The relationship between the designer of learning materials, and the trainer / facilitator who will deliver those materials, is one that provides a dynamic backdrop to much of my work. The core question here relates to my assumptions about the level of skill that the facilitator will bring to the exercise at the point of delivery. Do I assume a very low level of skill and design materials that maybe don’t achieve everything they could? Or do I assume a higher level of skill and risk releasing designs that mean that the facilitator will face a real challenge in delivering them?

When we created RSVP we were looking for a name for this new company, a name that emphasised the progressive, design-led nature of what we wanted the company to be. My colleague Ann Alder suggested RSVP as an acronym for the qualities we wanted to build into our products. Those qualities she defined as:
R for Responsive
S for Simple to Administer
V for Versatile
P for Practical

It’s the second of these that has an impact on this debate. Can you make learning materials Simple to Administer without compromising the learning design? If I am designing a bespoke piece of learning content I can work with the facilitator to create something that brings out the best in both the learners and the facilitator. But when the design will be offered as a product available to anybody via the RSVP website, I have no control over who will use it, or how, or where, or with whom: a much more challenging design brief.

Over my many years of designing learning tools and materials I think that I’ve got the complexity / ease of delivery balance right on the majority of occasions, but I’ve also had my share of failures. The problem with most of these designs is that I have created tools that are rich in potential learning, but ask too much of the facilitator in realising that potential without additional support. But we don’t waste the effort that goes into these designs, we recognise their value and make them available to clients as what we define as Powertools, materials which are sold as a package that includes an appropriate level of facilitator training and support.

For our Toolbox range, the tools that are designed so that they don’t need this facilitator support, we take a different approach. The exercise itself should be ‘Simple to Administer’, so even the most nervous, inexperienced facilitator should be able to successfully deliver the exercise. However, the support notes we provide will offer a great deal of scope for a more experienced facilitator to try more challenging delivery options, and to craft a review that will optimise the value of using the exercise.

Are we happy with this differentiation? Like any compromise it is essentially pragmatic – we want people to use out tools, so we have to make them as user-friendly as we can. We would like more facilitators to progress to using our Powertools, but we recognise that most who make this step have begun by using our Toolboxes. On balance we think that this is a good way to make quality, experiential learning design available to all facilitators.

Are you happy with the differentiation? Well most of the feedback we get is positive, but if you think we could make changes that would make it better for you, why not let us know?

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We have noticed recently that a phenomenon typically associated with larger class sizes in areas like India and China, is now being repeated in the US and Europe – trainers working with much larger groups that the typical intact team size (typically 6 to 15 people).  Requests seem to be around multiple teams coming together, and a desire to bring more real learning into what were typically passive large group meetings, conferences etc. Perhaps it’s also a feature of the squeeze on travel, time and financial budgets that if organisations get groups of people together then they are looking for economies of scale! Perhaps it might be that the benefits of cooperative learning are making a comeback, versus sitting on your own in front of a computer in an ‘e-learning’ workshop? As we are now increasingly looking at putting more development time into our larger Powertools, to cater for larger group sizes, and helping clients configure how to use multiple Toolbox sets with larger group sizes, it would be great to know if this really is a longer-term trend.

If not then tell us what tools would make your life as a trainer easier!

Experiential Learning, Learning Games, Training Games, Training Tools Hide

I’ve done a lot of work recently with trainers who need to prepare training workshops around very specific, and often quite technical, material. This has ranged from training about Pensions Administration, Risk Management and Internal Controls, specific IT applications to Health and Safety and Compliance. The comments are often similar, “Some of this stuff is fundamentally boring, but we have to make sure that the learners understand it. How can we make the process more engaging and enjoyable – even if the content isn’t inspiring?”

I firmly believe that the learning process, whatever the content, should be engaging, interactive and memorable. It is possible to use a creative approach to involve learners and encourage them to take responsibility for their own learning (and, as a result take pressure off the trainer) even if the content seems complex and uninspiring.

Here are some basic things to think about in designing more engaging and interactive workshops. I’ll continue this theme in future blogs.

