The Improvisation Method: A New Way to Reinvent Compliance Training - Workshop Tip #221

Mention the words “Attend the compliance training” to your workers and you can literally see the feeling of dread in their faces. Most employees, if not all, do not care about it. Compliance training has earned itself a reputation from people at work for being dull, boring, and time-wasters. It is an all-too-familiar reality for trainers, instructional designers, and leaders. Organizations invest time, effort, and resources for compliance not just because it is a legal and mandatory requirement. Moreso, it is a safety net from issues like safety, risks, liabilities, etc. Despite the invested effort, effectiveness and positive results are not always guaranteed. Work impacts simply cannot come from unengaged employees. There has to be a way to bring engagement and results from compliance training.

Moving towards worker empowerment

How do you create compliance training that goes beyond lecturing workers about standard procedures, rules, and regulations? That instead of telling them what to do, you provide them with the tools and latitude that allow them to discover and think through work issues and problems on their own?

I have been a training consultant for a long time. I know how hard it is to veer away from learning strategies and methods we have developed over the years. It is especially hard to let go of our tried and tested methods. But the problem begins when it limits our views and ways of doing things. We need to keep up with providing training that meets the evolving demands and trends of today’s workers and organizations.

Reinventing by improvisation

In actual work scenarios, how much of your training do you think workers rely on to help them resolve and figure out answers? I’m guessing that most of them would seek their co-workers’ inputs, or they do workarounds or improvise. People find looking at their own and others’ previous experiences, as well as collaborating with them to resolve an issue as a quicker and more reliable problem-solving approach than standard policies and regulations.

So when reinventing compliance training, we do not limit it to materials and content. We essentially change the way compliance training works. We shift our roles as trainers from sole providers of knowledge to facilitators of the workers’ learning discoveries and thinking processes. When we are able to successfully lay the groundwork for them, working their way through compliance issues is going to be faster, easier, and will yield better results and impacts.

Improvisation Method

The improvisation method utilizes exercises based on the Thinking Tools. One of these tools is referred to as Risk Analysis. It is used to help workers take careful steps in planning and managing risks and reducing costs and negative impacts.

Here are some of the other improvisation tools you can use as well.

The What-Ifs Scenario

The Troubleshooting Tool

Keep in mind these key considerations for a successful implementation of reinventing your compliance training:

• Careful analysis of your compliance courses to find the best ROI areas to reinvent.
• Selecting the most suitable work-application strategy and method.
• Application of the improvisation method for virtual delivery, social and collaborative learning, coaching, eLearning, and workflow learning.

Rethink. Improvise. Reinvent. If changing things up can help boost your workers’ engagement and scale their thinking capacities to achieve positive impacts for themselves and the organizations they work for, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

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

Can you explain the “Fiscal Cliff Crisis” to an Eight-year old?

The title of this article is a challenge to educators, designers, and developers on how to turn complex financial subjects into simple understandable lessons. Finance matters are very important in current real life situations as America continues to thread the tightrope of its economic problems. So, what learning modality could be more effective in teaching lessons on finance and money matters?

Try storytelling.

I’ve always advocated using the power of a story in teaching lessons. View an   introduction to our Story-based eLearning Workshop.

Synthesis. In the research paper Using Storytelling to Increase Interest and Recollection in Finance Concepts, the authors Lonnie Bryant and Renard Harris discussed the use of storytelling as an effective means to engage students in teaching finance and economic matters. The study examines the effectiveness of storytelling as a way to heighten  student recollection. Results of their study shows that story telling increases the interest and recollection capabilities of the students who were part of the study.

