Category Archives: eLearning

How do we ensure competency?

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Is training really the answer?

I’ve just watched Craig Taylor’s excellent Pecha Kucha ‘Using technology to enhance an assess-train-assess approach’ in which he shares examples of how assessing competency levels before automatically mandating everyone attend the same annual refresher has had a positive impact on business.

When I hear people talking about the need to design a course here may be some reasoning behind it:

a) there is an update
b) compliance -staff are required to attend refresher training every year whether they need it or not
c) there’s some new approaches to working practise

However, before you automatically go through the usual motions and go down the ‘we’ve got to design a new course’ why not ask yourself the following questions:

How much do they know already?

How often would they carry out that work?

and the biggie…. What REALLY tells you whether they are competent or not?

Why do we insist on putting everyone, no matter how experienced they are in the subject, through a course before establishing whether they actually need it? Even when the instructional design is top notch including relevant task based interactive activities, it’s a waste of resources and staff time if they already know the subject matter and are applying successfully. Of course we need to maintain quality and adhere to legal requirements but is herding us all through one-size-fits-all courses the most efficient or, indeed, effective way of doing this?

It seems we often pay more attention to recording ‘bums on seats’ – virtual or otherwise instead of establishing the quality of work performance. So our workforce are all too often taken off their important jobs and attend compulsory training where there is limited flexibility in what they can choose to do. There is a simple, logical and very effective solution – assessments not courses.

As I said in a comment to Ryan Tracy’s blog post ‘online courses must die‘ “why force individuals to go through the same mandatory content year after year when all they may need is a yearly, skills based assessment. If that assessment highlight skills gaps then a more flexible learning programme will make sure individuals learn only what they need not what they don’t”

Now I’m not saying that we’ll never need formal courses ever again. This would be rediculous and untrue. Besides, I’d be talking my way out of a job if I do that. There are many reasons why someone will need formal courses. But before we decide, we do need to be more analytical before designing how to facilitate our workforce’s learning paths. Yes, it may mean more hard work gathering all the information you’ll need. Yes, it will mean we would need to encourage ownership of learning more to the individuals themselves and help them develop their meta-cognitive skills. And yes, it will mean L&D professionals would then become more cultivators of learning.

When reflecting on why this ‘herding’ approach occurs so frequently, I was reminded of a conversation I had recently around the reluctance in considering just assessing staff to prove competence before deciding whether anyone needed more formal training. It appears it all boiled down to the quality of the assessment – or rather the poor quality of the assessment. This meant that everyone had to be forced to attend the same training course to make sure the content was covered (not I didn’t say learned) and which could be tracked for statistical purposes and to prove attendance.  Now, correct me if I’m wrong but the whole point of an assessment is to test whether a person is competent in the subject matter.

If you spend the valuable time and effort in creating great learning programmes, whether they are formal courses or a collection of learning nuggets on-demand, the only way learning can be confirmed is by completing an assessed activity.  If that assessment can easily be ‘guessed’, then the learner doesn’t have to use any problem solving techniques to analyse and apply.  If you honestly have little confidence in the assessment at the end of a learning programme, of course you won’t want to put it out there on its own.  It will about as much use as a chocolate  teapot!

We’ve often discussed what makes good learning, ‘e’ or otherwise. What now begs the question is “what is good assessment?”

How do you eat an elephant?

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One bite-sized chunk at a time!

Recently I listened to the last CD of the audio book ‘The Elephant to Hollywood’, the latest autobiography from Michael Caine. It was a requested Christmas present and I decided on the audio book rather than the hard copy or Kindle version for a number of reasons.

  • Pink elephantI have hundreds of books and just rarely get the chance to read for pleasure these days (something I have to change);
  • I spend a lot of time in the car or in hotels and at the end of a day’s training my eyes are too tired to read;
  • Michael Caine was reading his own book which was the selling point to me as it would certainly bring it to life;
  • I had previously bought his last audio book (then on tape back in 1993 and enjoyed that one too);

It was something that I listened too in snippets each trip I made a long or short trip. However long the trip, it sped by listening to his distinct tones. I laughed out loud and cried in places. I love driving anyway but looked forward to my longer trips so I could hear more.  Although at time it was clear that he was reading it because at times there was a little less fluidity to the narration, on the whole it was pretty much like listening  to the stories as if being recounted from memory with the help of notes.

