Learning Designs That Work

gnite! Newsletter—August 2013 Article

Learning Designs That Work

Learners need to spend 30 percent of their time learning and 70 percent of their time practicing what they’ve learned, according to Dr. Vicki Halsey, Vice President of Applied Learning for The Ken Blanchard Companies. Studies show that learners will forget 50 percent of what they learn if the new knowledge and skills are not reviewed and reinforced within 24 hours. Some research suggests that, without proper reinforcement, learners risk losing up to 90 percent of what they’ve learned before they even get back to the work environment.

Part of the reason, according to Halsey, is that the brain is like a switchboard—it decides which path information takes. If an individual decides the information is important, it goes down the path of long-term retention accelerating future use. If an individual decides the information is not that important to retain, the information goes down a different path where it gets filtered out along with the hundreds of less important bits of information the brain temporarily records. For individuals designing adult learning experiences this means making sure that individuals understand the relevancy and usefulness of the information they are learning.

Dr. Pat Zigarmi, a founding associate with The Ken Blanchard Companies responsible for the learning designs of many of the organization’s best-selling programs, says that one key is to draw upon the learners’ personal experiences and real work challenges.

As she explains, “This allows people to ‘get’ the concepts more quickly because they’re applying what they’ve learned to issues that are real, and therefore, relevant for them. This practice also boosts their retention and confidence when they begin to use their new skills with their team members.”

Continually generate relevancy to inspire application

To help with building relevancy, Halsey and Zigarmi recommend assigning pre-work, during which you ask learners to think of real work problems to focus on and to do some pre-learning that will help them begin to generate their own solutions and goals around those problems. This not only reduces time spent away from the job but also maximizes the use of that time.

During training, require real work application. This helps speed the transition from knowing to doing to getting results. Ask questions that generate stories and reinforce your content. For example, “Who was your best boss?” or “What was the best team experience you’ve ever had?” will provide learners with a real context that will help them more quickly adopt or adapt their skills.

After training, link learning to business outcomes. Connect with your learners after the learning event to find out how they are applying new content and skills to their real-world issues. Reach out to learners after training or learning. Consider hosting focus groups, e-freshers, or informal discussion groups to have individuals share how they are applying the learning to their work experiences and how they are seeing return on investment. Reconnecting and sharing success stories will deepen their learning and accelerate its use.

Make it easy for learners to access the content

In addition to generating relevancy, Halsey and Zigarmi believe it’s also important to provide learners with easy access to information and resources before, during, and especially after the class.

As they explain, “People tend to prepare, learn, and review in a time frame that works for them. So it’s important to develop tools that allow this to happen in ways that work for each learner.”

Before training, send pre-reading like articles, portions of the content, and questions to think about to introduce people to the material being covered and pique their interest. Give them time, not only to get the work done but also to really think about what they want to get out of the training.

During training, shake up the learning delivery. Learning must be experienced via one’s personal learning preferences, so use a variety of delivery options. Give people time for reflection, but also make sure they are engaging and moving. Consider bold start designs that can appeal to visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic learners.

After training, make content available via online portals that can be accessed anytime and anywhere so people can refresh their memories and tap into content easily. And Zigarmi adds, “When you are teaching people new concepts, it’s important to meet them where they are and let them learn at their own pace. Learners need content to be delivered in chunks they can consume in ways that match their learning preferences.”

Make learning a group effort and build community

It’s important to teach teams, not just individual leaders. This drives accountability and momentum. No matter how enthusiastic a learner is when they leave the classroom, they still have to apply those new skills in an old environment.

“For years, we’ve encouraged managers leaving our training programs to teach what they’ve learned to others back home, as the one that is doing the teaching is doing the learning,” explain Halsey and Zigarmi. “In our latest designs we are actively providing learners with online tools and apps that give access to classroom materials that are shareable with others. Teaching is a great way to reinforce the learning and increase the likelihood of creating impact. It also helps to create critical mass that tips the organization toward effective leadership more quickly.”

Three additional ways Halsey and Zigarmi recommend setting up participants for successful application are to

• Create tools that allow managers to easily teach their people what they’ve learned, and provide direct reports with tools that make it easy to apply the concepts that their manager has just been exposed to.
• Encourage managers to have conversations with their people about what they’ve just learned and ask for feedback about how they’re using new content and skills.
• Set up informal learning groups during training so managers have built-in cohort groups to help them solve problems and to provide a sounding board for issues they are getting ready to face.

Training done right gets results and builds confident practitioners

In working with hundreds of companies over the years, Halsey and Zigarmi remind instructional designers that organizations utilize training to improve performance and create change. But in order to accomplish this, the concepts leaders learn must be easily accessible, revisited and reinforced many times, and leveraged into an existing work group to accelerate learning and drive behavior change.

“Remember to build a line of sight to business outcomes and have learners think about how their learnings can impact their organization—this drives accountability for training and links training to results.

“Finally, help your learners transfer training from the classroom to the work environment more completely. Set up a solid design that engages active participation of learners, encourages new behaviors, and creates the critical mass needed to effectively create change.”

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Would you like to learn more about creating training designs that work? Then join us for a free webinar!

Creating Engaging Learning Experiences 

Thursday, September 12, 2013
9:00–10:00 a.m. Pacific, 12:00–1:00 p.m. Eastern, 4:00–5:00 p.m. GMT, 5:00–6:00 p.m. UK

Today’s learning designs need to engage learners quickly, offer extensive opportunities to build and practice skills, and provide follow-up support for deploying those skills. In this webinar, Blanchard founding associate Dr. Patricia Zigarmi will share the key concepts she uses in creating engaging learning designs for The Ken Blanchard Companies. Drawing on her extensive background creating best-in-class training products for more than 30 years, Zigarmi will share how to

• Deliver learning in short segments—designed to match individuals’ learning preferences and attention spans
• Engage learners so they take greater responsibility for using what they’ve learned back on the job
• Create powerful learning tools that support and cement new behaviors
• Create collaboration, critical mass, and a “tipping point” for organization-wide adoption

Discover how a “learn fast, practice slow” approach captures the attention and passion of learners and teaches them how to use new content in a fully engaged way that creates lasting results.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn directly from one of the industry’s foremost experts on how to unleash the learning energy within your organization by creating enthusiasm, openness, involvement, and meaning in your learning designs.