How to Improve Training Recall? S P A C E O U T Learning

Long-term recall is far better when we learn information over several sittings, and any amount of spacing appears to help a lot. The longer we need to remember information, the more the learning should be spaced out.

Source: Chief Learning Officer Magazine, May 2015, Your Brain on Learning

Thinking Through Instructional Design Choices (Tailored Learning book excerpt)

Depending on the delivery method, designers must consider how these choices influence design, desired impact on the job, and any assessment plan.

Design Implications

Different delivery methods will change the design of the course. A classroom-based course can be very interactive and can include group activities in the design. However, an asynchronous would determine whether the interaction or activity is crucial to the learning, and if not, then determine how the same learning outcome could be achieved by an independent learner.

Impact on the Job

Ultimately, any training program should enable participants to return to their jobs and implement what they have learned during the training. To accomplish this, the learning must be designed in a way that is immediately applicable on the job, and the participant must be motivated to use the new knowledge and skills.

For example, in a classroom-based training course, a follow-on activity might be for the facilitators to check in with the participants once a week to see what kind of success they are having implementing their new knowledge and skills back on the job, as well as to offer support and coaching. However, if the training course is designed to be offered asynchronously, the coaching may have to be offered by the participant's sales manager or more senior salesperson in the office. While the same objective can be met, the methodology for meeting that objective might be quite different.

 The Assessment Plan

If the ultimate goal is to have an individual return to the job prepared to implement new knowledge and skills, then there should be some way of assessing whether the training has been successful in accomplishing that goal. Similar to on-the-job considerations, assessment approaches might differ depending on how the training is delivered. Therefore, the assessment for each objective will be defined once the training approach has been determined.

Changing Behavior Through Asking Questions

Because adults have a lot of "rules in their heads" about how things work (or how they work best for them) they aren't inclined to change their behavior on the job simply because you say so or even if you tell them why a change is in their best interest. 

One of the ways you CAN assist adults in changing the way they think about a behavior, and the potential benefits of changing that behavior, is through asking questions.

Here is an example: Let's assume you are not registered to vote. You could read a pamphlet (asynchronous learning) or attend a voter registration meeting (how to register, your voter rights) but none of that information is likely to get you to change your beliefs / behavior regarding voting.

What if, instead, you were asked "Why is it considered a privilege, in the United States, to have the right to vote?" or "Why is it important for you, personally, to register to vote?"  NOW you are getting at deeper analysis and thinking. People need to think through and explain their reasoning. Sometimes they will come up with the same answer (not going to register; no compelling reason to vote), but more often than not, they change their thinking and more importantly they change their behavior because they came up with the "answer" on their own (even though you led them to it; but shhhh, that will be our little secret).

Asking the right types of questions is a powerful technique to assist adults in adopting new ways of thinking and behaving.  We challenge you to go through a course you currently teach and simply insert some questions that will cause your learners to think. You'll realize remarkable changes in behavior when you do so.

Why We Should Ban Cell Phones During Training Classes

Gloria Mark, of the University of California, Irvine, has shown that workers typically attend to a task for about three minutes before switching to something else (usually an electronic communication) and that it takes about 20 minutes to return to the previous task.

Source: Harvard Business Review, June 2015, Conquering Digital Distraction

No, You Cannot Replicate Your F2F Class Online...

What most organizations don't appreciate is that it is impossible to take a classroom-based class and replicate it online as it currently exists. They are two different delivery mediums which require two different instructional design techniques.

Too often organizations simply strive to replicate the classroom experience; so they use the same participant guides, the same slides and the same activities, which fall flat and/or fail to support the learning experience in an online class.

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.

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.

Guest Blog: 3 Ideas for Leadership Development Outside the Classroom

By Halelly Azulay, TalentGrow LLC

Your current leader population wants to grow and needs to continue to improve their leadership competencies. You have Baby Boomer leaders set to retire, but many of those 'on the bench' to succeed them are not quite promotion-ready. Millennials are chomping at the bit for ongoing leadership development opportunities.

