Demystifying the Trainer’s Myth - Workshop Tip #223

I recall a story where a trainer said to her participants,

Although this is a statement of fact, in my mind I thought that the trainer seemed to have missed a golden opportunity to make the learning stick to her learners’ minds.

Consider training and work situations as two islands. Trainers, instructional designers and developers build the bridge that interconnects the two. We need to provide the workers an avenue where skills and knowledge learned in training can meet the demands, issues, and situations at work “as they happen.”

We’re Not Atlas

For some, the trainer’s myth that it is our job to follow up on how good the workers are at doing their jobs and applying ideas beyond training is unfair and unrealistic. It is like Atlas carrying all the weight of the world on his shoulders. It’s not that learning professionals are trying to avoid responsibility but this is hinged on what actually happens on the ground. However, just because it’s hardly possible to check on everyone, it does not mean that there’s no way around it.

Follow-up Works!

The importance of follow-up in the training process cannot be underestimated. It is during follow-up that workers are given time to reflect on their learning. Also, trainers are able to evaluate the effectiveness through feedback and results. It also is an opportunity to reinforce key learning points to the workers. It works! No doubt. However, follow-up requires time and resources from both trainers and workers. It can also be difficult when trainers and workers are unable to connect regularly.

Three areas to explore to make follow-ups effective:

1. Self-learning - Encourage your learners to drive their own learning. Provide opportunities in your design and training that follow-up work and study are relevant and useful to learners.
2. Easy to access references while at work - publish your references and learn-on-need materials so your learners can easily access them when the need arises. The references become so handy that it feels “it is always there.”
3. Build in your design work applications - focus your design with the intent of work applications. If your sessions are on point for work usefulness, learners will apply the ideas by themselves, instead of the need for follow-ups.

Learning is supposed to be an ongoing process. But we also have to realize that formal training alone will never be sufficient. More learning happens in the workflow, albeit informally. Study how people learn while doing work, involve their ideas, and try to embed follow-up methods or activities for a seamless, more efficient, and relevant learning process. The argument of whether follow-up is a trainer’s sole responsibility may be debatable but it doesn’t take away the fact that it is essential and highly beneficial to improving the workers’ learning and performance at work.

Ray Jimenez, PhD
Vignettes Learning
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"

Avoid a Fatal Error: Lack of Specificity in eLearning Interactive Stories

Synthesis:
In eLearning design and development, the lack of specificity is fatal. Know the value of adding details to eLearning stories. Details help learners understand and relate to the content’s meaning and lessons.
___________________________________________________________
Sometimes in classroom training sessions we see participants with wide glazed eyes with a wondering thought, “This is great story, fun, but what is the meaning of this?”

Stories, cases, illustrations and examples without details and lack SPECIFICITY tend to elude the learners mind. In eLearning design and development, the lack of specificity is fatal.

Consider these are two examples.

Example A

John lost a major client because he failed to disclose the risks of the investment.

Example B

John lost Mercy Flanagan, a high asset customer who belongs to the $10 Million Club, because he failed to disclose the fact that the Brazilian company investment is not a Class A stock classification.

Example A is pretty generic. Although it could trigger a response from the learner, the learner needs to exert more effort to “connect the meaning of the story to his/her own context.”

Example B, on the other hand, provides sufficient details to make clear the story’s meaning to the learner.

Strong and effortless stories in eLearning come in three design approaches.

1. Immediate recognition of context. This is done by quickly increasing the speed of connecting the story to the learner’s situation.

In eLearning, the values of stories are acquired through a learner’s immediate recognition of its meaning as well as the story’s accessibility. Fuzzy and aimless, yet warm and enjoyable stories are dismissed by the learners. “It’s fun, but, so what?”

In the above example B, the very details of the story suggest the emotional tone and the impact of the story to the learners’ real-life situation.

John must take care of this client because it can lead him to losing his job or result to company losses. The nature of the details carries with them the risks and consequences.

2. Vividness of stories. This is making the story more vivid so the learners can relate to the content you wish the learner to learn.

The main purpose of using stories in eLearning is to help learners learn by embedding lesson content in the story. The story above shows that it is immediately obvious to the learner that the issues they need to reflect on are the following: the disclosed policies and ethical issues related to investments, and the financial impacts and liabilities which can harm the company as well. The detail of the story embeds the lesson.

3. Increase usefulness. This process aids the learner to find the multiple circumstances in his/her job and, therefore, increases the usefulness of the story.

4. Correlate and analyze stories. They allow learners to correlate or analyze the stories and apply them in several situations. “This is a similar situation in disclosing investments in real-life portfolios from mortgage houses” is an example where the learner is correlating the same story but in another context.

The details make is possible for the learners to bridge the story at hand to another situation due to the abundance of details supplied.

Tips

One of the important steps in “The Story eLearning Design Process” is to flash out details of the story. Do not skip in answering the questions. You run the risk of having weak stories. The more details you provide the easier for the learners to learn.