When the last CD came to an end I could have listened to it all over again and probably will because as often happens even when listening to the radio, I zone out at times and don’t actually listen to every word.   Maybe some extract of the story sparked a memory or it took me back to one of the films. So the next minute or so the voice just became background noise.

Some weeks after finishing the audio book, I wouldn’t be able to recite it back to you or even give you details of what was said in a particular chapter.  However, certain things will trigger memories of parts of the book and they became clear in my mind again.

Then I began to reflect on my experience and thought how closely it linked to listening to podcasts for learning and what we could use them for.

Firstly, if you are planning on a monologue, I think it’s essential for it to be more along the lines of story-telling.  For example, someone could share a little anecdote about how celebrating a colleague’s birthday in the staff room complete with birthday cake and candles literally sparked a full blown fire evacuation, two fire engines and lots of fire crew.  Yes, folks it did actually happen – I was there – and no it wasn’t me!  Not only would it be an amusing story to tell but something to use as a learning discussion point.

Keep them short.  Even though the audio book took a while to get through it was divided up into CDs and then chapters on each CD.

Separate into topics.  If the podcasts are, say, 20 minutes in total, divide it up into easily digestible chunks.  Not only will it make it easier for the listener to navigate and revisit but it’s quicker to download and manage smaller audio files than larger ones.

Try and go for a more conversational style piece such as an interview or a simple discussion between two or more people.  We tune out to a single voice much more quickly which is why I think I might have ‘zoned’ out at times even though I found Michael Caine’s story-telling fascinating.  Think about why we like listening to the radio.  Afterall, it’s been popular for decades.

Why not go for more of a reporter style podcast.  For example with some creative writing and some keen amateur dramatics people involved you could report on an ‘incident’  where the reporter might have been one of the first at the scene.  Yet another good starting point for a learning discussion.  Here’s an interesting example.  Can you guess what incident the reporter is covering?

A simple briefing:  podcasts could even be used purely to introduce the programme or provide some background behind an initiative.

Really, if you just think about how radio is used, your podcasting world is your oyster and very easy to include in your solutions.  There’s plenty of audio recording software out there.  Try Audacity which is free.  You’ll need to also download Lame with it if you want to convert into MP3 files and it has a really good selection editing tools.

There is a little more to it of course but I’ll explore those at a later date.

 

 

All the world’s a stage

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And all the men and women merely players

Have you ever struggled with writing engaging elearning? All too often the detached self study tutorials are full of what Cathy Moore calls ‘corporate drone‘ and because we have become used to writing what we think the organisation wants, we can find it tricky to look beyond the business gobbledygook and write what our learners need to hear/read.

Now there are lots of things we can do to help our elearning become more engaging but the one important thing that’s often missing is the human touch. Somehow when writing for these self study tutorials we forget there is a human being on the other end of the computer. We write business-speak – formal. The last thing to help people feel at ease is formality.

When I was young and being taught English Grammar in school, all my essays had to be grammatically correct. I was taught never to shorten words. I was told always to write ‘it is’ not ‘it’s’ or ‘cannot’ not ‘can’t’. This may still be the case if you’re writing novels. It’s difficult to unlearn these things (and if my Father ever read what I write these days, he’d be appalled).

Here’s my advice…. “imagine you are sitting right next to the person. What would you actually say to them?”. Because the thing is, even though the tutorial may reach hundreds or thousands of people, there’s only one person sitting on the other end of that PC. It’s an intimate experience. You are talking only to them not the masses. You are connecting only with that one person. Allow them to feel you really exist as a human being not a corporate clone.

I like to think that writing for elearning tutorials is a little like writing a stage play script or a movie script. Write the conversations you will have with that individual. If creating scenarios, write the script for the scene and create realistic characters to ‘speak’ and ‘act’ out the conversations and emotions. Use natural language. Use visuals to depict emotion or thought bubbles to allow us to understand what the character might be thinking. Avoid all those lovely descriptive adjectives we would see in great novels we’re not writing novels, we’re writing scenes so learners can imagine themselves right there.

Make their online learning experience just that – an experience. And one to remember.