Elements of  Storytelling. The authors of the paper give significant reference to Hidler who wrote that

Storytellers also have the responsibility of respecting and protecting the audience as they travel together through the story (Harris (2007). Storytelling has the power to foster inclusivity because it engages the imagination and emotions (Hilder (2005)). Hilder (2005) writes that the mission of a story is to widen awareness and awaken possibilities. Stories should have a definite beginning, middle, and end, and a call to adventure that initiates a physical, emotional, and spiritual journey for the main character (Bishop and Kimball, 2006; Ohler, 2006). Merry and New (2008)

Reasons Why Storytelling is Effective. Here are summary points that justify storytelling as an effective teaching modality:

• Storytelling requires listeners to suspend their disbelief
• Storytelling induce the use imagination and metaphors
• Storytelling compels students to focus and to exert effort to listen
• Storytelling challenges people to respond and offer feedback

Conclusion of the Study. The authors Lonnie Bryant and Renard Harris in their paper Using Storytelling to Increase Interest and Recollection in Finance Concepts reached this conclusion:

This study has shown that the introduction of storytelling that links student interest and financial theory has led to an improvement in student performance. This is attributed to the fact that the use of storytelling was a successful active-learning tool that involved student recognition of some of the elements of the story. By incorporating a storytelling presentation, results from student performance reveal that a significant proportion of students have an increased recollection of  the material covered. It was also found that this positive outcome was not related to the type of class but rather the increased interest in the lecture. These results support arguments that students that have a greater interest in the presentation have a perceived benefit between studying financial theory and its practical applications by personalizing the problem, storytelling can change the minds, motives and capacities of students. The art of storytelling can provide students with knowledge, skills, and the moral convictions that are needed to establish a productive and financially stable community. Thus, the goal of a lecturer should not be to teach from the text book, but to understand the text-book theory and incorporate that theory into a storytelling presentation. That requires understanding of institutional details that are applicable and integrating them into a storytelling presentation.

Read also my related blog:

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

Reference

Bryant, L. and Harris, R. (NA). Using Storytelling to Increase Interest and Recollection in Finance Concepts.

 

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

Are You Riding the Waves or the Ripples? Tracking Learning Trends

Synthesis:
The Thought/Action Wave and the Brain/Technology Wave are two particular learning principles that enable faster, cheaper and easier learning. The speed at which innovations propel these learning concepts are discussed here. __________________________________________________________________________

I am not a surfer. The closest I can get to do a balancing act is riding a bike.

A surfer possesses the skills to ride the waves and swim through the ripples with right timing - not too soon and not too late.

As an observer and a consistent student of learning trends, I am constantly challenged to surf the waves and ripples of changes. There are instances when I miscalculate, overestimate or misread trends. At certain times, I feel off-balance, fail to ride the waves and end up swimming through the ripples instead. Yet surely, I determine to always stay afloat and survive. At particular opportune times, I find myself on  the crest of the waves, not just drifting with the ripples.


Click here for larger view 

Strong Waves

There are two strong waves that I pay attention to: the Thought/Action Wave and the Brain/Technology Wave.

Thought/Action Wave

In the 18th century, education, learning and training have focused on thought or knowledge retention. Thinkers of that era believed that when learners retain abundant knowledge, they perform on the job when needed: “Thought First - Action Later” (Johnson, 2002). In decades past, however, evidence showed that “Thought First - Action Later” was inadequate. The alternative approach: “Thought and Action are One” (learn and apply, learning by doing) gained popularity.

Yet, the momentum gained by the “Thought First-Action Later” principles and practices  in large institutions and infrastructures – schools, book publishers, teachers/educators, government, corporate training, business processes, others – still exists. The wave is powerful. It persists. The current is strong.

Understanding and deciphering the Thought/Action Wave is critical to decision making with regard to the focus of our energies and resources. Oftentimes, we find ourselves  solving a problem with palliatives and failing at it rather than directly addressing the
true issues.

As an example, designers and developers are frustrated that subject matter experts throw PowerPoint files and linear and page turning lessons unto their laps (remnant of the “thought first – action later” practice). Without presenting an alternative way of writing content, SMEs will cling to these traditonal methods.

