All Learning Is Self-Directed

During almost four decades spent designing, developing, and delivering learning events, I’ve researched and written about many workplace learning issues that are pertinent to the rapidly changing workforce. The world of training continues to evolve as our learners do. For the first time, there are four active generational groups of people in the typical workplace. In addition, there are people from around the world who often come together in a learning event, each with their cultural perspectives related to what a trainer should do and how learning should occur. Add to this mix the influx of technologybased learning concepts, and you suddenly find that, as the character Dorothy in the movie The Wizard of Oz said, We’re not in Kansas anymore. In effect, the rules are different, the people are different, and the environment is different. All of this means that you also must be different and look for new ways to inspire, inform, and encourage your learners, no matter what type of learning environment you use.

That is why I wrote this book. It provides a smorgasbord of proven ideas, strategies, and techniques that you can use to enhance your approach to adult learning and to engage and support your learners while making the environment more upbeat, fun, and functional.

No matter whether you’re a novice trainer or instructor looking for additional ideas to expand your knowledge related to adult learning, or a more seasoned one looking for reminders or different approaches to addressing common situations in the learning environment, there is something in this book for you.

As trainers and educators in search of resources to enhance your learning environment, you have thousands of books to choose from each year. Many of the books focus on how to design, develop, and deliver effective training programs for a variety of organizational types and topics. Others provide bits and pieces of concepts that may help improve learning in the classroom or encourage the posttraining transfer of knowledge and skills to the workplace. This book addresses all of those topics, offering a resource for creating learning events that will help you assist learners in gaining, retaining, recalling, and applying what they learn; and helping make you a training success story. It does this by taking a creative approach to an old topic. Instead of simply saying, Here are some tips for you to consider, it ties together concepts related to learner motivation, communication, and effective training strategies. In these pages, you will find classroomtested approaches to creating learnercentric training events that are interactive, effective, dynamic, and fun!

Using the techniques, tips, and strategies presented here, you can develop and deliver training programs that will stimulate your learners’ brains, aid their retention and recall of newly acquired knowledge and skills, promote the transfer of learning to their workplaces, add value for them and their organizations, and increase training returnoninvestment. In a short period of time, you will be applying strategies and techniques that master trainers have been using for years.

Take the journey now to enhanced training knowledge and skills. Turn the page and discover how to start helping your learners master any training topic.

Acknowledgments

Like many trainers and consultants, I have spent major portions of my life in the classroom, working with clients, and sitting at a computer. All of this has been possible because of the support of my wife, friend, and life partner, M.J., and my mother, Rosie. They are the reason that you are able to read this book.

A special note of thanks to Christine Cotting, who struggled along with me to get this book into a format that will better benefit anyone reading it. Also, thanks to Tora Estep and Jacki EdlundBraun for their support in making this project a reality.

Bob Lucas

April 2010

In the past two decades, researchers have made a number of discoveries about how various environmental and related factors in the classroom affect a learner’s ability to gain, retain, recall, and use what he or she experiences there—factors such as light, sound, color, odor, movement, novelty, and nutrition. They have identified where in the human brain visual and auditory messages are processed, which parts of the brain are involved when a new stimulus is encountered, and what path is taken as memories are formed. Trainers and educators now can use the lessons from this research to plan their approaches to content delivery. Designing training activities and environments that incorporate what we now understand about learning will enhance the value of your training programs. The research offers insights that you can use to develop valuable instruments and processes to add to your professional training facilitation toolbox.

Moving beyond the learning effects of environmental factors, we also know that tasks done often become more familiar and easier to accomplish over time. Thus, trainers and educators have built practice, repetition, and quizzes into their sessions to provide recurring opportunities for review and application of skills and knowledge repeatedly—and they are making sensory experience a part of those vehicles. Their program designs help fix the tasks or information in learners’ memory for easier future recall and use. But how else can we stimulate and promote better learning outcomes from our teaching efforts?

