Every day there's less time and more to do. It's easy to take shortcuts...easy to get in a rut...easy to not think things through. And every day it takes more to be successful, too, so there's a real need to see things in a different way, and not settle for just "good enough." It reminds you that: if we always do what we've always done, we'll always get what we've always gotten.
From the top of my head, here are some examples of what may be contrary...but more correct for the our needs...thinking:
- Good smile sheets as feedback on training may be a reverse indication of how much is learned
- The best instructional designers may be the ones without degrees
- Things like learning styles and multiple intelligences aren't solidly substantiated by research
- Faster and cheaper isn't necessarily the right business target
Now, maybe some of these already make sense to you. You're savvy. Good for you. But if some of them have you wondering, let me continue in more detail.
Feedback
It's good to know how you do when you're a trainer or how the program is going when you're a training manager. And we've all known that we need more than smile sheets for some time. Here's a Training Magazine article from a couple years back that illustrates how in one company, the two trainers with the worst smile sheets have the highest training gains. http://bit.ly/4CZbJ5
Even though it can be next to impossible to get real business results, post-training, you can ask learners about how they've changed because of training. And more importantly you can ask their managers and make a comparison between the two reports. An example of this kind of surveying is in a previous post from this blog.
Instructional Designers
We have way too much e-reading and e-listening out there that's being called e-learning. So we need good IDs, no question. Cammy Bean has a great blog post from a session she facilitated at DevLearn 09, talking about IDs: http://bit.ly/8u1Nnw
For our part, here at w/, the framework that we expect our IDs to work within is what we call Natural Learning, meaning that courses should be designed around exploration, practice and feedback...allowing people to learn like they do everywhere else in their lives (okay...other than when they sit in front of PowerPoint presentations). For more on natural learning, there's another post on this blog.
Learning Styles
These theories always sound good. It would be nice to have easy answers for everything. A formula to follow...but it doesn't always work that way, does it? At DevLearn 09, I listened to Ruth Clark talking about a study that disproves learning styles. Ellen Behr also has a great blog post, with numerous supporting citations to debunk learning styles: http://bit.ly/6zNu9B
Faster and Cheaper
One of the things I want to do here is take aim at rapid e-learning tools. Yes, they can be used well...but most of time they're part of a broader approach of faster and cheaper. And I have one challenge to this: return on investment! If cheaper and faster puts your car in the ditch...is that really the target you want to shoot for? I mean...hello! When you put your other products together (and e-learning is a product) do you cut corners and then expect quality results? Heck no!
I had a conversation with a global training manager just the other day, who explained that when his company went from all instructor led training to a focus on e-learning they "went from one ditch to the other." Now they have so much rapid e-reading that people can't get to all of it. It's not focused, and it's not quality training. So, what do you think the results will be on their sales and field services? And if a year or two has passed as they drove their training program from one ditch to the other, what damage have they done to customer satisfaction or the top line results they might have had? When it comes down to it...faster and cheaper can be frighteningly expensive!
Conclusion
I started this post by saying that there's less time and more to do than ever before. That's true, and it's only going to get worse. So, business as usual isn't good enough anymore. Get out of the box! Don't take less time to sort things out, take more. Be strategic before you get tactical.