Instead of banging our heads on the wall (swimming through the ripples), we need to ask, “What exactly is the problem (wave) and how do we find a solution (riding the wave)?”.

Brain/Technology Wave
 
Scientists and pioneering entrepreneurs are confident that a "thinking machine" will be perfected in the next few years, comparable to how the human brain works. The Singularity movement spearheads the conversations and forum for exchanges about the Brain/Technology Wave.

Unlike the approaches of earlier decades, where primary focus was on computing power, today’s scientists use the discoveries on how the brain works in their design of the "thinking machines."

There is a convergence of technology and brain sciences brought about by multidisciplinary research. IBM's Watson and robotics will change how we learn and work. The “thinking machines” will perform mundane and heavy data lifting and processing so we can spend more time on higher-thinking tasks or decisions. In profound ways, this will impact learning principles and practices. More and more we will find ourselves subordinating our knowledge to “thinking machines”. Such reality is now evident in ubiquitous tools like smart phones, GPSs, sequencing the human genomes and in many fields.

The Brain/Technology Wave is a dominant driver and accelerates this change in all facets of government and industries. Ray Kurzweil calls this the “Law of Accelerating Returns.”  Apparently, faster–paced changes are poised to happen in the next few years compared to progress in the past.

My Vantage Point and Balancing Acts – Riding or Falling

I don’t have a crystal ball to foretell what solutions will succeed or fail. However, patterns (ripples) emerge from big (trends) waves. They reveal the drivers of the solutions.

My intent is to share with you my interest areas and studies with the hope of providing you with a different vantage point.

See the diagram “Tracking Learning Trends: Are you Riding the Waves or the Ripples?”.
 
 Click to view larger image

Contextual Learning

People learn the natural way - through the interdependencies of things. Thoughts, ideas and knowledge have to be experienced. People need to discover meaning. This is the "Thought and Action as One" philosophy. John Dewey tells us, paraphrasing: “when we see a wagon, we just don’t see the parts, but the way people use the wagon.” Contextual Learning and Teaching are adapted methods in many universities and the adoption is growing.

Leaving ADDIE for SAM

Michael Allen in his book “Learning ADDIE for SAM” confirms what I have suspected all along – we need to develop courses reiteratively - small review cycles - and select what works in our environment (I stressed this in my book “3-Minute eLearning ”). Allen boosts our confidence that there are different ways to design and implement eLearning courses. SAM (the successive approximation model) describes what many of us do under the radar.

Microlearning

The Microlearning practitioners espouse the use of micro-content to make knowledge flexible, searchable and contextually relevant in work environments. The goal is to redesign work conditions to permit the instant occurrence of Microlearning. We see the effort in the direction of the 'Thought and Action are one" concept. See Microlearning Conference and Marcia Conner’s article. I made a study in 2007 on the Impacts of Microlearning.

Story and Experience Based Learning Design

I follow and continue to apply key principles and practices that Roger Schank pioneered. “Stories index memories and it is by stories that we recall and learn new things.” Through stories, learners find the meaning and context of the content that help them apply ideas in real-life work situations. See Roger Schank's "Tell Me a Story", “Teaching Minds and my workshop on Story-Based eLearning Design.

Social Media and Learning

In "Informal Learning", Jay Cross relates that 90% of knowledge and skills are acquired by learners informally. Furthermore, Jane Bozarth (Social Media for Trainers) shows us how to use social media to optimize informal learning opportunities.

Social Learning encourages learners to share and contribute their learning and experiences. This aids them to connect ideas with real-life work situations. By now, you recognize how the trend and the above developments support the promotion of the "Thought and Action as One" principle.

Gamification

Mario Herger, at the Caltech Entrepreneurs’ Forum last Jan. 12, 2013, spoke of how they have made training on software at SAP more engaging for workers with the use of gamification. When workers were asked, “How’s your training going?”, the response was, “Don’t you see I am working hard. I need to win this exercise!” Gamification accelerates “Thought and Action is One“ learning.

