Action Learning in a virtual world - Trainingzone

Action Learning (AL) has an impressive pedigree dating back to the 1950s, but does it have a role on 21st Century learning? Joan Keevill looks at its evolution and how it is being embraced in the virtual world.

Action Learning as a development tool for leaders and managers has been around for a long time. Pioneered by Reg Revans in the 1950s as ‘a method of problem solving and learning in groups to bring about change for individuals, teams and organisations’, it was described by Professor Mike Pedler in 1996 as ‘perhaps the most important form of management development to emerge in the past 20 years.’ But does it have a role in the 21^st century?

Back to basics: What is action learning?

Action Learning is an approach to leadership and management development that assumes those involved have the potential to solve their own problems and indeed are more likely to do so if they develop their own solutions and can change their own behaviour or attitude. Participants work in small groups or Action Learning Sets, and come together on a regular basis, usually meeting face-to-face with a set facilitator; many go on to become self-facilitating. Each participant needs to bring a complex and intractable business problem to the meeting to maximise the potential for learning. Through insightful questioning from their peers, the ‘problem holder’ is encouraged to view the problem differently and explore their role in it. They review the actions they’ve taken to date, consider new actions, try these out back at work, reflect on what happens and in doing so, learn from this.

What are the benefits?

As the cycle is repeated with each participant and over time, sets develop strong relationships of trust and support and real change is enabled. Individuals develop different perspectives, learn to reflect more, build their listening and questioning techniques and their ability to learn and network across the organisation. Managers talk of increased self-confidence in their leadership role and their ability to critically evaluate the way they operate. This in turn can lead to an improvement in the output of their teams and impact positively on performance overall.

What about Virtual Action Learning (VAL)

Virtual Action Learning follows the same principles as Action Learning with the key difference being that participants do not need to be in the same place or even participate at the same time. So how does it work? Dickenson, Pedler and Burgoyne³from Henley Business School have identified six varieties of VAL practice. These split into events or set meetings which take place at the same time, ie all participants ‘meet up’ virtually at a set time (synchronous) and those which take place at different times, ie individuals contribute to the ‘meeting’ in their own time (referred to as asynchronous); all can involve text, audio and video. So, synchronous VAL might mean using instant messaging, a conference call or a live video link for a set meeting, whereas asynchronous could be using a message board (text), recorded voice messages (audio) or recorded video which is available at any time over a given period to participants.

How does VAL impact on participants and facilitators?

VAL of any variety requires the facilitator and participants to overcome any barriers thrown up by the technology or medium of communication. Experiments that have been done recently at the Henley Facilitation Forum involved facilitators participating in either synchronous telephone conferencing (including VOIP via a laptop) or video conferencing VAL to find out what it’s like to both facilitate and participate, and to review the impact on the AL process. The conference call set meeting was easier to set up and run, with the telephone being seen as ‘low tech’ and familiar.

Participants noted the lack of eye contact and body language, the need to manage silence and to concentrate harder on listening. For the purposes of the trial, the set meeting only lasted half an hour but audio call-based VAL can last up to two and a half hours, made easier if participants use telephone headsets with microphones, rather than handsets, and have suitable breaks. Use of mobiles is discouraged due to sound quality and participants are encouraged to mute their phones unless actually speaking, to reduce ambient noise on the call. It’s important to ensure all participants are focused and in the moment and participants should of course avoid any distractions while on the call. From the research at Henley, some practitioners suggest it’s not essential for participants to know each other in advance, whereas others feel there is a real advantage in people meeting face-to-face first before moving into the virtual world.

Many companies are already using tools such as web conferencing (eg WebEx, GoToMeeting or Perfect Meetings) to run business meetings so why not extend that into a learning and development programme? Clive Shepherd, chair of the eLearning Network, suggests calling this ‘live online learning⁴’ and outlines a number of ways in which L&D practitioners could introduce this. As with any new technology-enabled learning, it’s advisable to test the technology in advance of a Virtual Action Learning set meeting to avoid frustrating participants; the multi-tasking facilitator needs to be competent in using the tool, the technology and in set facilitation.

Using a headset during a video conference-based set meeting also seems to provide better quality audio and video-based VAL also encourages shorter meetings, perhaps because you have to concentrate harder than when you’re in the same room as fellow participants. The video requirement may mean participants having to move into a dedicated video conferencing space if they don’t have a webcam but being able to see participants and put a face to a name is beneficial to the facilitator and to the group if they don’t know each other that well. However, if there is pressure on bandwidth the audio stream may drop out and then you risk losing the thread of what participants are saying. One way round this might be to combine video with a telephone conference call, or with instant messaging. It can be helpful to encourage participants to write up their problem or issue in advance or to post notes afterwards, e.g. on a message board, thus combining synchronous and asynchronous VAL.

Once technological barriers have been overcome and assuming set facilitators are confident and competent, VAL can be as productive as face-to-face, with the added benefits (easily measured!) of reduced time away from work, no travel time and no travel costs. So should we be using it more?

Article courtesy: You can read the original article here.

How to instantly grab e-learners attention - Ray Jimenez

To instantly grab e-Learners, remember embedding content into stories.

