The 4 Learning Outcomes all Training is Trying to Achieve
The Four Levels of Learning
While this month's topic is not directly related to adult learning theory, it is important to understand in terms of designing learning for adults.
Learning progresses "up a ladder" of difficulty from knowledge -which is the easiest way to design and transmit learning - to changed behavior on the job, which is the hardest to achieve through a learning process.
Knowledge is firmly rooted in education. It involves reading, lectures, and rote memorization. It is helpful for providing baseline information, such as facts and rules, and is easy to design because it is simply a collection of information. A learner often can partake of knowledge without any professional intervention.
Psychomotor skills are a bit more complex because they involve teaching someone to physically manipulate something such as a cash register or a fork lift. This type of instruction requires hands-on practice and a skilled instructor to demonstrate or coach appropriate behavior. This type of training takes longer to design because it includes both information and skill, and it takes longer to teach because an instructor is often required, and practice time should be included.
Proceeding up the ladder of difficulty, critical thinking skills are significantly harder to teach because they require teaching someone to think in a different way. For instance, teaching a loan officer how to determine if someone is eligible for a loan, includes both facts and rules (knowledge) - and applying those to some type of standard -in order to make a decision. Often, when teaching critical thinking, numerous scenarios must being practiced in order to have confidence that the learner will make the right decision no matter the variable stimuli.
Teaching critical thinking - within itself, can have many degrees of difficulty; from "easy" decision making - such as whether or not to grant a loan, to life or death decision making such as performing surgery. This type of learning process requires multiple exposures to information and situations (in other words, it takes longer to teach thinking skills) and is difficult to design in order to ensure that the trainee changes their thinking process permanently.
Finally, ultimately, the goal of training in the workplace is to get people to change their behavior on the job. This requires actually leaving the training and helping people to transition their new knowledge and skills to their on-the-job responsibilities. That can take a few days to a few months - especially if you're organization intends to do a level three evaluation in order to determine if changed behavior actually has occurred.
Before designing any training program, assess what your desired outcome is (from the four categories above) and invest the appropriate amount of time necessary for both the design and the successful completion of the training.
Quotable: Tom Gimbel
Our Training leaders don't provide the answers... they help people get to the answers themselves by posing thoughtful questions. They listen, observe, and think before reacting or responding.
Tom Gimbel, founder and CEO of LaSalle Network
CLO's Reasons for Outsourcing Training
Outsourcing some of your training functions such as instructional design (ahem) and delivery can help reduce the stress of creating and delivering content in an ever-changing environment. But don't take our word for it, here are some comments from CLO's Business Intelligence Board members, when surveyed about why they outsource:
Headcount reductions force us to seek outside assistance
There is no time for resources internally to develop training (this is the #1 reasons we hear, at The Training Doctor as well )
Outsourcing is more cost effective and flexible than hiring
In-house expertise becomes static and confined to specific areas
Subject matter expertise that the vendor brings
The vendor's ability to act as a partner
Why we can't effectively measure training outcomes (say the CLOs)
CLOs (Chief Learning Officers) believe their ability to deploy an effective [training] measurement process is limited by: Lack of resources, lack of management support, and an inability to bring data together from different functions. When the measurement programs are weak, most CLOs report their influence and role in helping achieve organizational priorities is also weak.
Source: Stagnant Outlook for Learning Measurement published in CLO Magazine, May 2015
Quotable: Michael Lee Stallard
Managers organize, leaders engage. People follow managers because these individuals have the authority to hire, fire, and promote them. People follow leaders because they are inspired to.
Quoted in Connect to Engage, published in TD, April 2015
Higher Ed Students are Used to Online Learning
About one-eighth of students enrolled in higher education institutions take all their coursework at a distance (online or through video, satellite or correspondence work), while another one-eighth take at least some classes at a distance according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education which focuses on best practices and technology for distance learning.
Free Podcasts Related to Workforce Development!