There is no guarantee like this: If you use effective lighting, add color to your classroom, incorporate music into learning, feed your learners, put plants in the room, include some movement activity, and repeat everything four times, learning will occur. But these and other factors can create an environment that stimulates the imagination, increases blood flow to carry oxygen to learners’ brains, holds participants’ attention, and offers enough variety in sensory experience and repetition to aid retention. For example, in his book BrainBased Learning: The New Science of Teaching and Training (Corwin Press 2000), Eric Jensen reported on studies that found plants placed indoors raised oxygen levels and increased productivity by as much as 10 percent. That finding suggests it may make sense to put nonflowering plants in training environments, especially in closed buildings where windows are sealed and air simply is recycled. Some neuroscientific research has found that blood flow to the brain increases when a stimulus like music is introduced. Trainers may want to use music and incorporate musicbased activities to help focus participants’ attention and improve the chances that learning will take place.

Of course, not all research that applies to training and education is new or focused specifically on the learning environment or on repetition. Consider the research that Abraham Maslow did at the end of and following World War II. He identified employee motivation factors; and from his research, we got the oftenquoted Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. His theory of motivation generally remains valid today. In the classroom, you can tap into Maslow’s research to help ensure that your training addresses the needs that motivate your learners. As a refresher for you, appendix A illustrates Maslow’s hierarchy and describes the five levels of need. It also gives examples of things you can do in your own learning events to ensure that you’re meeting those needs.

What you will find in these pages are realworld examples and ideas for turning into practice what researchers know about how the brain processes information and how learners best benefit from training and educational experiences. As you read through each section, consider ways that you might incorporate the creative techniques into your own learning environments in an effort to help learners maximize the returns on their time and investment in attending your sessions. Consider keeping a notepad handy and jotting down specific page numbers and tips that you want to try in your next training program or class.

Who Should Use This Book

The content of this book is based on proven, classroomtested strategies gathered over 37 years of experience that the author has in various adult learning environments. Anyone who trains or educates adult learners will

find these techniques useful and valuable in enhancing learning, enthusiasm, motivation, and efficiency in a variety of classroom settings.

How This Book Is Organized

Following this introduction, there are 13 chapters full of tips and techniques to energize your training program content and delivery, your class environment, and your learners. Each chapter begins with a brief introduction to the topics it comprises; and each topic includes a Putting It to Work sidebar. These sidebars offer specific techniques and strategies that have been used by the author and other workplace learning and educational professionals to create more memorable and effective learning events. In all, 438 tips, techniques, strategies, and bright ideas are presented in the book’s practical justtellmewhatworks format.

There also are three appendixes and a Resources section. These addendums to the book content expand the knowledge and provide ideas and strategies you can use in any adult learning environment. There is an overview of the five levels of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, from the perspective of what a trainer or educator can do in a classroom to address learners’ motivations. And there are strategies for selecting volunteers through a variety of novel and fun means, and for creatively grouping learners in the classroom. In the Resources section, there are lots of websites, books, Internet sites, and other resources that can provide useful information and purchase sites where readers can find the creative props and products referred to throughout the book.

ChapterbyChapter Overview of the Book

Chapter 1: Assessing and Addressing Learners’ Needs—Before you can design, develop, or deliver effective training, you must discover the true needs of your learners. In this chapter, you’ll learn strategies to supplement traditional needs assessment techniques so that you can give learners what they need or expect. You also will discover strategies for meeting the expectations of your learners.

Chapter 2: Creating Memorable Events—By building learning events in which you creatively sequence activities, schedule adequate time, plan learnercentric strategies, and take a buildingblock approach to content delivery, you help encourage participation and inspire your learners. In this section, you’ll gain insights that can help accomplish all of this. And you’ll learn the importance of selecting the right time and date for your sessions. You also will identify strategies for maximizing your learning time.

Chapter 3: Developing Powerful Learning Aids—Learning aids are powerful teaching tools for trainers and educators. In this chapter, you’ll find a wealth of tips for planning, creating, and using different audiovisual support materials. The novel tips focus on how to create materials that will help learners gain and retain what they experience. They’ll also supplement your verbal messages to your learners. You’ll read about techniques for developing and using more effective flip charts, slides, handouts, training tools, and video clips.