Embedding Steps

1. Relate
2. Interpret
3. Apply

_________________________________

Which statement grabs you instantly?

Life is full of trials and tribulations

or

I started work at 3:00 am and finished at 11:00 pm, exhausted.

The fist statement is a technical content, whereas, the second statement is a story.

Many experts agree that in e-Learning, storytelling is a good approach to instantly grab learners and help them relate the content to real life situations, hence, helping them to retain and apply the content. Thus stories carry with them the emotional aspects of learning.

Emotions as integral to learning

According to Rosenfield (1988), emotions have important connection to memory; Caine and Caine (1991): stories add and help in storing information, thus triggering its recall.

"The emotional depth and range that learners have affected their actual capacity to grasp ideas and procedures. Similarly, content that is emotionally sterile is made more difficult to understand. ... To teach someone any subject adequately, the subject must be embedded in all the elements that give its meaning. People must have a way to relate to the subject in terms of what is personally important, and this means acknowledging both the emotional impact and their deeply held needs and drives. Our emotions are integral to learning. When we ignore the emotional components of any subject we teach, we actually deprive learners of meaningfulness."

Stories and storytelling as carry learning ideas

Furthermore, stories and storytelling are the carriers of emotional content. Stories, which I call organics, have different forms: narrative stories, anecdote, example, metaphor, demo, illustration, and other forms that bring the emotional and real-life aspects of content.

Two types of content

There are two types of content: technical which are factual, objective, mechanical content and the emotional which are real-life situations, personal context and understanding of the content.

The technical and emotional content work hand in hand. However, we discover that in designing e-Learning pages, there is even a greater need to magnify the emotional side. There is practical reason to this. In classroom or facilitated sessions, the good instructor or facilitator can successfully relate the technical and emotional content. Unfortunately, in e-Learning, the facilitator and stories are absent and we oftentimes find the lessons to consist more of technical or mechanical content. Something is lost in the conversion. The emotional content is “lost in the translation”.

Embedding content into stories

Embedding content into stories is the technique of relating mechanical content into engaging stories. The technique is valuable when you wish to instantly grab and engage your learners.

Essentially there are three steps.

Embedding Steps

1. Relate
2. Interpret
3. Apply

Relate the technical content to real-life situations

Relate refers to adding meaning to new mechanical content by presenting or translating them into emotional and real-life experience. The experience might be events, people and conversations. Furthermore, it is not sufficient to relate real-life situations. The real-life situation must have emotional aspects to them.

To relate the technical content to real-life meaning involves one or more of these methods:

• Citing unresolved problems – helps learners to focus on specific, meaningful and real-life conditions. Example: “John lost his left eye due to a furnace blast. He used the wrong protective goggles.”
  
  
• Using familiar and personal experience – helps learners to understand the content by finding a relevant meaning in their personal lives. Example: “When was the last time you had to work 24 hours to meet a timeline?”
  
  
• Using visualization and emotional experiences – helps learners imagine and picture in their minds and capture the emotions of the content through a story, metaphor, examples, illustrations and other organic methods. Example: “He touched my shoulders, leaned on me, whisper in my ears and sad ‘you smell great’”, she sobbed while telling her story to the lawyers.”
  
  
  Brainstorming questions:
  
  What is the mechanical and technical content? What is a real-life problem situation that depicts the content? What can learners easily relate to? What familiar events are familiar to the learners? What stories and other form of organics help the learners visualize and feel the emotions of the real-life situation?

Ask learners to interpret the story

While the learner is relating the story, it helps the learners when they are asked to interpret the story. Interpretation is a mental process that allows the learners to connect the story and the content in their own lives and their own create their meanings. The story and the content becomes part of learners’ experience. And therefore helps the learner to personalize and own the story and content. This is similar to the learner discovering the answers for themselves.

To help the learners’ interpret the story and content, one or more of these methods would work:

• Asking the learner to respond – this helps the learners move from an observer to a participant in the story. Example: “If you are Pearl, what would you do?”
  
  
• Bring the learner into the story – this helps the learners become a character in the story. Example: “To stop this accident recurring, what would you do as a safety officer?”
  
  
• Ask the leaner to resolve the problem – this helps the learners to actively offer their personal solutions to the problem. Example: “How would you resolveNancy’s dilemma?”
  
  Brainstorming questions:
  
  How do you invite the learner to respond? How can the leaner become a character in the story? What and how do you ask the learner to resolve the problem?

Ask the learner to apply in their own real-life situations

To further engage the learner and strengthen the learning process, ask the learners to apply their understanding of the story and content in their own lives. This process is either a thinking or an action process. By applying the solution to a problem or the learning discovery into their real-lives, the learners satisfy themselves that indeed they discovered the meaning of the story and content. If not, learners will go back to interpret the story and will try to understand it further. Applying the ideas helps in retention of the knowledge, but even more important is the immediate usefulness of the ideas. The usefulness of the discovery helps learners recognize the immediate value of the content in their own lives.

To help the learners’ apply the story and content, one or more of these methods would work:

• Reflecting on the application – this helps the learners reflect on how they can apply the solution in their own lives. Example: “Why is this case useful to you?”
  