These are the questions:

• What is an emotional event related to the lesson content?
• Who are the characters?
• What are the conversations?
• What are the emotions?

What are the conflicts that need to be resolved?

• What are the risks and consequences if they are not resolved?
• What are the resolutions? What are the discoveries of the learners as they go through the stories?

Provide sufficient details. These help learners understand your embedded content quickly.

Caveat

The more you add specific details, the likelihood that the story becomes inflexible for other uses. The details can limit the context to a very narrow setting. Find the right balance of details, if you plan to use the lesson and story with multiple types of users with varying backgrounds.

Summary:
Details in eLearning stories help learners understand lessons and relate the content to their own context or situation.

References:
Story Impacts Learning and Performance eBook. Click here to access a free ebook

Related Posts:
Making Technical and Compliance Learning Fun and Engaging
Making Facts Stick With Stories - Jiggling Atoms

Are you guilty of interrupting the learners learning?

Synthesis:
Provide learners the ability to interpret and form their own discoveries from the content via self-reflection. A story-based learning material that is free of a designer’s explanations of the events allows learners to learn faster. _____________________________________________________


I just concluded an extensive workshop on Story-Based eLearning design and one highly debated issue was about shorter and faster learning. Many think that learning today needs to be short and concise to facilitate instant learning.

Is there such thing as instant learning? If it exists, how do we apply the ideas so we can help learners benefit from instant learning?

One conclusion from the workshop discussion was that to arrive at shorter and faster learning is not about shorter lessons per se; although it helps. But it is about whether our eLearning design slows down or interrupts the learners’ learning.

We define instant learning as providing learners a miniscule of message to help them reflect on an issue. By helping learners reflect on an issue or content, we trigger the critical process of learning, which is the reflection of an incident and its meaning in the learners’ situation.

Are you guilty of interrupting learners’ learning?

Compare these two illustrations:

Illustration A

“Martin came in late. This was the last straw. Due to his repeated absences, he was terminated immediately.”

Martin approached his boss, Nancy.

“Nancy, this is really unfair! Although I was late and absent a few times, I also did a lot of overtime.”

“Well, that’s not enough to compensate for the absences.”

“Martin was furious. He felt dismissal was unjust. He wants to file a complaint.”

Does Martin have a valid claim?

Illustration B

Martin: “This is unfair. I have clocked-in a lot of overtime.”

Nancy: “It does not matter. Your overtime hours were not sufficient to cover the time lost during absences.”

Martin: “I feel I have been unjustly treated. I will file a complaint.”

What should you do Nancy?

What is the difference between illustration A and B? Which one has the potential to help in instant learning?

In illustration A, there are four characters or voices in the story: Martin, Nancy, the narrator, and you, as the learner.

In illustration B, there are only three characters or voices in the story: Martin, Nancy and you.

Which illustration will help speed up the process of a learner’s reflection?
I would suggest it is illustration B.

In illustration B, we removed the narrator. In illustration A, the narrator tends to slow down the delivery of the message. It often interrupts the learner. The narrator’s interpretation of the events deprives the learner the opportunity to interpret the story on his/her own.

What is one cause of this tendency to interrupt the learners’ reflections?

In the classical definition of story structure, there is emphasis on the “telling” side of a story. This is why we loved so much listening to our parents or grandparents who told us stories when we were children. As we bring story-based learning in corporate learning, we stick to the old behavior and continue to apply the “telling” approach.

There is another side of a story design - that is the learner’s interpretation of the events, issues and characters. Although the narrator helps the learner, it is far more important that the learner reflects on the events and not be influenced by the narrator.

The biggest challenge among designers when developing stories is not to push their opinions on the content they are presenting. Instead, they need to facilitate a learner’s innate ability to self-reflect. Designers find this process difficult because we are so accustomed to the role of content providers. This is like we are slamming the brakes on the learner’s learning.

For instant learning to be effective, learners must be allowed to draw their own conclusions through the process of self-reflection.

Tips for eLearning designers and developers who want to use stories for instant learning.

1. Allow learners to reflect on the content by making them part of the story.

2. Avoid giving your interpretation or descriptions of the story.

3. Always use the character’s own voice. Allow the characters to talk. Avoid interpreting what characters are going to say. Give characters the opportunity to speak.

4. Embed the lesson in the story. Refrain from giving your own opinion of the story simply because you are afraid that the learner might miss the point if you don’t offer an explanation.

Summary:Instant learning requires the ability of the learner to interpret a particular content. For instant learning to be effective, learners must be allowed to draw their own conclusions through the process of self-reflection.

References:Story Impacts Learning and Performance eBook.

Click here to access a free copy

List of Story Impacts:Symptoms of Information Overload
Learners Don’t Know What They Don’t Know
Are Trainers Still Needed?

Related Posts:Instant Learning: How it works and how to make it happen?