I’d like to talk about what I see as the heart of great training.
Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to question why I want to focus on training. Some might argue that the focus should be on performance, not training, whether that performance is replenishment, customer service, parent education, or equipment repair. Others might argue from another angle. They would say that training isn’t the point; learning is, especially in an era so dependent on knowledge workers. And still others might urge us to move from e-Learning to knowledge management. Their view is that learning and lessons represent only a portion of the possibilities, as technology is deployed to create rich environments that provide just-in-time content and community.
I have no argument with any of that. I edited The ASTD E-Learning Handbook: Best Practices, Strategies and Case Studies for an Emerging Field which reflects those views with articles from 62 experts, including Marc Rosenberg, William Horton, Gloria Gery, and Sivasailam Thiagarajan. e-Learning must contribute to performance, honor learning and capacity, and reflect a “big tent” view, encompassing online knowledge bases, communities, modules, decision support, assessment and tracking. (Editor’s Note: For more on Allison’s “big tent” view, see her article at http://www.performancexpress.org/0302/)
There are, however, many reasons to revisit the attributes associated with great training:
- It’s what clients want. “We need a curriculum for the buyers,” or “We want a series of classes, maybe even a certificate program, about customer service,” or “Can we shift that product class to online training?”
- It’s what employees want. While for many reasons most still prefer classroom training, there is no doubt that they want and expect development experiences. According to The New York Times Job Market, 14% of hiring managers in the New York metro area say professional training programs are the most effective way to retain employees, with a similar number touting the impact of bonuses. Interestingly, according to this survey, both of these have more impact on retention than promotions do.
- Development is what people need, especially in a world chock full of new diseases, technologies, products, partnerships, and customers.
- The use of technology shifts control to individuals. They make choices to be involved with online learning, communities, and content — or to pass by those resources. Employees will make those affirmative choices when online resources demonstrate immediate value and opportunity.
- Many organizations are large and global. They want training to be consistent, standard, distributed, and top-notch. Ask any executive. That’s what they want. Not objects, not learner choices, not even authenticity. They want training.
- In the rush of excitement about Flash!™, Knowledge Management, and Learning Content Management Systems, it’s easy to forget what pays the bills. Right or wrong, at the beginning of this century, training is what customers agree to pay for; thus, training remains what we deliver. Can we do more? Yes. Should we do more? Yes again. But let’s also do a bang-up job on the basics — on training.
Many who are building e-Learning are relatively new to training and development, attracted perhaps by the technology first and foremost. Here’s a primer for them, as well as a reminder for those somewhat longer in the tooth.
What is great training?
When Kendra Sheldon and I wrote Beyond the Podium: Delivering Training and Performance to a Digital World, we included a chapter titled, “What is Great Training?” I assumed the chapter would stimulate debate because there is, of course, no one way to answer that question about training. Let the debate continue now, here, as I bring some thoughts about the attributes of great training from Beyond the Podium to The eLearning Guild.
Great training is purposeful
Great training is about something, but not about everything. The online student who comes to a site and is left wondering why she’s there or what this site is about will depart in a New York minute. The purpose or purposes must be both evident and resonant to the student.
Great training should say something or allow the user to discover something about a topic, whatever the topic, something that participants want to ponder and use. It is driven by purpose. In Beyond the Podium we identified several considerations regarding purposeful training:
- Are the purposes of the training clear, obvious?
- Are the purposes of obvious value to both the individual and the organization?
- Do we communicate the purposes to the individual and their manager?
- Do we define a role for the manager, and make it easy and expected for him or her to do something relevant?
- If we are using a more constructivist approach, one that encourages participants to find meaning individually or in groups, is there meaning there for them to find?
- Do we use purposes in all possible ways: to rivet participants’ attention; to set objectives; to define strategies and assessments; and to enable self-assessment?
- Are the purposes written in a way that will interest their intended audience?
- Do our purposes include the development of independent learning and reference skills and resources?
Great training is active
E-learners, all learners, in fact, should enjoy programs that encourage them to be active. Lisa Schafer and I highlighted five kinds of activities in the June 2003 issue of Training and Development: seek, try, decide, compare and commune.
SEEK: Inquiry-oriented activities, such as WebQuests, engage learners by encouraging them to seek answers to questions by conducting research on the Internet. You can imagine how that would make sense for training about business intelligence, for example. Who is the customer? How can you learn about them online? What are the implications of what you’ve found? Who are our competitors? What can you learn online? What more do you need to find out? (See http://edweb.sdsu.edu/EdWeb_ Folder/People/Bdodge/Professional.html for a link to the WebQuests site.)
