Beignets, beads, Bourbon Street debauchery, and...breakthrough learning. Ok, so I didn’t actually feel the need to hit up Bourbon St., having done that in my more tender undergraduate years, and sadly, I didn’t make it to Cafe du Monde to partake of their famous flaky french doughnuts, but I did learn about breakthrough learning techniques and other concepts related to instructional design and training facilitation during the 2 1/2 days I spent at the ATD Core 4 Conference in New Orleans, LA.
The conference is designed for HR professionals, curriculum designers, corporate trainers, nonprofit facilitators, teachers -- really anyone who has anything to do with professional development in any type of organization. As a SLRC Librarian I deliver a variety of face-to-face and virtual trainings, and I attended ATD with the goal of absorbing new ideas.
So, what did I learn?
- It takes A LOT of time simply to design effective training. According to research by Brian Chapman, it takes anywhere between 22 and 82 hours to create 1 hour of instructor-led classroom learning. Developing 1 hour of basic e-learning from scratch takes an average of 49 hours.
- Avoiding “death by powerpoint” is a must, and visual design play a huge role. Playing with font styles, shapes, and types of imagery creates appealing slides, and as Connie Malamed pointed out in her session on “Crash Course on Visual Design,” aesthetic appeal actually leads to greater learning.
- Learning styles are a big lie. Ok, not totally but several presenters referred to recent research that suggests it’s less important to focus on individual learning styles and more meaningful to provide variety in your training because most people learn best by using a combination of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic techniques. While we’re on the topic of theory, having a grasp of adult learning theory is super important. When designing training, adults often want to know WIIFM (What’s In It For Me), or how this is going to immediately and practically impact them. Also, they often appreciate opportunities to share their life experiences during learning events as well as relate newly acquired knowledge and skills to previous knowledge.
- Action mapping is a useful instructional design strategy that helps trainers avoid the all too common “information dump” presentation. The 4 step method involves 1.) identifying the goal, 2.) identifying what actions (not necessarily knowledge) people need to do to accomplish the goal, 3.) designing practice activities, and 4.) identifying the minimum information people need to complete each activity. Maybe it’s not totally practical in all library learning contexts but if you’re like me, you’ll try anything to keep your participants from snapchatting and playing Angry Birds during your trainings.
- Games are a great learning tool to integrate into training and instruction. No, wait games are distracting and bad. Ok, so both things can be true. Games are ok if they facilitate successful learning outcomes (I played a friendly competitive game of Jeopardy to find out how much technical lingo I already knew about e-learning), but don’t throw them in with no strategy and call it “engagement.” Then it just becomes what presenter termed “clicky clicky bling bling,” just for looks.
- The New World Kirkpatrick Model used for training evaluation is super useful and super hard to implement. Measuring level 1 (learners’ reaction to training) and level 2 (if and how much learners’ actually learn during training) is totally doable, but it becomes much harder when we try and measure how training changes behavior (Level 3) and how it influences outcomes (Level 4). Oh, the ever present challenge of assessment. No magic answers here, but some good food for thought.
Speaking of food, I did sneak out of the hotel one day between sessions to enjoy a classic muffaletta from the world-famous Central Grocery and a view of the muddy Mississippi. It was yet another breakthrough learning experience, I promise.
Emily Sachs
Information Services