Looking to expand your horizons and gain some knowledge in the management arena? The AMA (American Marketing Association) is a great resource for free podcasts. You can find short audios from industry leaders such as Dan Pink, Marcus Buckingham, and Alexandra Levit on such topics as Collaborative Methods for Moving Forward, Why Technology is Doing More Harm Than Good, and Harnessing the Next Generation Workforce.
Learn more here!
Training Tailored to Millennials? Really?
Here is an excerpt from a recent TrainingIndustry.com blog article which suggests ways to “empower Millennials to succeed” in the workplace.
Our question: How is this specific to Millennials? This is simply a list of best-practices for quality training….The millennial generation is focused on people and professional development. They want to learn and feel empowered to lead and help others.
Kyle Borchardt of Virtuali and PJ Neal of Harvard Business Publishing offer the following suggestions on how organizations can empower millennials to succeed:
Instill leadership capabilities and a leadership mindset in millennials early in their careers, so they are ready to transition into more senior roles sooner.
Deliver small, continuous learning experiences over a longer timespan to ensure the learning sticks.
Have employees practice new skills on the job in combination with formal training programs.
Encourage employees to reflect on learning experiences to increase knowledge retention and improve behavior change.
Provide career coaching and mentorship opportunities customized to individuals.
Quotable: Leah Matthews
Distance education is bringing about a new revolution where students are putting together their own playlist of curriculum.
Leah Matthews, head of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission
WebEx Tip
In a recent poll of Training Doctor newsletter subscribers, the majority estimated that they only used 20 - 50% of their synchronous platform capabilities. So each month we will offer you a tip or "trick" - alternating between WebEx and Adobe Connect, the two most popular platforms.
WebEx Tip: Do you find that text "falls out" of your tables or you have weird line breaks on your slides once loaded to WebEx? Stick to Helvetica or Ariel for your slide font. WebEx gets persnickety otherwise - especially if your organization has its own custom font because it simply doesn't know how to translate it.
How is training predominately delivered?
training hours via method
Results of an eLearning! Magazine Group survey conducted Jan – April 2014 of 408 individuals in corporate, government, and educational institutions. Most respondents were non-managerial, trainer / teachers.
Online Collaboration MUST be Designed
All virtual classroom platforms pledge that their product enables your organization and your learners to work collaboratively. And it is true. All virtual classroom platforms allow for learners to interact verbally, via chat or instant messenger, through the use of feedback symbols or emoticons, and often through breakout rooms which enable smaller discussions and group activities to occur.
This doesn't just happen spontaneously, however. It is imperative that the training be designed to be collaborative.
How Organizations Set Themselves Up for Training to Fail
In the past year (2014), companies that wanted to do business with us asked us to do the following egregious activities in order to sabotage their own training effectiveness. These are the types of situations we don't want to be a part of:
Cutting time from the delivery process in order to save time and money.
Many organizations think that the same learning outcomes can be achieved in less time if we could just whittle this class down by 3 hours. In their minds, saving training time equates to saving money when organization's figure they are taking people away from their "real work" in order to attend training. But by not providing adequate time for training (and practice and coaching), people will inevitably make mistakes on the job which will cost money.
Cutting practice time out of the learning process so that participants are simply subjected to new content but have no ability to work with that content.
Most individuals do not make the 'transfer of training' on their own. And in many cases it is impossible to go from learning-to-doing without a period of practice. How did you learn to drive a car? Classroom only? Did you watch a video? I remember helping my niece learn to drive; she had a "habit" of braking right at the stop sign rather than slowing down as she approached it. When I asked her why she said, "That's how I learned - you can't crash the simulator."
No interaction or collaboration.
Companies often rely solely on the delivery of information without any activity or collaboration among the learners, even though we know that adults learn best through collaboration and application of their learning with others. Yes, it might only take 25 minutes to teach the information / skill, but it takes another 60 minutes to "get it" while working with others in order to hear their perspective, practice, get feedback, etc. Try brainstorming as many uses for a brick as you can - by yourself; now try it with 3 other people. Point made.
