Quotable: Marcus Buckingham
We've studied the best team leaders, and they don't write performance reviews, they don't give feedback. I don't want feedback. I want attention.
And the best team leaders seem to understand that what we really want is coaching attention. Don't give me feedback. Don't tell me where I stand. I want to know how to get better. Coach me right now. Help me get better next week.
As quoted in HR Magazine, June 2015. Business as Unusual.
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.
Guest Blogger: Margie Meacham
The Neuroscience of vILT
The Society of Applied Learning Technology (SALT) reports that “the vast majority” of companies plan to expand their use of VILT in the near future. Yet only 20 percent of these same companies find this delivery medium to be very effective.
So why do they keep doing it?
The survey respondents say the primary reason is to save money. The next most-frequent response is reducing time away from the office, while the third reason is the ability to train large numbers of people quickly.
If you want to avoid investing time and money in training that is economical but ineffective, you might want to apply a little bit of science to your VILT programs. In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of design.
Design for engagement
Many VILTs follow a very predictable format. The first few minutes are spent getting organized and positioning participants online, followed by introducing the instructor and the topic. At the end of the class, there is usually a brief quiz or poll. The predictability of your programs may be causing your learners to tune out or multi-task instead of focusing.
This behavior occurs because the brain has developed pattern recognition as a survival mechanism. Our brain tends to relax in familiar surroundings and shifts into high alert in unfamiliar surroundings. Somewhere between feelings of boredom and anxiety is the highly productive level of attention. To help your VILT participants pay attention to you, design your VILTs for maximum engagement.
Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Jump into the content right away.
Have you ever walked into a class or meeting a few minutes late and felt yourself scrambling to catch up with the conversation? If you start with content right away, your participants will be forced to pay attention immediately. There’s also a secondary benefit: people will start logging in early to be sure they don’t miss anything. This approach, on many television programs, attempts to engage views immediately so that they aren’t tempted to switch channels while the predictable credits are showing. The credits eventually appear, several minutes into the program. You can do the same with your standard introductions.
Ask a challenging question in the chat window.
While polls have their place, you’ll get a lot more interaction from the use of the chat window. Pose a question that doesn’t have a clear right or wrong or answer; then sit back while participants share their opinions. This simple tool helps your VILTs become social learning events in which participants learn from one another, not from the “the sage upon the stage.”
Promote a participant to a presenter.
When we watch someone else solve a problem or learn a new skill, mirror neurons fire in our brain in the same way as the person we’re observing. We visualize ourselves in their place. A fascinating study demonstrated that students who watched others practice proper basketball free-throw techniques improved almost as much as those who were actually practicing. A very effective VILT technique is to have participants take turns trying a new skill. Let the rest of the class, rather than the instructor, provide help as needed to maximize the effect.
VILTs are here to stay. Designing them to be more engaging will help you get better results from your investment.
About Margie Meacham: Brain-aware Instructional design and performance improvement consultant Margie Meacham, “The Brain Lady,” is a scholar-practitioner in the field of education and learning and president of Learningtogo. She specializes in practical applications for neuroscience to enhance learning and performance. Margie’s clients include businesses, schools and universities. In addition to her Brain Matters Blog on learningtogo.info, she also writes a popular blog for the Association of Talent Development (ATD) and has published her first book, Brain Matters: How to help anyone learn anything using neuroscience. Her next book: The Genius Button: Using neuroscience to bring out your inner genius will appear in November, 2015.
Quotable: Alice Kim, Ph.D.
It's a misconception that trying to match knowledge delivery to someone's personal learning style or perceptual preference translates to better learning.
Dr. Alice Kim, Rotman Research Institute for the study of human brain function
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
Music and Memory.org
The Training Doctor has just gathered up all its employee's old iPods and shipped them to Music and Memory to help "expand our proven program of personalized music to reach more individuals struggling with Alzheimer’s, dementia and other forms of cognitive and physical impairment.
A 5-minute task - a significant impact. Won't you consider doing the same?
How Do You Define "Competence" In A Job?
Very often when we design training we also want to design some type of test or certification which helps us to assure the organization that learning truly did take place. What most training departments struggle with, however, is how do you define competence? How can you ensure, through some type of test, that the trainee truly does understand what they've learned and can apply it on the job?
Very often when clients of ours ask us to create a Level 2 evaluation (a test) they ask of us: “So what should be the level of success?” In other words, what is a "passing grade?" Often, we fall back on the standards we learned in grade school - an 80 or better would be considered "passing" and better than average. But, in the reality of the workplace, do we really want someone who performs 20% less than they optimally could? It is not logical for us to churn out marginally capable individuals.
A solution to this dilemma is to secure a comparator. A comparator is essentially the standard of excellence or competency which we want a new trainee to be able to replicate. A comparator can be established through identifying those individuals, already on the job, whom the organization deems to be the best at their job. That might be the best salesperson, the machinist with the lowest quality defects, or the collections agent who has the best collections rate.
Don't look to just one individual because you have the potential to miss excellent practices which that individual might not employ. Judith Hale, of Hale Associates, even suggests NOT choosing your best performer but instead your B+ performers. Her philosophy is that the A+ performers don't even know what they do anymore; they are on autopilot and have forgotten what it is like to be new and still thinking through the process and applying rules.
Develop the comparator by conducting a time and task analysis of how your chosen performers do their job. This is a detailed observation of their day-to-day responsibilities: how they complete their responsibilities, how they organize themselves and what period of time it takes them to complete their job correctly and competently.
Once you have those comparators identified, you can then determine what the level 2 - or potentially level 3 - evaluation would seek to determine/establish. (Note: once you have the comparators, you can also establish your objectives.)
Rather than pulling a "level of excellence" out of thin air, instead, take the time analyze your best performers and establish a truly defensible expectation for competence and excellence on the job.
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.
Quotable: Bob Pike
When performance is the question, training is the sixth answer.
When we have deep conversations with managers about performance and help them focus on all the possible barriers to performance first - systems, policies and procedures, recruitment, placement, and coaching - but using some or all of these still does not provide the performance and results we want, then it is time to look at training.
Bob Pike is founder of The Bob Pike Group
How does one "prepare" to work in training?
What makes a "training professional?" Interestingly, the May/June edition of Training Magazine has a feature article, "2015 Emerging Training Leaders" and the formal degrees of the 25 individuals featured include: journalism, psychology, social work, biology (2), mechanical engineering, education (whew! we were getting worried), entrepreneurial studies, English lit, ecommerce, communications (warmer), genetics and French.
Things that make you go "hmmm." (Thanks Arsenio Hall)
Ensure Training Validity with an Advisory Committee
Establish an Advisory Committee
An advisory committee should be created in order to help you determine what training needs to be developed for your organization, and what is a priority. An advisory committee should be made up of front line workers from across the organization and from all levels, from hourly workers to supervisors. For example, if you want store managers to conduct new hire training, it's a good idea to have input from store management, supervisors, front-line workers, and back office workers. They will provide their thoughts on how the training should be delivered and what should be accomplished by the conclusion of it.
An advisory committee should have no more than 13 members, and the membership seats should be rotated regularly. Larger groups can be harder to facilitate, and you want to be sure everyone has an equal chance to participate in the discussion. You'll find that you don't have to do as much marketing of the training function when you have 13 ambassadors who return to their work areas every month understanding that they are responsible in part for the success of the organization.
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