Training

What I’d like to do, but can’t …

/ Melanie Marttila

Now I know what you’re thinking.  Those are the words of a whiner, but I’m stating a fact and not trying to make excuses.  Honest.  There’s only one of me, and I don’t have a time-turner, like the one Dumbledore gave Hermione in The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Last week, I expressed my coulda-woulda-shouldas with respect to a piece of computer-based training.  What I’m talking about this week is part of the same training beast.  The virtually-delivered piece.

In my role as training coordinator, it’s not my task to deliver the training or to design it, and though I am training this week, it’s because I’ve no choice in the matter.  If I didn’t step in, the project would have stalled, possibly fatally.

Even as a trainer though, I’m a total n00b.  I’ve only been a trainer for three years, and though I enjoy it, and believe I’m good at it, I know I have a lot to learn and am far from perfect.  I’m even greener with respect to instructional design.  I only started doing that last year.

But if I can think of a better way to design and deliver training, then it must need improvement.

I have to step back a bit and explain a couple of things before I get to the meat of the post.

About a month ago, the task of organizing the training of all staff in Ontario on a new initiative was assigned to me.  The training products were given to the two consultants who agreed to deliver the training.  I had two weeks to get everything together, the training schedule, WebEx meetings, and invitations.  I didn’t have time to read, let alone critique or redesign the course material for virtual delivery.

So now we’re into week three of the WebEx sessions and I’ve just started my week of training.  Already, I’ve received reports back on how boring the session is.  It wasn’t designed with virtual delivery in mind.  On average, the sessions are running two hours, which is too long to sit in front of your computer, staring at a screen.

What I’d do for this course (if I could):

  • There is a policy bulletin for the new initiative and a Job Aid.  Though technically, this was all supposed to be a “pre-read,” I’d like to have had the time to turn it into a true pre-course assignment with some form of assessment, submitted to the trainers in advance, so they could have some indication of the group’s level of understanding of the new initiative prior to the course.
  • Start with an activity reviewing the four aspects of their job that this new initiative will change and conduct a proper debrief.
  • Have the exercises on a PowerPoint or Notebook presentation with answers on a reveal.  Use the annotate feature in WebEx to have participants complete the blank assignments (one “scribe” with group support) and debrief using the revealed answers.
  • Let the participants “play” with the online tool designed to help them implement the new initiative by assigning them control of the application through WebEx.  Alternately, this could be a post-course assignment to assist with skill transfer.

Now of course, all of this would make the session considerably longer and comfort breaks would have to be worked in, or the session broken up into smaller pieces (four 30 minute sessions would be my preference).

Why none of this could happen:

This is our busiest time of year, compounded by summer leave.  The timing of this new initiative couldn’t be worse.  As a result, we had to fight for the time to do the one-cheeked job we’re doing.

The initiative will be effective in August.  The training had to be completed before then.

There simply wasn’t time to roll this out differently given the tools and the resources we have.

This is why I often wish I was Shakti, one of the Hindu goddesses of multiple aspects and multiple arms 🙂  Then I might really be able to be in two places at once, doing two (or even three) jobs.  The word “shak” in Sanskrit means “to be able.”

Ah well, so much for dreaming 🙂

Timing is everything, they say.  Have you had a situation in which you’ve been “under the gun” with respect to training?  Were you able to pull a rabbit out of your hat or did you have to make do?  Is good enough really good enough?

That’s all from the Learning Mutt this week.

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8 Good things I’ve learned from bad computer-based training

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

So … we were provided this computer-based training (CBT) product to help roll out what may appear on the surface to be a fairly minor change, but turns out to be quite a complicated change that has an impact of several aspects of the work our front-line and processing staff perform.

The intent was to send the product and its accompanying Job Aid out to all staff, and let them have at.  There would, of course, be a policy brief released and online tools to help with the adjustment.

At first blush, the CBT looked great: interactive, with exercises and self-assessment tools …  That was before anyone actually tried to work through it.  Early on in the process, when it had already been decided that the CBT would be insufficient for our needs (thank goodness) I and several of my colleagues had a chance to go through the CBT.

