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. 

Quotable: Dr. Roth Tartell

Clearly, much of what the leader needs to do to increase employee engagement levels can be shaped through learning.

Learning professionals have a responsibility to their organizations to ensure that  perspectives and approaches critical to successful engagement are built in to curricula, incorporated into developmental plans, and then included in the talent discussions that shape the future leaders of the organization.

Quotable: Dr. Roth Tartel is Learning and Development Manager - North America for GE Capital Real Estate

Delta Takes Training Evaluation to the 4th Degree

Delta flight operations training goes through level three evaluations for "everything we do," says Scott Nutter, Flight Operations General Manager, and level four evaluation by tying training data to operational performance and safety metrics.  

As a result, Delta has received several awards including Travel Weekly's Magellan Award and being named to Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies in 2011.

Delta and Northwest merged more than three years ago and had a smooth integration of their training initiatives by keeping focused on these important level 3 and level 4 outcomes.

March /  April 2012 Training Magazinep. 40

Are you still using 14th century teaching techniques?

Here is a great, short(ish) video from Ted.com describing how Stanford University offered an online course in Artificial Intelligence to over 160,000 students, in 9 countries.  The speaker is Peter Norvig (one of the two instructors) and some of his insight regarding student motivation, the power and necessity o f collaboration and accountability are excellent.

One of their students commented at the end, “This felt like sitting in a bar, with a really smart friend, explaining something you haven’t grasped yet, but you know you are about to.”

Highly recommended: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/en//id/1487

What you can learn about eLearning - from Engineers

Since 1980, The Society for Manufacturing Engineers – Education Foundation, has awarded over $31 million in grants, scholarships, and awards to high schoolers pursuing a degree in science, technology, engineering and math, more than any other professional engineering society.

Their website is a marvel of interactivity and engagement.  It’s a wonderful model for e-learning as the ‘learner’ can pursue multiple topics and to multiple-depths, through their own decision making process. www.manufacturingiscool.com

In 20 years, trainers (that's us) will be MORE than necessary

We are always worrying about whether our profession will continue , what with the advent of e-Learning, m-Learning, social networking and the like.  Well, don’t fret! The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) predicts the follow trends, as the global labor force approaches 3.5 billion in 2030. Based on current trends in population, education, and labor demand, the report projects that by 2020 the global economy could face the following hurdles:

• 38 million to 40 million fewer workers with tertiary education (college or postgraduate degrees) than employers will need, or 13 percent of the demand for such workers

• 45 million too few workers with secondary education in developing economies, or 15 percent of the demand for such workers

• 90 million to 95 million more low-skill workers (those without college training in advanced economies or without even secondary education in developing economies) than employers will need, or 11 percent oversupply of such workers

What does that mean for us? It means we will continue to have to train people who enter the workforce.  They will need to come prepared. We will need to build curriculum and not just classes. We will need to build or revive our “corporate university” ideas, but start the learning at a much more elementary level.

It means, perhaps, that we have to broaden our focus from “training” to “education” to understand where our learners are coming from.

You can read the whole report here: http://tinyurl.com/cxyraq2 Fascinating, sobering…

Are you training for the job? Or training the person? Is there a difference?

Performance Support and Learning have the same objective: working smarter. The trade-off is whether you put the knowledge into the job (support) or into the performer’s head (learning).

So quoted: Gloria Gery

Does Size Matter?

Very often, when organizations move to virtual training, they think that the constraints of travel and space (learning space) are removed and it is now possible for a larger audience to take part in the training offering.

Not true! Compare these two simple visuals:

• A circular table of 8 where everyone can see each other, hear each other and be involved with one another in an engaging and collaborative way.

• A town-hall meeting in which a lot of people are in attendance, but only a few get to take the floor.

If YOU wanted your opinion heard, or you wanted to come away from the meeting having developed a relationship with the others in attendance, which meeting would you want to attend?

The circular table of 8 is the visual we need to keep in mind when designing for virtual delivery of training. Our learners are already hobbled by the fact that they cannot make eye contact with one another or read one another’s body language; but they CAN make connections with each other when there is a smaller group involved.

The real benefit of virtual delivery is that you can deliver the same topic as many times as you like, at any time that you like. So you can run 3 sessions, of 8 learners, in one week.  This allows for more interaction and engagement among the learners. When the facilitator asks a question, it is quite obvious if 8 people have answered or 3 people have answered.  When you poll them for their opinion, there is actually time to hear why people chose the answer they did – and allow for comparing and contrasting results.

With larger groups, we might undertake the same activities, but they will simply be ‘watched’ by some in attendance – it is not possible to involve everyone, in every activity, to the degree that they feel they are contributing to the content.

Smaller groups enhance learning outcomes, and virtual learning deliveries allow us to economically utilize smaller groups.