Chapter 4: Creating a Stimulating Environment—People typically remember best when they experience information a number of times through various senses and in myriad formats. That’s because repetition helps their brains better process and retain what they experience. This chapter provides tools and techniques to help your participants acquire, retain, recall, and use information from your programs. Strategies provided in this chapter include ideas for effectively organizing your environment for maximum learning. You also will read about the use of music, color, props, games, and activities; and you’ll discover other inventive ways to reinforce knowledge, skills, and attitudes addressed in your learning events.

Chapter 5: Starting with a Bang!—Before you can share your knowledge with learners, you must gain their attention and get them to focus mentally on you, each other, and the session content. In addition, you should keep learners engaged and working together throughout the session so that they can benefit from the knowledge and experience that each participant brings to the environment. As you’ll read in this chapter, there are many ways to accomplish all of this, including the use of magic, novelty, interaction, and other attentiongetting strategies.

Chapter 6: Connecting with Learners—Part of your training strategy should be to establish a safe environment in which trust can flourish and an open exchange of ideas can occur. By forming an interpersonal relationship with learners, you often get them to volunteer, share, and work more cohesively in small groups. You also can improve the chances that they will value the experience, take what they learn to heart, and transfer it back to the workplace. In this chapter, you’ll learn to gain and maintain learner trust, to communicate more effectively in the classroom, and to provide feedback to learners.

Chapter 7: Getting Learners’ Brains in Gear—One of the things that separates excellent trainers and educators from those who just do a good job is the ability to understand how learners best take in and process information. Many research studies have been conducted to discover strategies for helping people more effectively absorb and assimilate what they learn. If you recognize specific learner preferences and indicators, and then build into your lesson plan some strategies to deliver to each of them, you enhance learners’ potential success ratios. In this chapter, you’ll read about how to aid your learners’ information processing and tap into their learning modalities and multiple intelligences.

Chapter 8: Engaging Your Learners—A key component of successfully training and educating adults is keeping your learners actively engaged mentally and physically. It’s crucial that they are involved and assume some responsibility for their learning by taking ownership of the consequences and results. This helps ensure transfer of learning later. You can accomplish engagement by creating an environment and a program that allow for activity, risk taking, challenge, novelty, and fun. By using a variety of active learning strategies—including energizers, props, and movement activities—you can bring participants into the learning arena and make them feel that they are important and active elements of the learning process. This chapter will share ways to get your learners to challenge, question, think, and apply what they experience.

Chapter 9: Keeping It Positive—From the moment you first open your mouth until you finish your session, learners will be evaluating and forming opinions of you and the learning event in which they’re engaged.A positive first impressionis powerful and crucial in a learning environment. By projecting a powerful image, incorporating active learning strategies, and creatively preparing your environment in advance, you can stimulate interest and excitement as soon as learners enter the classroom. After that, you have the opportunity to help them develop new paradigms and ideas. At the end of your session, you can send learners out on a high note and help make the experience more memorable. In this chapter, you’ll find techniques and tips for establishing an environment that captures and holds learner interest and helps enhance the learning experience from beginning to end.

Chapter 10: Managing Unique Groups and Individuals—In a globally diverse world, you’re likely to come in contact with learners from all types of cultures and backgrounds. You also are going to have people from different generational groups in your sessions; and you’ll have people who, for a variety of reasons, don’t behave in a manner that’s conducive to learning. Your role as a trainer or educator is to manage all these variables so that each person has equal access to the learning experience and benefits from his or her time investment. In this chapter, you’ll discover strategies for interacting and communicating with people who are different from you or whose needs or behaviors create challenges in the learning environment.

Chapter 11: Reinforcing Learning Through Review and Repetition—A key factor in learning retention is your use of repetition in the classroom. You can accomplish this by using a variety of techniques during and at the end of a learning event. In this chapter, you’ll read about strategies for effectively reviewing key concepts and ideas presented through the use of games and props during a session, and techniques for helping learners validate what they got at the end of the program.

