Engaging with training
It is a common misconception that the best way to impart knowledge is by lecturing on a new subject. But learning is actually more effective when students are given the opportunity to interact through tasks and activities and learn for themselves, explains Vincent Desmond, IRCA's business manager
Given a fighting chance, children manage to learn everything they need to know before they go to school: how to communicate, how to survive socially, how to judge consequences, and therefore how to plan.
By the time they arrive at corporate training courses their expectations of learning are set by what they have experienced at school, at college and at the training courses they have been sent on. They expect:
- a small group of 'delegates'
- a smart, professional tutor
- PowerPoint slides
- lectures - during which the tutor presents the material and fills them with knowledge
- a impressive folder to put on the shelf back at the office
- a fine lunch
These deeply embedded expectations do not make for effective learning. The transmission method (ie telling people information) has given way to the theory that learning happens most effectively when people practice things and therefore when the trainer knows how to guide learners through appropriate practice activities.
IRCA is developing auditor training course syllabuses that move away from long lectures to interactive learning sessions that allow students to learn for themselves by completing tasks and activities. Of course, this needs to happen within a well-managed learning process such as the version of Kolb's learning cycle in figure 1 below, which many management systems professionals will recognize as a close cousin of the plan-do-check-act cycle.
Figure 1. IRCA's version of the Kolb learning cycle
If implemented successfully in the corporate training context the following should be observed in a classroom:
Students:
- doing tasks with defined outputs
- experimenting with new ideas and notions
- asking lots of questions
- helping each other
- working in teams
- being relaxed and confident
- working at their own pace and in their own way
A classroom that:
- has an atmosphere of comfort, relaxation, and even fun
- is set up for active, team-based project work, not listening and reading
- changes in mood regularly
- is owned by the students and contains their own work outputs
Trainers:
- operating as facilitators not lecturers
- setting up tasks and activities with clear output requirements
- encouraging students
- questioning students to challenge their understanding of new ideas
- encouraging students to answer their own questions
- requiring students to review their own performance and understanding
- helping students to identify learning achievements and areas for improvement
The benefits to this approach are clear: students learn things more thoroughly and retain knowledge and skills for much longer.
Breaking it down
In fluid business environments where markets, products, software and people change constantly, learning must also happen constantly. However, for many, the training budget has much in common with the marketing budget: you have a feeling that only some of the activity is effective, but which parts?
Given that knowledge is power, those companies spending money on training need to consider the following in their selection of training providers.
- remember that content experts are not necessarily good at training
- send staff who perform regular in-house or on-the-job training on a train-the-trainer course. It will pay for itself many times over
- if you buy a lot of external training expertise, it is also worth sending key purchasers on a train-the-trainer course so they can ensure they can define appropriate training requirements, talk the same language as the training providers who pitch to them, and assess training delivery
- you need to assess training before you buy it, not after your staff members have completed it and you have already paid. Consider observing trainers before you buy their training
- make sure trainers, both internal and external, have an acceptable professional trainer qualification from a recognized body
About the author
Vincent Desmond is a professional trainer with experience teaching
and training in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Before joining
IRCA as training manager and then business manager he worked for International
House as a director of studies and as an assessor for the European
Association for Quality Language Services.
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