Facilitate Training With Impact
Your job as a trainer is to deliver content that has been specifically designed to meet the needs of your learner. Your responsibility is to do so in a manner that increases retention, reduces boredom and enables the learner to quickly incorporate the new knowledge and skills back on the job!
How can you accomplish such a feat? In her book, “The Art of Great Training Delivery” Jean Barbazette, founder of The Training Clinic, provides some sound, strategies, tools and tactics through her experiential model, the Five Steps of Adult Learning.
An experiential learning model helps to engage the learner at all levels and can be applied using a variety of activities including simulations, demonstrations with skill practice, role-plays, case studies and participative lectures. An added benefit of using this model is that everyone gets something out of an activity – no matter how diverse the audience because the learns are actively involved. This process allows the trainer to meet the learners where they are and take them where they need to be.
In order to effectively facilitate each step of the experiential learning model, Barbazette states that you’ll need a wide range of skills in addition to an instructional design that supports the process.
Here are her five steps:
1. Trainer Sets Up the Learning Activity by Telling What, Why and How
In setting up the learning activity, adult learners become motivated when they understand the benefits or importance of the activity to themselves and their work. To be successful, set-up the activity so learners understand what they are going to do and why they are going to do it. A trainer needs to be directive by giving instructions and ground rules for how the learning activity is to be conducted. Set-ups might also include elements such as the following:
- Tell participants about the purpose of the learning activity.
- Divide participants into groups and assign roles.
- Provide ground rules.
- Explain what the participants are going to do.
- Tell participants why they are doing the activity without giving away what they will "discover" as a result of engaging in the activity.
The difficulty of the set up (number of steps and the importance of doing them in a particular order) and/or the skill level of the trainer will dictate how detailed the course designer needs to explain this step.
2. Learners Participate in a Learning Activity
A learning activity will be successful when adult learners are involved as much as possible. It is also appropriate to consider how the activity will appeal to the senses of sight, hearing and touch. This step involves any learning activity, including lecture, discussion, case study, role-play, simulation or game, inventory, and independent study and/or reading. Depending on the activity selected for step 2, the trainer’s approach can be anywhere on a continuum from directive to facilitative, again, another element to be considered in writing the detail of the design.
3. Learners Share and Interpret Their Reactions
In this step, the learners share their reactions to the activity by identifying what happened to them and to others, as well as how their own behavior affected others. Often, questions such as these are asked:
- “What was your partner's reaction when you did . . . ?"
- "What helped or hindered your progress?"
- "Summarize the key points from the lecture, role-playing activity or case study."
Learners in diverse groups learn different things from the same activity. The trainer’s role in this step is to facilitate a discussion and ask the learners what happened to them (not what was learned) during the activity. Instructional designers are responsible for crafting process questions for trainers to use to accomplish this.
4. Learners Identify Concepts
During this step, you again use a facilitative role and help learners discover the concept or idea underlying the activity. This is the "So, what did I learn?" step. Questions that develop concepts might include, "What did you learn about how to conduct an interview, discipline a subordinate, teach a new job, etc." If this step is left out, then learning will be incomplete. Certainly, participants will have been entertained by the training activity, but they may not be able to apply new learning to similar situations outside of the classroom. Indeed, it is only when concepts are inferred from an activity that adult learners are ready and able to apply them to future situations. Diverse learners can learn different things from the same activity. The trainer’s role as a facilitator is to be sure each learner takes away something of value from the activity. Again, it is the instructional designer’s job to write debriefing questions to elicit what was learned and the instructional objectives are met.
5. Learners Apply Concepts to Their Own Situations
Here you continue in a facilitative style. This is the "So, what now?" step. During this process, learners are asked to use and apply new information learned from the activity to their own situations. This step often involves an action question such as, "How will you use this questioning technique the next time a subordinate asks you for a favor?" or "In what situations would you be more effective if you used this technique?" Like the preceding four steps, if this step is omitted, then learners may not be able to discern the relationship between the learning activity and their job (or situation) and may not be able to see how what was just learned can be useful to them in the future. Diverse learners definitely take something different from the lesson, since different jobs require different applications. The trainer’s role is to be sure enough questions are discussed so application of the concept is possible for all learners. Be sure the instructional designer provides a variety of questions to choose from.
So how do you reduce boredom, increase retention and send the learners back to the job with maximum skills and knowledge? Simple – use an experiential model that involves all learners at all levels. Barbazette’s Five Steps of Adult Learning does just this and then some!
