Make workplace learning less boring

It constantly surprises me how ineffective approaches to teaching are in workplaces. I'm not talking about formal L&D training but the kind where there's a cool trick you know that would be really great if others knew too as it would save time, money etc.

Sometimes we must rely on others to guide us or help us learn, for example through coaching or through teaching us a facilitation technique. In my experience, no one is taught to teach and this can make workplace learning painful. People have a misconception that teaching is just about sharing information but it is much more than that - it needs to be visceral.

In order to learn, we need to be motivated or engaged to do so. In the workplace, the 'teacher' needs to create those conditions. To make people remember things and not be bored out of their minds, we need to engage them and not just share information.

Sharon Bowman's 'Training from the back of the room' has a simple structure to follow to do just that (the 4Cs). The following instructions are copied from Sharon Bowman's website.

Connections

Learners actively make connections with what they already know about the topic (prior knowledge), with what they will learn (learning objectives), with what they want to learn (personal goals), and with each other (community building). Instructor leads short connection activities.

Concepts

Learners take in new information in multisensory ways: hearing, seeing, discussing, writing, reflecting, and participating in short, quick review activities. Instructor delivers content with brief lecture segments (10-20 minutes in length) and leads 1-3 minute review activities between each lecture segment.

Concrete Practice

Learners practice a skill or perform a task using the training content, or they all participate in an extended, active review of what they have learned. Instructor observes and gives positive or corrective feedback.

Conclusions:  

Learners summarize and evaluate what they have learned and create action plans for how they plan to use the new knowledge and skills. They also celebrate the learning. Instructor leads the conclusion and celebration activities.

This structure works as it constantly engages people and doesn't let them fall back into a passive listening mode.

Plus it makes use of all the senses / learning modes at our disposal to repeat a message and hammer it home without it being tedious:

• Get people to write, talk and even jump!
• Use images, surprise people.
• Anything that gets people to be active (e.g. writing) rather than passive (e.g. reading) is good and will help with the repetition required to make something stick.

One good exercise to try as part of the Connections piece is to get people to shout out what they already know about a topic or jump up and say it while trying to avoid speaking over others - this gameifies it. You then tot up a score for how many things people suggested as a group and then do this exercise at the end in the conclusion and compare scores. This is something I picked up on the IC Agile Coaching course offered by Agile Affinity.

This framework is also effective to use when you just need to engage people. If you are just talking at them, chances are that people are switching off and worse, becoming resentful. So this framework is useful for when you want to demonstrate a model or product or way of working as it gets people to actually demo it rather than just thinking about it in the abstract.