ZebraZapps

ZebraZapps is an authoring tool created for the next generation of learners and developers. It is a sophisticated and advance technology for developing highly interactive content. It signals the growing maturity of software development for the learning industry. It supports the embedding of interactive design in programs. One would be embarrassed to producing page-turning programs in ZebraZapps.

Storyline

Articulate has succeeded in providing developers and designers a new milestone in authoring tools. Storyline adds the power of Flash in authoring without a single scripting line. It enables many “do-it-yourselfers” in eLearning, to develop faster, cheaper and smarter interactive programs. See my workshop on Storyline Authoring.

Experience API

Experience API is a new simple learning utility that allows companies to track and encourage informal learning and sharing of experiences. I emphasize “ encourage” because it is my hope that this will turn out to be a recognition of how learners learn from real-life situations which lead to faster and cheaper ways of providing learning opportunities. The risk, to my mind, is that Experience API becomes another “big brother” and SCORM-type of tracking for “cover your __ (CYA) type of learning.”

Whole Brain

I had the distinct privilege of working with Perla Tayko at the Assumption University, Bangkok, to help students use software I developed for “thinking through” learning content. Tayko says, “to take advantage of the explosion in digital technology, we need to employ the whole brain thinking for improved learning and decision making.” 

Recursive Design

I have been following the work of Jürgen Schmidhuber on self-learning machines. His works on neural networks and building robots endowed me with curiosity and creative feed for my study on the learner’s ability to learn from small events, incrementally and rapidly. I am fascinated with his applications of the self-supervised learning in robots.

Mobile

Mlearning is the new eLearning. Mobile tools enable the learners to learn on need, wherever and wherever. Mobile learning is where “Brain/Technology Wave” and “Thought/Action Wave” juxtapose. We are enamored by the freedom and impact on productivity and our quality of life. We often forget that Mlearning is the tip of the wave that liberates and accelerates the learner’s capability  to “Think/Act” at the same time. The ubiquitous Mlearning tools will forever bury the delay and hindrances caused by the “thought, action later” thinking. Now, we think-act-educate-use simultaneously.

Drones

Chris Anderson left Wired Magazine to launch the “do-it-yourself” venture into the mass production of drones. What is fascinating to me is the amazing speed of technology transfer from military use to civilian use. Furthermore, Anderson worked with a young kid to evolve the concept from the inception of the project - an application of crowd sourcing. This suggests that innovation comes from all around us.

Cloud Computing

The “cloud” will enable us to afford cheaper, faster and easier ways to design and deliver learning. Check out Jane Hart’s website for the newest and greatest of learning software. One can see the abundance of tools and enablers to help us implement learning environments.

Robotics and Learning

Steve Wheeler discloses how we will never be able to separate our learning and work away from some form of robotics. Today, this happens in the high-fidelity-simulation type of training.

Watson

We are all familiar with IBM’s Watson. In the healthcare industry, Watson works with mobile devices to help doctors and staff. In Fortune’s January 14, 2013 issue, an article illustrates how our lives are now so intertwined and dependent on drones, medical devices, surgical robots and supercomputers. “Thinking machines” will most likely help us to act faster and better by outsourcing the data mining drudgery, while allowing us to think through and make decisions on more important things. 

Fascinating future, here and now.
 



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

Creating Great Stories for eLearning

Synthesis: 

Create great stories for learning by exploring sources and methods like business artifacts, business practices or memes, personal tips, workarounds, how-to’s, self-help solutions and even people’s backgrounds. Systematically collected stories can  become a reference library for elearning  programs.   

____________________________________________________________________________

Disney and Pixar recently released the movie "Brave." What a great title. That alone, immediately reminded the audience of the travails, fears, hopes, joys, challenges and adventures of heroic people. With "Brave" as the title, it becomes an instant recall for stories. It is pure genius. Of course this is Pixar. On the other hand, eLearning designers, as many may say, "don't have the creative juices" to craft powerful titles and stories. However, we are more optimistic. I think deep in the hearts of learning designers is the ability to create stories that compel learners. 