TRY: The essence of action is nudging the learner to do something. What better activity than practice of the task at hand? The try action is seen in technology training. ElementK, for example, requires e-Learners to use the feather option in a Photoshop course. Cardean.edu uses realistic scenarios to teach business skills. They create a case and then ask online participants to try their hand at authentic business tasks associated with the situation.
Want to learn to sail? It makes sense to give it a try, even if your efforts get you turned around and headed back to the starting line, as mine did. Figure 1 is an active online sailing program that you can try at http://www.macgregor.net/sailing/SailGame.html.
FIGURE 1 Learning sailing by doing it.
DECIDE: Should I recommend investing in that bond or this equity for this investor? Should I give this employee another chance or set him loose? What would constitute ethical action in this circumstance? Great training, online or otherwise, makes people engage, think and decide.
DigitalThink offered a sample course with just such a situation. A man is interviewing a woman for a job. He says to the woman, who looks to be Japanese or Korean in heritage, “So Noriko, your last name is ‘Smith.’ How did you get such an American sounding name?” Did the interviewer handle this well? If he wants to know if she has had other names, so he can do a complete reference check, how might he have handled it? How should his supervisor advise him?
COMPARE: A critical element in successful learning is the ability to figure out what you know and what you don’t know. How did I do on this? What was on target? What was not? How would peers handle this? How would an expert? On the First Things Fast website (http://www.jbp.com/legacy/rossett/rossett.html), training professionals can compose responses to objections by people who aren’t as keen on performance analysis as they are. Then they may compare their approach with a model effort. Figure 2 presents a situation, in this case, confrontation with a doubting subject matter expert. Figure 3 allows the online student to compare his response to the author’s.
FIGURE 2 A resistant subject matter expert isn’t keen on talking to a non-expert.
FIGURE 3 The author tackles the objection and explains why she handled it that way.
COMMUNE: We know that memorable instructor-led classes are chock full of conversation, examples, debates and group effort. That should be true for online learning too.
In their contribution to the Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and Technology Thomas Duffy and Donald Cunningham reminded us of distinctions between cognitive constructivism and social constructivism. Much recent training is influenced by cognitive constructivists who typically create opportunities for learners to examine a realistic situation; seek and use relevant tools and resources; construct approaches based on research and analysis; and then assess results and efforts through comparisons to experts and peers, and reference to rubrics. (Rubrics are explained at http://edweb.sdsu.edu/triton/july/rubrics/Rubric_Template.html.) Social constructivists, on the other hand, incline us towards the convivial. They are keen on affiliation, conversation, teaming, mentoring, lunching and collaboration. Great online training, in their view, would include e-mentoring, asynchronous discussion, virtual classrooms, electronic brownbag lunches, threaded discussions, listservs, and instant messaging.
I invited my introductory educational technology students online to prepare for a final exam. The course was delivered in a regular classroom, with no online students, so the online strategy was intended to enhance our practice and generate a useful archive for use later as the date of the test came closer. This was an extra, voluntary, session, scheduled for a time I thought might be convenient.
Students and faculty used the Virtual Classrooom function of BlackBoard to share screens with practice test questions. Then, synchronously, through an online discussion, we tackled each item. The interaction was lively, based on content that riveted their attention, and energized by a semester’s worth of relationships started in class and carried forward online. Approximately one-third of the students came online for the test preparation, which I considered to be a successful level of participation; more accessed the archive later.
Great training touches hearts as well as minds
As we emphasized in Beyond the Podium, there is more to great training than cognitive outcomes — I’ve even learned to meditate online (http://www.donot-zzz.com/) (Editor's Note: As of February 11, 2010, this demo appears to have been removed from the Web.) .
Remember the math learned in high school and college and later avoided? Consider the time management class that made not a dent in any habits. After the online asynchronous module about customer service, will the representative take time to explain why and how, and to seek concerns as customers examine their bills?
What good is training, in a room or online, if the impact is shrugged away afterwards? Here are some strategies known to influence attitudes towards the topic at hand:
- Early on, enable learners to experience success and see the usefulness of the experience.
- Reveal the sources — the people whose ideas or experiences influenced the program; detail why they are credible and how they resemble the participants.
- Use two-sided arguments to make points. In most cases, approaches that admit multiple perspectives on the topic are more convincing than a one-sided litany.
- Inoculate learners regarding the reactions and barriers to come, by detailing ways to handle impediments.
- Use role modeling and role playing, and include lively conversations.
- Use “war stories” to engage the learners in what happened to people.
- Practice on vivid problems and cases; ask for active participation, such as seeking, finding, deciding, comparing, and teaming.
- Encourage reflection about the usefulness and meaning of what is being learned.
- Provide continuous and repeated exposure to the message and attitude, on the lips of supervisors and in takeaway materials and online programs and tools.
- Use extrinsic rewards for boring and repetitive tasks.