I had no problem, but I’m tech savvy, I know how these things are generally designed, and I also play with things.  I click in apparently inappropriate places.  I muck about until I figure out how something ticks, and then I git ‘er done 🙂

The first problem was the site onto which the CBT was loaded.  It wasn’t particularly user friendly and several people couldn’t figure out whether they needed to log in, set up a new account, or reset their passwords.  The system was a little glitchy too, and offered errors when the CBT was accessed, requiring a re-log.

After I helped everyone get logged in and set up, I waited for the reviews.  This is what we discovered:

  1. Though pretty, the CBT was very much of the “clicky-clicky, bling-bling” species that Cammy Bean reviles.  Read about it on her blog.  Go on, I’ll wait.
  2. There were no clear and easily accessible instructions to inform learners what they needed to do on any given page (e.g. you have a picture of a luggage rack on the screen … and … ?).
  3. Navigation was accomplished through varied small or awkwardly-positioned cues.
  4. Exercises and tests contained no clear instructions, nor any mention of the purpose of the activity or how it would apply to the learner’s work.
  5. When working through examples, the learner can not navigate back to the scenario page and so has to write everything down and work it out by hand, or muddle through on a memory and a guess.
  6. All the assessments were self-assessments.  How could anyone determine if learning had taken place?
  7. The CBT was filled with acronyms, but no definitions.
  8. There were errors in the examples.

Turn all these negatives on their heads, and you have 8 take-aways for elearning.  See how that works?

When the CBT was given to staff, many of them were so frustrated with the experience, they stuck to (and got more out of) reading the print material.

Ultimately, the CBT was about how to get through the CBT, and the real learning was lost.

Admittedly, we don’t have the time to correct the existing CBT, or to develop a new product.  As flawed as it is, it’s what we have to use.

Next time, though, I hope the development team keeps a few things in mind:

  1. The importance of bringing subject matter experts (SMEs) who have some course design experience and technical aptitude into the fold. There are a few of us out there.  Use your networks and resources wisely!  Even if I had the time, I couldn’t redesign the CBT: I don’t have a license for the tool used to create it, or anything similar.
  2. Design for how people think.  This means keeping the end-user in mind.  It has to be a product that both your mother and your ten-year-old nephew could navigate through equally easily.  This means beta-testing on a group of your target audience and taking their criticisms seriously.
  3. Assessment is not just for the learner, it’s for team leaders and the advisors who are going to have to answer all the questions your learners have after the CBT experience.  It’s also for trainers, course designers, and IT, so they can figure out how to make a better product next time.

In the end, the CBT has to facilitate learning, support retention, and help the learner apply the knowledge when he or she returns to work.

Oh, if I were king of my little learning world 🙂  And yes, I’m a woman and I want to be king.  Got a problem with that, do ya?  I didn’t think so 😉

How have the best-laid plans of upper management and IT gone awry for you?  Did you tuck any lessons away for future application?  Have you learned good things from a bad CBT?

The Learning Mutt is signing off for another week.

Participant Centered Training and Personal Knowledge Management

/ Melanie Marttila / 1 Comment

Bob Pike is responsible for introducing the concept of participant centered training (PCT).  He’s been in the training industry since 1969 (the year I was born, incidentally), but focused on PCT since 1979.  Needless to say, PCT is not a new idea.

Traditionally, corporate training has been conducted by a “talking head,” a subject matter expert, who imparts her or his wisdom to waiting students.  The assumption of this kind of training is that the students are sponge-like, highly motivated, and that they will somehow find a way to absorb what the trainer is saying, or to mimic the trainer’s behaviours, and be able to magically transform that information into the performance their employer desires.  But how does the average learner, who may or may not be sponge-like, accomplish this feat?  That’s the problem.

PCT turns that paradigm on its head.  The trainer is merely present to elicit the desired knowledge from the learners, to encourage the appropriate behaviours, and to facilitate the process of discovery that will lead the learners to exhibit the desired performance in the workplace.  It’s no longer about having all the answers, but about being able to help the learners, now active participants in their own learning, find the answers for themselves.

Not the “sage on the stage.” Instead, be the “guide on the side.”

Primarily, PCT is a classroom methodology, and that is how it’s often taught, but once learned, the principles can be applied to any kind of training.  If you can design the right kinds of activities and ask the right kinds of questions, it’s still possible to implement PCT online in synchronous courses, or even online, asynchronously.