Creating great stories for eLearning is an investment that raises the engagement or compelling levels of your programs. This helps the learner to learn better and faster.
There are varied sources and forms of stories. Oftentimes, it is easier to find and tell a story, when one knows the questions to ask and what to search with a set of frameworks or storymaps. In this article, our objective is to learn how to find great stories that fit the nature of the content you want to stress.

SRIA eLearning Design Model – straight to the gut

In the eBook and in our workshops, we introduced the SRIA (Set up, Relate, Interpret and Apply) Story-based eLearning Design approach. SRIA is a microcosm or nucleus of converting a small content into a story format. In Set up, we transform learning objectives into observable real behaviors, events and consequences, either positive or negative. At the Relate phase, the learner is invited into the story. During the Interpret step, we ask the learner to analyze or assess the story. Finally getting to the Apply approach, the learner is encouraged to try it out or test the story idea in real-life situations. SRIA is our "straight to the gut" approach. It is a "cut to the chase" method of applying stories in eLearning. See examples of the SRIA approach - Burglary Watch and The Secret.

Different Methods of Finding Great Stories

Business artifacts – "What's behind the numbers?"

Try looking at your customer complaint logs or your accident reports or scrap waste level or rate of returns. These are artifacts in every organization that provide very rich sources of stories from its data vault. The artifacts reflect some incidents or real-life situations that become part of the data and numbers.


These include:

• Logs
• Reports
• Customer complaints
• Exception reports
• Conversion ratios
• Data in sales, marketing, production, logistics, safety
• Financial records
• Compliance directives, infractions,
• Performance records
• Efficiency and productivity reports
• Other specifics of your business

I recall a former professor of mine, who taught finance. He said, 

"All numbers reflect what reality is out there. Don't just accept numbers. Ask what's behind the numbers."

Examples of stories from artifacts

"Howard Shultz of Starbucks saved millions of dollars by simply adding a controlled measurement marker in the pitcher serving soy milk. Previously, employees would throw away soy milk costing millions."

 
"Some graduate degree students sued FedEx for failing to deliver their applications to grant institutions. FedEx promised the next day. But the package arrived two days after causing rejections of the applications for the grant."


I was observing a call center order taker for a large online retailer and the chat transcription went this way. "Do you deliver in Stockholm? I need the stroller immediately since I am traveling." – customer from Stockholm. "Yes, do you want the FedEx next-day option? It would be $72.00 more." – call center person in Dallas, Texas.

Business practices - "What we are about"

Most organizations espouse principles, visions and practices to help them accomplish their goals and strategies. Practices send powerful messages about the culture and norms in the organization. Best practices are usually what we refer to when pointing learners towards success. However, bad practices are also vivid illustrations on "what not to do." 

Business practices are usually expressed in terms of:

• Statement of vision
• History of the organization
• Previous, present and future comparisons
• Turnaround stories
• Conquests

Practices become "memes". Memes are hard-coded practices that are expressed as unquestionable norms, cultures and practices. They either work for or against the organization. Memes either promote or discourage changes you want to happen. In the blog "Battle of Stories", we express that trainers and designers need to factor "memes" into their design. 

Learning your corporate "memes" helps you leverage it's energy and emotional power to enhance your learning design. 

Examples of memes – practices

Undesirable: "Our customers tend to take advantage of our goodwill. So here in our company, we support customers sparingly." 

Favorable: "Customers are always right. Even when they are wrong, they are right."

