It’s 60 degrees here in PA. If you missed any of our winter blogs, check out this 5 minute Pecha Kucha to catch up. Happy Spring!
REFERENCES
Microsoft. (2014). Winter [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=winter&ex=1#ai:MP900425259|mt:2|
(Microsoft, 2014)
This is a story from my husband, Dennis, that perfectly illustrates the learning-doing gap. My husband was working as a janitor in the 1980s for medium sized printing press which is no longer in business. Press operators would feed massive rolls of paper into the machines. There were sharp blades coming down under high pressure to slice & dice massive quantities of paper that were whizzing through the press. A lot of people would disable the safety devices, allowing them to put their hand on the plating allowing the machine an opportunity to sever off digits. This was done in a false “Spirit of Efficiency.”
One day, Dennis was thrown on a printing press because he was another warm body and they needed to keep the printing press running while the trained press operator was rushed to the hospital to reattach his thumb. The first thing that Dennis did was enable all the safety devices. When a supervisor asked him why, Dennis held up his hand and wiggled his fingers and said, “Because I like these a lot.” He still has all four fingers and his thumbs because he respected the power of slicing and dicing machines.
With no other information, logic would suggest that Dennis would end up in the hospital while the trained press operator wouldn’t. Yet, the trained operator was the one who cut his thumb off while my husband with no formal training, just by enabling the safety devices, kept his fingers. Now, my husband did have informal training with slicers and other dangerous machinery during his earlier apprenticeship as a restauranteur. However, both Dennis and his injured co-worker saw numerous other industrial accidents during their tenure at the same company (his co-worker was actually there longer than Dennis).
Why the learning-doing gap then? Exposure from an early age about the dangers of slicing and dicing machines? A larger quantity of exposure? An unhealthy absence of fear? An ego that that says “This couldn’t happen to me?!?”
REFERENCES
Microsoft. (2014). Bryce Canyon in Utah in winter [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=canyon&ex=1#ai:MP900442251|
(Microsoft, 2014)
Have you ever learned from a mistake? I sure have. Now your learners can, too.
I was at the March PADLA meeting (http://www.padla.org//) this past week and saw an amazing product, ApprenNet (http://info.apprennet.com/). The general method is Try It, Share It, Learn It. In the Try It phase, the learner is presented with a challenge. They record a video response. In the Share It phase, they see responses from other learners and have an opportunity to comment. Learners have an opportunity to “vote” on which cohort response was the best from a small pool of responses. Finally, they Learn It, by watching a short tutorial or seeing an expert response. A dashboard shows learners which responses the teacher thought were innovative in addition to those that got the most votes from learning peers.
The gating is excellent, the learner CANNOT skip around, they MUST Try It before they can Share It before they can deepen their learning. This approach beats the heck out of didactic teaching and then having learners answer multiple guess…I mean… multiple choice questions.
Adults are motivated to devote energy to learn something to the extent that they perceive that it will help them perform tasks or deal with problems that they confront in their life situations. Furthermore, they learn new knowledge understandings, skills, values, and attitudes most effectively when they are presented in the context of application to real-life situations (Knowles, 1984, p. 59)
If a teacher designs their exercises to reflect real-life situations, the illusive solution to learner motivation (which I feel can be more problematic even more in online environments) can be more than solved through the use of ApprenNet.
ApprenNet also helps set the learning climate. When speaking of how to set the climate for learners, Knowles (1975) talks of how the teacher “respect[s] the experience and creativity you [the learner] bring to this inquiry” (p. 9). The climate should also allow learners to “participate actively in this inquiry … raising questions about what I say and supplying your own answers” (Knowles, 1975, p. 10). This is built into the DNA of ApprenNet in the Try It and Share It phases.
Learning theories other than Andragogy from the academy definitely support this approach. A full discussion of this topic may be in an upcoming post.
If you can spare another 90 seconds, check out a customer testimonial. Click http://info.apprennet.com/, scroll down until you see What People Are Saying. Then click on the smiling woman in the center of the page. Pay special attention to the end of the video where a grateful client verbalizes in her own words what distance, experiential learning is all about. Motivating “Mistakes”, indeed!
REFERENCES
Knowles, M. (1975). Self-directed learning. New York, NY: Cambridge.
Knowles, M. (1984). The adult learner: A neglected species. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Company.
Microsoft. (2014). Smiling young girl pointing to bandage on elbow [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=bandage&ex=1#ai:MP900426458|mt:2|
(Microsoft, 2014)
Too many times in my experience working as part of a Learning and Development organization, we tend to focus on being order takers. The business wants something and we don’t necessarily agree. Do we push back? Do we say “You know what? This isn’t really training, this is a culture adjustment that can’t be solved through a single training initiative.”
Generally, I didn’t push back and you know why? Because when you are in Learning and Development, you want to be accommodating, it’s in our nature. You are there to support the business and that is an understood part of the paradigm. They are paying your paycheck because you are supporting their initiatives.
But did that make me a true business partner?
So I started with Merriam-Webster’s (2014) online dictionary and my eye was drawn to one particular part of the definition “one associated with another especially in an action” (para. 5).
I have taken a lot of action in my time but was it the right action? Wick, Pollock, and Jefferson (2010) write that “Business leaders want learning professionals…who understand their specific business, who can clearly and succinctly explain the business model of their company or division and its more important business drivers and challenges” (p. 31).