It’s the facilitation (or the framework) that’s the key.

I took an introductory course to PCT delivery in 2009 and in September of 2011, took the next course on my way to training certification within my organization.  There’s a lot more to PCT than what I’ve mentioned here, but that’s the key learning behind PCT.  How the trainer, or designer, accomplishes it has been the subject of books, academic papers, and the foundation of many a training business.

It could also be the innovative trainer’s ticket …

So check it out.

Some resources for you:

I’m a novice at this whole training gig and I know I have much farther to go.

Case in point: Harold Jarche.  The man has seriously been blowing my mind in the last weeks with his posts on his blog: Life in perpetual beta.  I cannot articulate the awesome right now.

Just go read his blog.  Follow it.  Become a PKM disciple 🙂  What’s PKM, you ask?  That would be personal knowledge management.

PKM takes PCT and turns that paradigm on its head 🙂  The learner is ultimately and intimately in control of their own learning and in many ways takes facilitation out of the equation altogether.  As a newbie trainer it freaks me out a bit, but PKM is the way I prefer to learn, through networks and connections, and as an addicted learner, I’m a fan.

Acronyms abound!  So what do you think?  PCT or PKM?  A liitle from column A and a little from column B?  Does it depend on the learning situation?  Can PCT be a stepping stone on the way to PKM?  Tell me what you think.

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The bitter and the sweet

/ Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

I promised last week that I would post about a bittersweet experience I’ve had at work.  As with anything I write on Writerly Goodness, it’s a bit of a story 🙂

I’ve written previously about how I became a trainer and course designer.  All I’ll add to that now is that I love my job and I honestly thought I’d found my home.  I had no interest in leaving.

Still, the wisdom at work is that if you see a job-posting that you’d be interested in, apply for it.  If nothing else, you get the experience of going through an “assessment process” and you get to find out if others in the organization see value in what you do.

In 2010, I’d missed out on a couple of plum postings, both times because I was out on the road training, and didn’t have my resume, transcripts, or copies of my degrees with me.  All would have been required.  Ah well, I thought, this might be the universe telling me that I’m right (for a change).  I’m happy where I am and I shouldn’t mess with it.

In April of 2011, I saw a posting for a courseware writer.  At this point, my training world-view was just beginning to be expanded with techie tools, and free Webinars, and all that good stuff.  Even then, I knew that course writing was a direction I’d love to go in.  So I applied.

One thing I have to tell you about assessment processes at my employer is that they are long.  Sometimes a year can pass before you hear anything back.  I was content to wait though.  So many other things were happening in my life at the time, I probably couldn’t have done testing, interviews, or myself, justice.

In July, I received a notice: I’d made it past the screening and would be writing an exam.

So I did.

Then in September, in the midst of another crazy time at work, I saw a posting for a consultant.  My position is called an advisor.  That’s where training falls in our organization, and consultant would be a step up.  The call was broad, across business lines and all over the province.  I thought, what the heck, let’s give it a try, not even thinking that I would be successful.

That testing was in October, a fairly quick turnaround for my employer, and the test was followed by a phone interview in November.  The results were to be released by the end of the calendar year.

I still hadn’t heard anything about the course writer process, and as the possibility that I could become a consultant became more and more real, I started to get concerned.  By that time, I was more convinced than ever that I was where I was meant to be, career-wise.  Did I want to become a consultant?  Would I like it?  I had no idea.

The promise of a swift assessment was fulfilled and I made the pool of candidates along with another colleague.

Then things at work began to get tense and uncomfortable.  My colleagues and I were delegated to processing for three months and all training activities were cancelled.  Employees were being culled by virtue of the non-renewal of their contracts.  Restructuring, a process that is on-going and painful, had started in earnest and people were relocating, changing business lines, and generally doing whatever they could to preserve their jobs.

I didn’t expect anything to result of the consultant pool.  There was no budget for hiring, so why should I expect anything?

Slowly, things began to even out.  My team returned to training, and the initiative that had been postponed by our return to processing.  My manager announced that she was pregnant and going on maternity leave effective June first.

And when I least expected it, I got the call.