Chapter 12: Transferring Learning to the Job—This chapter offers tips, ideas, and strategies to help accomplish the transfer of learning from the classroom to the real world. From both an organizational and an individual perspective, the bottom line in training is, Did learners gain worthwhile new knowledge, skills, and attitudes from the event? To ensure that the answer is yes, you must begin thinking about what content is needed, how it will be delivered, and how it will be measured during the planning stages of your training—before you design your program. Once in the classroom, you must focus content delivery on desired outcomes. You can do this by providing small chunks of information, creating memory pegs, focusing content on the real world, identifying ways to partner with supervisors and others in the organization to establish a network of support for employees returning from training, and using other the techniques discussed.

Chapter 13: Evaluating Training Results—You should continually seek to measure how well your training content is meeting the performance needs of your learners and their organization(s). By regularly examining the content, delivery style, materials, environment, and other pertinent factors of the training process, and by assessing learner comprehension and satisfaction, you can implement a process of continual improvement. Only after you have accomplished these things can you start to identify your training’s returnoninvestment. In this chapter, you’ll learn creative ways to gauge and monitor learner feelings and track training progress.

A Personal Word

As a human resource development professional with nearly 40 years’ experience as an internal and external consultant, I’ve trained thousands of adults from many counties in military, forprofit, nonprofit, volunteer, and academic organizations. I know that training professionals are more interested in results and learning outcomes than in theory and research. That is what you will find in this book—hundreds of classroomtested and experiencevalidated strategies, techniques, approaches, and activities that will enhance your learning events, engage and focus your learners, and help you help them reach their maximum potential.

I am confident that the money and time you invest in buying and reading this book will add value to the design and delivery of your training programs. I guarantee that you will find tips that will help you create a more learnercentric and productive learning environment. I encourage you to use the tips and techniques to improve your success in the classroom and to share your ideas with others, just as countless other professional trainers and educators have done with me over the years. That success may mean more engaging, memorable, and enjoyable training events; fewer classroom disruptions or learner distractions; substantial personal and professional development for your participants; greater transfer of learning to the workplace; and better training returnoninvestment for your organization. If this book helps you in these and other practical ways, I count my efforts as worthwhile.

Happy training!

What’s Inside This Chapter:

5 Suggestions for identifying learner needs

13 Methods for giving learners what they want or need

10 Ways to address learner expectations

Before you can design, develop, or deliver an effective learning event, you must identify your learners’ expectations and needs. Failure to properly determine factors inhibiting employee performance may result in poorly and inappropriately focused training that wastes time and dollars.

This section will describe strategies for discovering what your learners want and need and for meeting or countering their expectations.

Five Suggestions for Identifying Learner Needs

Always make efforts to discover what the learners who are expected to participate in an upcoming training actually need before you try to design the training program. If there’s no way to gather this information before the day of training, all is not lost. This section describes five ways to bring workplace issues and learners’ needs to the surface so they can be addressed in the course of the training.

1 Us e Participant Interviews

At the beginning of your session, ask learners to spend time interviewing one another to discover some personal details about their experience with training in general and their motivation for taking this class in particular. Here are some questions they might ask:

Why are you here today?

Have you ever attended training on today’s topic? If so, what did you learn there?

What one bit of information do you most need to get from today’s session?

What one thing do you hope does not happen during the training?

How do you plan to use the information that you gain from to day’s session?

How soon do you expect to apply what you learn?

When everyone has been interviewed, have each person share what she or he has learned about the person interviewed.

2Pas s Out Questionnaires

If pretraining timing permits it, create a questionnaire and send it to registrants before the session. Ask them to respond to the questions and return the survey to you by a specific date before the scheduled training. If that’s not feasible, pass it out during your introductory remarks to the class and use it instead of the mutual interview process.

Your questions should focus on learners’ current performance and workplace issues. Here are some sample questions: ! What workplace issues prompted you to sign up for this training? ! What is your biggest knowledge or skill deficit related to the session topic? ! What performance challenges related to the session topic have you faced recently? ! How have workplace issues related to the session topic affected your ability to perform your job?

3Us e Index Cards to Reveal Priority Interests

At the beginning of the session, distribute index cards and ask each participant to write down one bit of knowledge or skill related to