This is a challenge for me (and, I hope, for the reader) to open our horizons further than the next learning project to a wider world where we understand the challenges the business faces and work to “discover the highest value needs or opportunities that training and development could help fulfill” (Wick et al., p. 35). This first step helps us to turn partnership from an item in question by the business towards making partnership a statement of fact.
REFERENCES
Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. (2104). Partner [Web Page] Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/partner
Microsoft. (2014). Group of businessmen huddled on a football field [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=strategy&ex=1#ai:MP900422756|
Wick, C., Pollock, R., Jefferson, A. (2010). The six disciplines of breakthrough learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer
(Microsoft, 2014)
As L&D professionals, we would love nothing better than to keep our audiences separate. In-room participants in one session. Virtual participants in a different session.
In the real, busy world, we need to make the best use of our time and our participant’s time. So blended audiences in webinars are a reality. How do we make blended webinars a win for both in-room and virtual participants?
Be Inclusive
Welcome both your in-room and virtual participants. It sets the stage that both sets of participants are part of the learning experience. When asking questions, be sure to include both audiences in turn. Be consistent – always address in-room participants first or second. It just makes it easier for the participants to know what’s happening next.
Encourage Chat
Your virtual participants need to have a voice. Having them actually speak can be at the least disrupting. With large audiences, this can be impossible. We talked about having two people involved with webinars. One person can monitor chat and bring to the attention of the presenter relevant questions. You won’t be able to address every chat in a large group, it is more important to address the most topical or most repeated chats.
Call Virtual Participants by Name
With in-room participants, we can simply look at someone to acknowledge them. We have been discouraged from calling in-room participants by name so as not to put them on the spot. With virtual participants, you need to take the opposite approach and call on them by name. Because they can’t see you and can be distracted by things (like email ;)) in their physical environment, you need to call them by name to re-engage them in the learning.
What other ways have you been able to make webinar learning events a win-win for both in-room and virtual participants?
REFERENCES
Microsoft. (2014). Blender [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=blender&ex=1#ai:MP900385483|mt:2|
(Microsoft, 2014)
Corporate learning and development organizations can realize three benefits by articulating their educational approach:
Measure Learning Effectiveness
As discussed in the last blog post, the first benefit of being able to articulate our educational approach/theory/pedagogy is for the purposes of measurement. “Success is defined by the sponsors (the persons who control the budget), and only by the sponsors” (Pollock, 2010, p. 62). However, there are times when the sponsor may be unwilling or unable to define what success looks like. In these cases, L&D professionals should be able to stand in the gap to provide the measures for learning success from an educational standpoint. This is impossible without first being able to articulate for each learning solution/project what underpinning theory/pedagogy will be used for development.
Establish Professional Credibility
Our clients, our subject matter experts are educated professionals; as are we. While we do not want to alienate our clients by drowning them in “edu-speak,” we should be able to intelligently answer their questions if they desire to explore the underlying educational approach we are applying to learning projects in more detail. This happened to a colleague of mine a few months ago. The fact that she could not articulate her approach clearly caused strain on the learning partnership and did nothing to enhance our organization’s credibility.
Provide Clear Guidance
As learning professionals, we should be able to articulate our educational approach be it andragogy or pedagogy to each other. Every profession or practice has its unique vocabulary. This vocabulary allows for complex concepts and frameworks to be concisely communicated and understood. This is true in education as well. The entire learning development team should have a clear vision of what educational approach will be taken. Theory and pedagogy/andragogy can provide that guidance.
Corporate learning and development organizations can realize these benefits by taking advantage of existing theory and pedagogy. Finding more hours in the day to learn/develop or even just articulate this is hard to find, I know. But the benefits are worth it.
REFERENCES
Microsoft. (2014). Road being covered with a tunnel of trees [Digital Image]. Used with permission from Microsoft. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=road&ex=1#ai:MP900427595|
Pollock, R.V.H. (2010). What drug development can teach us about measuring learning. SPBT Focus (Winter) 61-64. Retrieved from http://www.the6ds.com/resources-1/MeasuringLearningFocusMagazine2010.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1
(Business Quest, 2012)
Should learning organizations have to articulate the epistemology, theory and pedagogy they use to develop learning solutions? In my humble opinion, I feel we should.
Part of my educational approach encompasses andragogy. I have used this approach in my own practice and have seen the positive results that can result for learners. However, I do see where pedagogy can also have a place in the development of learning solutions for adult learners.
Kanuka (2008) brings me to the first point of how this ability can be beneficial to corporate learning and development organizations. Kanuka (2008) urges us to articulate pedagogy in order to be able to effectively measure the success of e-learning projects or programs. I humbly submit that this articulation could also help us measure the success of instructor lead solutions as well.
There are other benefits we’ll explore in future posts. Do you see any value in evaluating the success of your learning solutions against the yard stick of pedagogy? I look forward to hearing from you!
REFERENCE
Business Quest. (2012). Articles [Digital Image]. Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~bquest/2001/pedagogy1.htm
Kanuka, H. (2008). Understanding e-learning technologies in practice through philosophies in practice. In T. Anderson (Ed.), The theory and practice of online learning (2nd Ed.) pp. 91-120. Athabasca, CA:Athabasca University Press. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/99Z_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