Am I using all the ‘modalities’ available to me to present my information: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic? I know that my learners process and remember information in different ways, so what am I doing to use this to help people to remember? How can I use all of the senses to help in the process of understanding and retention? Sometimes people think the kinaesthetic (feeling and movement) is really hard to do in a classroom context but it doesn’t have to be. Something as simple as taking the steps in a process or sequence, presenting them on individual cards and asking the learners to physically construct the ‘flow-chart’ to illustrate the sequence involves the physical movement that supports memory.

Am I using key adult learning principles in this workshop? I know that some of the best methodologies in adult learning are co-operative, learner-centred, problem-based and generative (drawing on and relating new learning to previous experience). So, how do I present realistic scenarios, decisions and problems so that the group can work together, share existing knowledge and use their human desire to solve problems to discover new learning for themselves? Again, with some creative thinking this doesn’t have to be difficult. Sub-divide information, give parts of it to different individuals and get them working together to assimilate it and then use it for a specific purpose.

Think about how children learn. Ask yourself what children you know do in Kindergarten, nursery or at play groups. We did this in a recent workshop and identified a whole range of activities including ‘Dressing Up’. So…. how do we do ‘dressing up’ in adult workshops? We explored what was really happening when children dress up – taking on the persona of someone else, learning to think from a different viewpoint, empathising with someone ‘unlike me’. Through discussion this led us into thinking about how we can encourage this in our training workshops: through role play, considering a problem from a customer’s point of view, asking what a member of our team needs from us and how best to supply it…We had some great training ideas that emerged from our initial brainstorm.

If you are interested in livening up your ’standard’ training workshops or if you have great tips about what works for you, I’d love to hear from you.

Have fun with your boring training!

Ann

Experiential Learning, Training Tools Hide

As a total newcomer to blogging I’ve gone through all the ‘big question’ loops that inevitably precede a step into the unknown: “What should the style be?” “What are the main messages I want to express?” “How much of this should be personal opinion? And how much should reflect mainstream thinking in Learning Design?”

Strangely I’ve never considered the difficulties of producing content for the Blog. I’ve been designing learning materials for over 30 years, I’m passionate about how design professionals serve their client learners, I hold (and express) strong opinions about what I consider to be “good learning design” and even stronger opinions about situations where I believe our profession is letting those learners down. Perhaps it would be best not to worry too much about the big questions, and just let the content just flow from what’s on my mind, and what’s on my desk, at the moment I sit down to write this Blog.

So every now and then there will be ramblings, though I’ll try to keep them relevant to the subject of Learning Design, and there will certainly be rants, though they will hopefully be coherent. Now I can’t control the quality or quantity of responses that this approach will get! And one aspect of the learning process to which I’m absolutely committed  is the place of conversation in learning environments. If this Blog is to be a place of learning it means that your responses become a vital component in the learning journey of which this is the first step. So what would you like to see or hear as this Blog develops?

We have no map for this journey, the world of learning is at our disposal, so where would you like us to go?

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We are currently working with one of our clients on the creation of scenarios to represent the integrity and ethical dilemmas faced by managers and leaders as they run a global business in the 21st Century.

In a discussion I was having with one of of the Senior Integrity specialists in the company he said,

“You can’t teach ethics. That has to be the start point of all the work that we, in the Integrity team, do.”

When I explored this in more detail with him, it became clear that in this company the Integrity team has three learning goals for their employees. Every intervention they make, whether in workshops or in individual dialogue, is designed to focus on these three goals.

1. To be able to recognize ethical dilemmas (moral awareness)
2. To learn to make the right choices (moral judgment)
3. To take action to do the right thing (ethical behaviour)

These three goals helped me to understand how we, as designers of learning experiences, can focus our learners on the real dilemmas they face and the need to demonstrate ‘ethical behaviour’ in their daily and professional lives. Our success seems to be coming from taking real-life scenarios, such as any employee in the company may face, and building in a series of potential choices that they might make. As they explore the implications of these choices for themselves as individuals, for others and for the company, they are learning about the complexity of the dilemmas they face. So, can you teach ethics? If that suggests teaching the ‘right and wrong’ choices to make, maybe not. But you can build awareness and encourage employees to recognise the importance of understanding the basis of the ethical choices they make – and how these can be represented in individual behaviour. What do you think?

Ann

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