No time for reflection.
Organizations that want their training delivered in one shot, by default exclude time for observation and reflection which is a key adult learning principle
Adults have a lot of "rules" in their heads and a lot of learned behaviors in terms of how they conduct their job. If we ask them to change those "rules", they need time to reflect on the ramifications of those changes - what's in it for me? is this a good thing or a bad thing? Will I have a better outcome in the long-run? etc. A one-time training session does not allow for this critical need for processing information.
Happy with mediocre designs that sort-of get at the necessary learning.
One client asked us to create "the best design possible," and then, during the design review said "This learning process is too long and we will never get participants to do the pre-work or on-the-job assignments, so cut out the parts that aren't critical" (if this was the best design possible, exactly what parts would not be critical?).
Cut topics to save time.
When redesigning training to accommodate less training time and people's busy schedules, organizations often cut topics or content from their training programs. Our question is: at what point did that particular piece of content become unnecessary? If it was relevant in the original design, how did it become irrelevant in the redesign?
Cut feedback.
One of our clients has an independent assignment which learners have a month to complete. In its original incarnation, that assignment was then graded by an expert and feedback was provided to the participants. It was entirely possible to fail and be requested to re-work the assignment.
In an attempt to save money the grading of the assignment was eliminated, which of course, trickled down to the learners asking, "Then what is the point of doing the assignment?" or "Why do a quality job?"
Training is both an art and a science. It is much more than providing information and saying "good luck with that!" Transmission of information is only half the battle; in fact, it may only be 1/3 of the battle (with the other two-thirds being practice/collaboration and on-the-job application/coaching)!
If you want your organizational training efforts to succeed, please, don't fall victim to the missteps just discussed!
Tell us YOUR "fail" story here !https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XXMBCZX
Quotable: Bob Mosher
To survive, and thrive, we need learners to own their own engagement, not an organization that drives it.
Excerpted from: It All Starts with Learners, Bob's regular column in CLO Magazine
Adults Need Time for Real World Application
Real World Application
Trainees need to return to their jobs behaving differently than when they went into the training; therefore workplace training relies on 'real world application.' Unfortunately, most training designs don't allow for real-world application. They include a lot of theory or rules (we pre-qualify a sales lead so that we don't waste our time pursuing someone who will never buy), practice in a fabricated manner (work with a partner to create or practice the pre-qualifying questions you would use back on-the-job), stories of successes (Jim, our star salesperson, spends 80% of his time pre-qualifying and only 20% making sales), and sometimes a checklist or job-aid reminder of the process / steps we have taught.
Is this how you would teach someone to ride a bike (Let's hear from Mike, who has experience in bike riding) or counsel a drug addict (Work with a partner to come up with some questions you might ask the patient)? No. But far too often this is the "design" we see in corporate training programs.
The point? Training, in order for it to stick and be sustained, must include real world application so that people understand what the task or process is and how they would actually perform it on the job. We know about chunking, we know about timed-intervals, now we need to also embrace real-world application.
Have trainees go back on the job and actually practice what they have been taught - BEFORE the training is over. Give them time to practice and fail and report back on what they have learned. Give them time to try two or three techniques to see which they are most comfortable with. It's much smarter to learn from one's own experience than Jim's or Mike's.
Training Design with Adults in Mind
There are a few techniques you can use to make learning easier on your workplace learners:
Structure - helps learners to keep track of detail; give them an agenda to follow-along
Known to unknown - Flying a plane to flying a helicopter
Easy to difficult - Painting with a brush to painting with a roller to painting with a power painter
Problem to solution - Getting lost to learning to read a map or compass
Frequent to infrequent - Running weekly payroll to running monthly invoices to running yearly W-2's*
Overview to detail - This is how government works to this is how an election is conducted
Theoretical to practical (big picture to doing your job) - The importance of eating right to planning menus
Order of importance or performance - Checking safety of machinery before operating it
Steps in a sequence (chronological) - Filling out a form; validating customer information
How participants would most likely interact with material - Teach blackjack by sitting at a blackjack table, not reading a manual
Exercises - are very effective, unless...
