally associate the content with the visual. It helps to have visuals that link to the content (e.g. Here are the 5 keys to qualifying a sales prospect, accompanied by a photo of a key) however, they don't have to. Any visual will cause an associated link in the learner's mind. You could simply have the 5 bullets set off in a colorful table and that would make a visual connection to the words for the learner, as well.

Visuals belong in the obvious places (your slides) and the not so obvious places (the workbook, the job aid).  Our visual cortex is the most developed of all our senses so you use it to your advantage in developing training.

Employee training leads to strong business performance

The #1 focus of Hubert Joly, Best Buy's new CEO, is employee training. He believes that inconsistent training across stores is what has led to uneven performance among stores and overall sales decline. His mission is to make store employees an "undisputed point of reference" for customers. 

Source: Chicago Tribune

Paying workers to learn? Yes! Great idea!

Now here's a twist - and a good one at that.  Okanagan College (British Columbia) is offering free training for retail and food service workers. Upon successful completion the learners get paid $500.

The curriculum includes: exceeding customer expectations; powerful sales systems; productivity and efficiency; product knowledge; effective communication; problem solving; accountability and ownership; and workplace health and safety.

The retail employees will have their own "track" as will the food service workers.  There are four days of training (9a - 4p) as well as six hours of self study.

Learners must be presently employed in the industry and have no college degree.

What a win-win-win - the employers get free training provided to their employees (and lots of it! How many organizations give 24 hours of training to retail or food service workers?); the employees get enhanced business knowledge and skills that can be put to use immediately as well as being an important addition to their resume; and the local region has a pool of well-trained individuals which can only help the local economy as a whole.

Mobile device usage for workplace learning

In a study of 40 large companies in various industries conducted in the fourth quarter of 2011, Boston-based Aberdeen Group found that mobile devices were used by:

• 55% for internal online communities or forums

• 48% for informal learning activities and development

• 42% for formal learning and development.

The results suggest that mobile devices represent a "strategic part of the formal learning plan," Mollie Lombardi, Aberdeen's research director for human capital management, wrote in a January report titled Learning on the Move

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!

Quotable: Daniel Burris

Mobile learning is a bigger deal than most organizations realize. It represents an amazing disruption and opportunity in how we educate.

Quotable: Daniel Burrus, CEO of Burrus Research Associates Inc.

Why the 2-hour training class doesn't work

Research on what’s known as the “spacing effect” shows that we form stronger and more lasting memories by exposing ourselves to information over time. Repeated cycles of learning, consolidating, and then re-encountering material fix it firmly in our minds.

Quotable: Jim Kelso

The best training programs are a combination of just-in-time training and practical application.

Quotable: Jim Kelso, Intel's Accelerated Leadership Program Manager

American education - preparing kids for the real world?

Here are some interesting perspectives on the American education system from Harvard Business Review blogger Tammy Erickson:

• While kids today communicate widely using technology, their teachers and school systems do not

• Kids often suggest a teacher or parent "Google" an answer "just to be sure" rather than relying on the knowledge or experience of the adult

• What kids learn in school today will prepare them for the Industrial Age, which is long gone; kids themselves want learning that is relevant and will enable them to be gainfully employed as adults

You can read the entire blog here.

When does the learning occur?

Let’s preface this article with two assumptions:

1. Most people who design training are not schooled in how to design training, these days. They are more typically subject matter experts.

2. 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.

Quotable: Daphne Koller

While the rising costs of healthcare in the United States seems to make the news daily, the cost of higher education has risen 559% since 1985.

Quotable: Daphne Koller; Co-founder: Coursera

Speed to Mastery - from Forum Corporation

Forum Corporation has designed a salesforce.com-like product for training. It combines classroom training, individualized support for when learners are back on the job, and a game-like interface.  It’s an innovative and inspiring way to learn and ensure on-the-job skills application!

You can learn more here: https://vimeo.com/44737652

Note: Forum Corp is one of The Training Doctor’s clients but we aren’t promoting Speed to Mastery because of that – we are promoting it because it is BRILLIANT.

Quotable: Donald Kirkpatrick

There is general agreement that the same approach should not be used for appraisals aimed at salary decisions and those aimed at improving performance. But in both approaches, an appraisal of performance IS necessary.  The main difference is that performance appraisal looks back, and the training looks ahead.

Quotable: Dr. Donald Kirkpatrick, Professor Emeritus University of Wisconsin and Honorary Chairman of Kirkpatrick Partners

Look BEYOND the training - if you want it to be successful

According to Robert Brinkerhoff, training events alone typically result in only 15% of transfer of learning to on the job behavior. So if you truly want your participants to be successful on the job, after training, you need to think beyond the training event itself.

There must be processes or systems in place that reinforce, monitor, encourage , or reward the performance of those things you consider to be critical on the job behaviors. We spend much of our time as trainers, worried about Level 1 and Level 2 outcomes (did the trainees like the training in the short-term and did the trainees leave with more knowledge than they came with) but not enough time on whether or not the trainees are implementing their new skills and knowledge on the job.

Before you start any training program, start with the end in mind, because the training will only contribute 15% to the success of your initiative. Be especially analytical of what you expect to see people doing differently on the job and how you expect them to be successful on the job. Very seldom will someone have the initiative or the time or the thorough understanding to be able to transfer what they learned in a class to their real work responsibilities.

The futility of tests

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