Futuring Training

For those of you who may not know, my background is Training.  Training differs from education in one very important way… education’s primary goal is to motivate critical thinking skills so that the person being educated can figure out things on their own; training’s primary goal is to teach a person how to do something.  I have often explained the difference to teachers who aspire to become a trainer (pay is also a distinguishing difference between education and training) like this:

If your 8-year-old daughter tells you that she is taking sex education in school, how would that make you feel?  Now, turn that around and your 8-year-old daughter tells you that she is taking sex training in school.  Would you feel the same way?

The answer is most likely no because the distinction between an education and training in this instance is the difference between learning about something and learning how to do something.  While learning about sex from school is mildly troubling for many parents, learning to have sex would be troubling to most parents.

With this distinction in mind, the success or failure of training is not whether the person being trained can pass some arbitrary test once; rather, it rests on whether the person being trained can successfully execute the task after the training is complete.  This does not belie the importance of a good education; however, it does emphasize the importance of ensuring that the training is successful the first time and every time that it is done.

What we know about people is that everyone learns in a slightly different way and that no single training method is going to be 100% successful with everyone we want to train.  So if the goal is to ensure that 100% of everyone who goes through a training program can successfully perform the task to be trained, then we have to understand how people learn and how we can leverage technology to adapt to each person.

Learning Modalities:

Most people learn in three different ways:

Visual – Learning by observation

Auditory – Learning by listening to instructions

Kinesthetic – Learning by doing

If we had to pick a single method to teach, most people fall into the kinesthetic category; however, we are not restricted to a single modality.  Combining all three modalities into a single lesson is going to produce the best results as it stimulates all of the learning centers of the brain.

There are two significant roadblocks to successfully developing and executing training: time and money.  Although few would argue the importance of good training, companies rarely resource training with a sufficient budget or provide sufficient time to allow students to gain a level of proficiency to execute all tasks successfully the first time.

In 2012, the New Media Consortium, an international community of experts in educational technology, released its Horizon Report on Higher Education.  The Horizon Report examines promising new emerging technologies and looks at different ways that they can be used to improved education.  While I did take time at the beginning of this post to discuss the differences between training and education, the one commonality shared between the two is that people do not learn differently if they are being educated versus being trained.  As a result, what works in the school will work equally well in a training environment.

One of the emerging trends that Training has not thus far taken greater advantage of is the use of digital media literacy of classroom trainers.  Much of the resistance to include digital media in the classroom (digital media is used extensively for distance learning environments) is based in part in institutional group-think where developers of training concentrate on more familiar and traditional classroom style lectures, discussions, demonstrations, and practical exercises that engage students in all three learning modalities.  What is often ignored is how digital media can be used both in the classroom and after the training is completed to reinforce the trained tasks. 

Organizations are slowly moving away from traditional computer-based training (CBT) – talking slideshows and videos – to Interactive Media Instruction (IMI) for distance learning solutions.  The primary difference between the two is that traditional CBT tends to only engage a learner’s visual and auditory modalities whereas IMI attempts to also engage the learners kinesthetic modality through forced interactions, simulations, games, and in-line quizzes that test the learner’s understanding of concepts and steering the training to address identified weaknesses on the fly.

While both methods of training (Classroom and IMI) can be quite effective on their own if they are properly designed and executed, combining the strengths of IMI and classroom techniques can reduce the amount of time required to train and increase learning retention.  This addresses the time and money roadblocks that often limits the amount of time that needs to be spent on training in three ways:

1. Students can learn academic concepts, background, history, and rules through IMI outside of the classroom before the formal training session begin.  The leaner’s proficiency can be measured and  minimum passing standards can be established to ensure that each student begins training with the same level of understanding of foundational principles.
2. The use of interactive media in the classroom can ensure that each student stays equally engaged in the lessons.  As an example, in a traditional classroom setting, the instructor may ask a question of the group to encourage discussion and to check learning.  The problem has always been that the same students are eager to answer all of the questions while others sit quietly hoping not to be called on.  Using IMI, the instructor can pose the question on tablets or computers assigned to each student and each student will have to answer the question on their own.  After each student has answered, the instructor has a tally of how many students answered correctly and can adjust the follow-on discussion appropriately depending on the level of understanding that the class has on the subject.
3. IMI that mirrors the concepts, simulations, and interaction of the classroom can be provided as a takeaway to refresh the student’s understanding of the tasks trained.  Retention is improved as students can play back the lesson repeatedly until the task can be done without further instruction.

Using technology to leverage traditional training methods (not necessarily replace them) can enhance the learning experience while reducing the amount of time necessary to conduct the training; however, training developers need to be retrained themselves to understand the advantages that existing and emerging technologies can provide.