"Unusual" or complex exercises interfere with learning - learners may miss the point
Adults don't like far-fetched or artificial exercises - respect their maturity
Need some challenge (but not too much) - remember to keep the environment safe
Stories-are "sticky" - stories help learners to remember. Anytime you are about to go in to lecture mode, ask yourself, "Is there a story I could tell that would illustrate this just as well?" and then, at the end of the story, ask your learners "So what is the moral of this story?" THAT is when the true learning comes about; give the audience time to process the point of the story and draw a conclusion - otherwise it was an interesting story that happened to somebody else.
Keep 'em active! - nobody sits for hours on end at the job - don't expect it in training either.
Blended Learning Uses the Best of all Training Methodologies
Organizations have displayed an increased interest in blended learning, which takes the best of all training methodologies from the perspectives of demographics, economics, and instruction.
Demographics
For the most part, the demographic factors affect learning in the workplace and concern the population of learners. Especially in today's globally diverse work environments, organizations need to make adjustments for multiple languages, various time zones, multiple generations, and cultural differences. While the content of the learning program may be the same (basic selling skills, for example), the design or delivery may have to be altered to accommodate varying demographics of the audience.
Economics
Often, training delivery options are dictated by the economics involved. For example, classroom-based training will require travel expenses, maintaining or renting classroom space, and the printing and reproduction of materials. Computer-based training options are more economical in many ways; however, they require their own set of economic decisions such as adequate server space, the hosting of a web site, and secure access and record keeping.
Instruction
The design of the actual instruction can vary greatly based on things such as individual learning styles, how immediate the need is for the training, or what access learners have to instructional methodologies. Do they have individual computer workstations? Are they able to leave their jobs to attend a 4 hour or 8 hour training class?
Want to learn more? Order your own copy here !
Adobe Connect Tip - for easier classroom management
One of the wonderful things about Adobe Connect is the fact that the pods make it so malleable... one of the maddening things about Adobe Connect is trying to get all those pods in place easily and at the right time.
One option: Create a layout for your activity instead.
Say, for example, your activity is for participants to respond to the question, How Do You Create the Perfect Impression on a New Client? What do you do before, during and after the sales call? and you have a separate chat pod for each response (before, during, after). Rather than try to move the pods in to the participant viewing area quickly and neatly, use a separate layout where they are already set up. Then, with one click, you can move the whole group to the layout.
From the menu bar, click Layout > Create New Layout
Then choose to create a blank layout (you will have to bring in every pod you want in this layout) or duplicate an existing layout (if you know you want video, attendee list and chat, you might want to duplicate the standard 'sharing' layout)
Give the layout a name so you can easily find it in the list of layouts on the right of your screen (using our example above, we'd probably call this layout Before, During, After)
Click OK. Populate the room with whatever pods you need (again, using our example, we'd need 3 chat pods)
Now, when that time in the course arrives, simply click on the Before, During, After layout thumbnail and voila! your three chat pods are at the ready and participants can begin their activity much more quickly.
Quotable: Jay Titus
Millennials will account for close to 50 percent of the workforce within the next five years. Corporate learning leaders need to be the champion for making professional development an organizational priority. We need to be taking educational benefits out of the last page of the employee handbook and shining a spotlight on it. In the next five to 10 years it’s going to be a key differentiator for employers who do it well.
Jay Titus, EdAssist
Excerpted from: http://www.clomedia.com/blogs/1-ask-a-gen-y/post/6303-millennials-will-work-for-knowledge