  
• Applying in a personal case – this helps the learners apply the solution in a very specific personal case. Example: “Select a situation at work that you can apply your solution?”
  
  
• Responding to a similar story – this helps the learners apply the solution in another related or similar story. Example: “In the related story where John and Martha had the same disagreement, but John, in this case, terminated Martha, how would you apply the ideas that you learned?”
  
  
• Applying in off-line activity – this helps the learners extend the learning into a specific work project. Example: “Go off-line and have a conversation with your boss. Ask him: ‘How would handle this situation?’”
  
  Brainstorming questions:
  
  How do you ask the learner to apply the story, content and solution in their personal lives? What is a related story that you can ask learners to apply the content and solution?

Now, let’s look at some examples.

Example 1 - Sales Training

The technical content

To close a sale you need to know what the customer needs. Understanding the customer needs helps you offer the right product or solution. The more you know the customer’s need, the more you close the sale.


The story
Would you buy from a salesperson if he does not know what you need?
What’s the worst thing that can happen?
How would knowing the need of the customer help you close more sales?

Reflect for a moment. Which content helps you immediately relate to real-life situation?

Example 2 - Cashier Training

The technical content

Scan each product correctly to get an accurate record of the sale and update the inventory. A mistake is very costly for the company because of excess inventory and wrong forecasting in production.

The story

The delivery driver complains – “I just delivered 100 cases of product X, but you still have 100 cases available, on-hand? Why did you over-order?”

What likely happened in this situation?

What would you do to avoid the problem?

Reflect for a moment. Which content helps you to immediately relate to real-life situation?

Example 3 - Leadership Training

The technical content

An effective leader has integrity and can be trusted. The leader who is trustworthy builds a bond with his team members.

The story
How do you feel a leader whom you can not confide your personal concerns?

For team members to confide in the leader, what must the leader possess?

How do you build integrity and become trustworthy?

Reflect for a moment. Which content helps you to immediately relate to real-life situation?

In the above examples, we used the common patterns for questions?

Questions are basic technique of engaging the learners.

Example 4 - Leadership Training (A Story)

The technical content

An effective leader has integrity and can be trusted. The leader who is trustworthy builds a bond with his team members.

The story

It has been rumored that Dana was fired because Peter, her boss, reported to HR and legal that Dana had misused her company credit card. “I trusted Peter and I was asking for his advice”, Dana said. Dana was cleared of the allegations and kept her job.

What do you think happened in this case? What happened to the trust between Dana and Peter?

If you are Peter, why is it important to preserve the trust between you and Dana and how would you go about preserving this trust?

Conclusion

To instantly grab e-Learners, remember embedding content into stories.

Embedding Steps

4. Relate
5. Interpret
6. Apply

You can check the original blog post here

Top ten tips for writing effective questions - Saffron Interactive

• Friday, August 7th, 2009
• Written by Stephanie Dedhar

Whether they’re for an assessment or part of the training course itself, writing questions can be a tricky business. Read on for Saffron’s top ten tips for creating effective questions that test learners in the right way, on the right thing.

1. Draft the assessment before the content
If step one is defining the objectives and learning outcomes, step two is drafting the assessment. Make sure each question maps back to the outcomes and then focus the training content on the assessment.

2. Randomise the assessment
Ideally an end of course assessment will have a pool of questions, with a random selection drawn on each attempt. This means, if learners fail once, they can’t simply memorise where they went wrong but are actually tested again.

3. Remember: quality not quantity
When it comes to assessments, it’s better to have 10 excellent questions than 40 substandard ones. Likewise, multiple choice questions generally work best with four options - don’t go below three or above five without a very good reason.

4. Use questions to drive the learning
We’re big believers in the value of the test and tell approach. Don’t just give learners information and then test them on it. Instead, ask them to think for themselves with a question before correcting or confirming their answers.

5. Focus on behaviours
We’re in the business of changing behaviours. This means we need to enable learners to do the right thing, not just to remember facts and figures. Make sure every question relates to a choice or decision learners will face in real life.

6. Make it challenging…
If the right answer is three times as long as the rest, or the wrong answers are likely to make learners laugh than think, there’s no point even asking the question. Yes, coming up with plausible wrong answers is hard, but it’s worth the effort.

7. …but keep it fair
Don’t try to trick learners or give them an impossible choice. Negative questions, options that are identical except for one word, and questions on topics that weren’t actually covered in the course are neither fair nor effective.

8. Avoid yes/no questions
Giving learners a 50% chance of guessing correctly is not the most effective test. If you must use them, include a couple more options and make sure that ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ are qualified, so learners have to justify their choice.

9. Help people learn from their mistakes
Don’t just use ticks and crosses to show how learners have done. Provide constructive feedback to reinforce the message if they answer correctly, and explain where they went wrong if they answer incorrectly.

10. Keep the learners’ experience in mind
Focusing on behaviours is one way to answer the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question. But there are other ways - for instance, pre-tests assess existing knowledge and point towards the most relevant training units. Time efficient and effective!

You can read the original post here.