Today was my first official day as Acting Training Coordinator (a position that falls within the consultant role) and with luck, I’ll get to hang onto it until March 31, 2013.  Eeps!

The good things:

  • New challenges
  • Steep learning curve (call me masochistic, but I thrive on this stuff)
  • Acting pay (had to say it)
  • A chance to find out if I like it
  • A chance to find out if I’m good at it

The bad things:

  • Leaving my team (I heart them so much!)
  • Fear of failure (and it’s not a wee thing)
  • Not training anymore (my last gig was last week—sadness)
  • Having to off-load all my work and special projects on my team mates
  • More responsibility and pressure (I have a budget to manage—eek!)

So there you are: my bittersweet rhapsody 🙂  It’s more sweet than bitter, to be sure.  I’m doing the snoopy 🙂

I’m celebrating tomorrow when I receive my Silver award with some of my team mates.  That was for the SMART Board project.  It looks like it might get a revamp this year and I may get to train again.  Happiness is just waiting to be found.

Do you have a success story that presents as a mixed bag?

My first “real” working group

/ Melanie Marttila

It was an education, that’s for sure.

Ostensibly, I was brought in to advise the group regarding training and supports for a new unit that the working group was to establish.  They’d already been meeting for some time and I had a fair bit of catching up to do.  A further complication was that while there were several members of the group in my office, it was a virtual group.  We met by teleconference.

I got the notification while I was out of town, training.  At first, I thought it must have been a mistake, but I was soon set straight.

I’d never done anything of this nature before, and I was flattered that my manager and director had recommended me for the group, but I was completely out of my depth.

With the responsibility came the looming possibility of a needs analysis.  I didn’t think I knew how to do that.  I started searching the Intranet, found a few ideas, canvassed my colleagues, and got a few more.  Then I started Googling and that’s when things got really interesting.

Here are a few samples of the kinds of things I found:

Of all the resources I’d gathered, many were vague, some differing, and a few in outright opposition.  Most weren’t recent.

I even discussed the topic with my husband Phil, who was going through something similar at work.  What he recommended was a process analysis.  Essentially, the work to be done is broken down into its component steps, and then each step analyzed and potentially broken down further.  With a process analysis, task competencies could be easily identified, and from that, training specific to those competencies determined.  It could also be the basis for procedure and/or policy, or even a screening tool for candidates.  I liked the efficiency of the concept, and found it a reasonable proposal.

The unit had yet to be approved though, and so the people working in it couldn’t be officially identified, nor could the new unit or its potential requirements be discussed withanyone outside the working group.

How was I supposed to determine what training and supports might be necessary for a group of people who had yet to be named?  The process analysis still stood out for me as a solution.  The suggestion was not received with enthusiasm, however.

I had no experience.  I didn’t know how these things worked.  The project lead took my under her wing.  Another member of the group who’d had more experience in working groups than I, was also generous with her time and helped me to understand how things were supposed to go.

We were to cast our net wide, and think of all the possible courses that might be required by the unknown members of the proposed unit.  I researched, obtained estimates for training costs, and started to work on a self-study course for one of the applications that the staff would be using.  I also suggested a SharePoint site, which the group did set up and begin using.

Then we discovered that there was no budget, and most of my work had to be abandoned, the arragnements I’d tentatively made cancelled, and apologies and gratitude distributed tactfully.

About that time, things started getting hectic in my personal life.  My father “took a turn,” as they say, and passed away a week later.  After the family time I’d taken to stay with him during his illness, and my bereavement leave, I was approved for a number of additional weeks of annual and self-funded leave.

When I finally returned, the project and the nature of the unit had changed completely.  The necessary training was accomplished in my absence, my training course was not used, and the working group ceased to meet shortly thereafter.

It felt … anticlimactic.

It was an interesting experience and I certainly learned a lot (mostly about myself).

  • I will dive into a new project, even if I have no idea what it is about.
  • I’m a good researcher, so long as I have a defined goal.
  • I’m not confident in proposing my own ideas.
  • I will defer to the current authority.
  • I’ll adopt current procedures, even if I don’t see the value in them.
  • I’ll pursue my own goals and projects on the side (subversive me).
  • I’ll totally forgive myself when life happens.
  • I know my real priorities.