See more on slogans, memes, impact stories, surveys, etc.(Click here)

In organizational context, stories are often shared in the following forms:

• Cautionary tales
• Genesis stories
• Leadership stories
• Stories of failure
• Founder myths
• Heroic stories
• Stories of hope
• Fearful stories
• Stories of transformation
• Visionary stories
• War stories

(Source: Dave Straker)

Personal tips, workarounds, short cuts, how to's, and self-help solutions

John Seely Brown, Xerox PARC scientist and author of "Social Life of Information" recounts this story. To paraphrase:

"Our team of engineers had a serious problem with one of our copying machines. We had spent weeks to study how to fix the problem. It continued to jam. Four engineers could not solve the problem. Finally, we went to see a mail room operator who used the same machine. We asked how he kept on using the machine without being bogged down. To our surprise, the operator explained that the paper's weight and humidity caused some serious jam. So to avoid the problem, he  allow paper to aerate and dry. This avoided the jam."
 
Another example - I had a conversation with the champion project leader of a large assessment company. They were converting their paper and pencil assessments into a software-based method using the iPad. This was a first-of-its kind in the world. The conversation went this way:

"We provided an assistance-type of a help guide to help users learn how to use the software and the iPad. But we were amazed to discover that users started using their workarounds to use the assessments and iPad in ways that they found useful and beneficial. Our software developers wondered what was going on here. Why were users not following the help guide provided to them?" 

 
One of my clients, the largest drip irrigation system manufacturer in the world uses this illustration: 

"Our drippers (tubes for underground drip irrigation) are so thin they easily break when punctured during installation, by coyotes and even birds. The drippers are very strong, but very thin. So we use the trash bag illustration – thin, yet durable. It was easier to understand."
 
Sources of stories from people's background

Heather J. Richmond of St. Thomas University wrote a paper "Learners' Lives: A Narrative Analysis". Her study included a series of interviews with adults for the purpose of helping improve literacy through connecting stories. 

Richmond developed a Schematic Organization of the Storymap (Figure 1) below. Her intention is to use the storymap to understand people's sources of stories.

(Click here for enlarged view)

When we look at Richmond's storymap, one invariably asks the question, "Can you share with me something about your background? The question encourages the person being interviewed to narrate an experience and share a related story. The storymap helps to provide us with a framework to understand where stories could come from. 

Collecting stories through a library system

In working with clients and non-profit organizations, we frequently suggest that they systematically collect stories. One large company developed a story posting and sharing web-based application to enable subject matter experts (SMEs), leaders, managers and team members to submit stories for different categories.

The client company found the system very productive. It became a source for immediate access to stories they can refer to, when writing eLearning programs.

An example of this system is Stories2Learn.com – click here. 

(Click here to view examples)

Summary

We all love a well crafted and totally compelling story. Everyday, stories swirl around us from the radio, tv, subway, bus station, our neighbor, friend or even our co-worker. Creating great stories for eLearning is an excellent method for quality learning. Stories help learners to easily grasp learning by taking them through a series of events toward discovery points. These maximize learners' participation and interaction and eventual application to real-life situations.

Related links

Which is More Compelling to the Learners: Facts or Stories?
"Concrete and Vivid Stories Exert Extraordinary Influence"
Making Facts Stick With Stories - Jiggling Atoms
How to Embed Learning Goals in Stories
Instant Learning: How it works and how to make it happen?

The BIG Plus of Compliance Training

True, many compliance training are delivered because of the CYA mentality.
But there is a plus side to this.

Yesterday, I accompanied my wife who checked out from the hospital after a major surgery. Thank God, she is fine.

In the check out process, the nurse inspected her wrist band/ID to validate her identity. Then she asked the question, "Can you say your name out loud?" I thought this was interesting. She further said that this is a "Joint Commission" rule. We need to ask patients to identify themselves.

It seems not really common sense that a nurse should ask the identification of the patient - quite redundant. But due to the compliance training that the nurse had to go through, the procedure is recalled better … whether due to potential sanctions from the commission or due to training. This is actually good.

Most compliance trainings are provided because life is at stake, like safety and health care.

Ray Jimenez, PhD www.vignettestraining.com
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"