You need to create 'bench strength' in the form of a pool of ready-to-lead talent .Does this sound familiar? Don't despair. Hope awaits...When we deploy a wide variety of development methods to get our leaders to the next level, everyone benefits. It is not merely a training issue, either. It's bigger than that. Here are three ideas to help you approach leadership development in a broad, and inclusive way that doesn't require developing coursework or having people attend classes!

Rotation/stretch assignments

A job rotation means that the leader is temporarily assigned to a different job, usually laterally, in another role in the same organization, for an agreed-upon period of time. A stretch assignment is a task or project that these leaders perform usually within their current role but beyond their job description that challenges and broadens (stretches) their current skills and capabilities.

In leadership workshops or seminars, leaders are usually isolated and focused on learning outside the context of their workday. But when they are strategically working in a job rotation or stretch assignment with a developmental lens, leaders learn new skills in the context of their daily work experience and apply their lessons immediately, continually.

These kinds of assignments, when coupled with specific development goals, are a rich growth opportunity that yields many benefits to the leader as learner. They are a wonderful platform for leadership development that is readily available and completely scalable to the specifics of the leader, team, and organization.

Volunteering in a leadership role

How can your future and current leaders practice new leadership skills on-the-job without any downside for your organization whatsoever? By practicing on someone else's turf as a volunteer.

Volunteer jobs in leadership positions provide a great opportunity for leaders to 'get their feet wet', try new approaches, and practice skills they haven't yet mastered. And they do this all away from work where their mistakes don't affect your organization directly or cause any hardship.

There are endless leadership positions in non-profit and community-based organizations that need volunteers to serve their constituents. Leaders can craft a development strategy for leveraging a volunteer job for their own learning and growth, then deploy the plan and bring back the newly developed skills back to your organization. It's a win-win-win.

Mentor/protégé

Do your current or high potential future leaders have a mentor? And, are they mentoring someone themselves?

Lots of employers already have, or are considering adding, a mentoring program. Often, we view these opportunities as intended to benefit the newest members of the workforce. Yet, the potential developmental benefits of mentoring and being mentored can be equally valuable to those in leadership positions.

When in the role of protégé (aka mentee), leaders can gain insights from those who are a few steps ahead of them on a similar leadership journey. Even the most experienced and successful executive coaches have an executive coach of their own.

Leaders of all levels should also keep their skills sharp by getting a mentor. These leader mentors create value for their protégés, but don't they also grow their own skills as a result of mentoring others? Yes! For example, they may develop patience or empathy, or gain a new perspective on organizational challenges and trends, or enhance their coaching skills while playing the role of a mentor. These new skills can then be leveraged back on the job. This is leadership development at its best. There is dual-value delivered to the organization as a result of both parties developing.

Developing leaders is an ongoing challenge many organizations face, and by expanding the idea of "development" to include non-training-related methods, we can all benefit richly. Whether by completing a stretch or rotational assignment, volunteering in a leadership capacity, mentoring or being mentored, current and future leaders can grow their skills, stretch outside their comfort zone, and bring the benefits of  their expanded skillsets to their organization without ever stepping foot in a leadership development workshop.

Look for these and many more non-training employee development ideas in Halelly's book, Employee Development on a Shoestring published by ATD Press. 

About Halelly Azulay, TalentGrow LLC

Halelly Azulay is an author, speaker, facilitator, and leadership development strategist, as well as an expert in communication skills and emotional intelligence. She is the founder of TalentGrow LLC.a consulting company that develops leaders and teams experiencing explosive growth. TalentGrow specializes in people leadership skills, which include communication skills, teambuilding, coaching and emotional intelligence. TalentGrow works with all organizational levels, including C-level leaders, frontline managers and individuals.

Halelly is the author of two books, Employee Development on a Shoestring  and Strengths Can Help You Lead a MoreFulfilling Life .She also hosts The TalentGrow Show, a leadership development podcast. She brings 20 years of professional experience in workplace learning and leadership development to her work with corporate, government, nonprofit, and academic organizations.