I still think the process analysis would have worked 🙂

Have you ever been thrown into the deep end?  Did you sink or swim?  Did something else happen?  I like to think I dog-paddled my way to the shallows where other priorities arose and by the time I was ready to dive back in, everyone else left the pool.  Special projects and working groups can be great learning experiences, but they can also be trials.

Storytelling in learning

/ Melanie Marttila

Can you see why this might appeal to the Learning Mutt’s sensibilities?

Last week, I attended a great Webinar by Roger Courville of the 1080 group on incorporating stories into training.

 

 

His tips (in brief):

  • Keep it short and sweet;
  • Keep it relevant;
  • Keep it entertaining; and
  • Bring it back to your topic effectively.

In the past, I have also attended a Webinar by Nancy Duarte regarding her particular angle on storytelling.  Her focus is more on presentation, which, as Roger pointed out, has a different purpose to training.

She looked at the three act story/play structure and saw a “shape” that could apply to verbal discourse.  She analyzed Martin Luther King and Steve Jobs to see if her theory worked, and it did.  She offered critical insights to presentation, and you can look up her TEDxEast lecture on the topic here.

I’ve also attended a Webinar by Terrence Garguilo of makingstories.net.  His point: stories beget stories.  Tell an effective story, and your participants will begin to create stories of their own going forward.

Overall, storytelling in training is a powerful tool.  It’s one of the oldest social networking strategies in existence.

I would encourage you to look up, follow, and/or attend Webinars by these fine people.

How I have used story in training:

  • In design, I use a metaphor to ties things together.  It could be a knightly quest, or planning a road trip, but tying your material into a metaphorical frame work will help to keep everything on track.  This can (and should) extend to the visuals you use/create for the course.
  • In written materials, to link to external resources that are “nice to know,” or might set learners off on a learning tangent.  A lot of blog posts utilize this technique to connect the reader to useful information.  There have been times when I’ve spent upwards of an hour following links from a single post I’ve subscribed to, discovering and learning, connecting the dots.
  • In-class, I’ve used practical stories of my own or other’s experiences to engage participants.

Do you use stories in your training?  In what ways?  Are there opportunities in your training to adopt storytelling as a tool?

An idea that didn’t go anywhere …

/ Melanie Marttila
"Here Lies a Good Idea. Don't Let Your Id...

“Here Lies a Good Idea. Don’t Let Your Idea Die. Put it in the Suggestion Box Today” – NARA – 514482 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So last year I had this idea for a way to evolve training for both our clients and our staff.

Essentially, the idea was to have online, self-study, or asynchronous, courses for our client groups, to teach them about our business, what we could do for them, and how to make the most of our service offerings.

A secondary tier, or phase, of the training would have introduced clients to the way we do our work, a kind of insider’s guide, which I termed a certification program.  Taking some of these more advanced courses could have been an asset for our hiring group, so that when jobs were posted, the links to these courses could be included, and completing them could give applicants an advantage, because they would have some knowledge of our business and the work that we do.

Internally, our training products could be converted to online, self-study materials as well, designed to harmonize with the public ones, and in conjunction with informal learning strategies like coaching and mentoring, replace the costly and time-consuming, in-class training we now provide.

I contacted a colleague to get her opinion, and she graciously offered to give me a venue to discuss the concept and get some feedback.  I had never written a proposal in our business before, nor did I know how to go about gaining approval for my idea.

While the session was great and I got some serious validation for the idea, I didn’t get much with respect to next steps.  There was a plan in the works for a kind of online suggestion box for employee ideas, but that wouldn’t be up and running until sometime in the next fiscal year.  Aside from that, I really didn’t have any kind of internal platform to promote the idea, gain support, and move forward with it.

I did follow up with some key management figures from other departments, and tried to escalate the idea through my own management team, but didn’t get much response with respect to who I could approach next, or support with respect to how I could present the idea.

I had to be set it aside for the time being.

Though the suggestion box was eventually launched in September of 2011, and I submitted my idea in early October, I haven’t heard anything since.

Maybe my employer isn’t ready to enact my idea yet.

Still, I think it was pretty good, and even if it doesn’t go anywhere, I consider it to be one of my accomplishments.

Have you had an idea that you weren’t sure how to promote or what to do with?  Who did you approach and where did it go from there?