What EDU-tainment can be
There is another option to commercially constrained training sessions. Training programs can still focus on edutainment but also on using the principles from the science of learning for skill learning and motivating. The next few paragraphs will describe the following image about how learning principles can be applied to training program design.
Audience considerations
If the audience (professional level, seniority, etc) is known beforehand a needs analysis can be conducted or estimated based on the knowledge of common problems that type of audience has. Perhaps this is not possible, but if not what are the reasons? If the training program aims to improve certain skills, then this should be the priority in program design. There is a necessary tradeoff between the amount of skill training possible from a training session and the diversity of participant needs. If there can be no control homogenizing of audience needs, then a scattershot approach of offering a lot of useful and valuable knowledge — while being an engaging presenter — is the only viable option. There can be no hope of helping the audience develop skills in a short training period.
Learning skills needs time …
The trick to a skills-oriented approach to training is establishing a sequence of important and interrelated skills to create progressions over time. Time is key. Learning requires time for practice and time for reflection and personal elaboration of learning. If the live training sessions cannot be extended over time, then technology can help reinforce and consolidate the learning, such as webinars, recorded lessons, online practice and tests, and scheduled online coaching or small group sharing.
Setting objectives and skill progressions
Once a list of audience needs has been established, a limited number of measurable objectives need to be set for the amount of time available for the training. These objectives should be seen as progressions of skills/knowledge that build on each other. These objectives should also be chosen with the purpose of the course and assessment at the end of the course. Once the objectives are set, then the course resembles a design loop with a feedback-like structure:
- Trainer provides input1, then
- Participant practices output1, which the
- Trainer assesses and gives feedback, which leads to
- Trainer input2 which builds on input1 as a skill/knowledge progression, and so on….
These input-output learning progressions will be more motivating if the knowledge and practice is concrete and relevant to the learner who needs to expend effort for any learning to hope to become deeper and more long-term.
With limited time and skill development as a primary goal, training programs can adopt a focused and more task-based instructional (TBI) approach to training. Specifically, there are three main parts with two task cycles in TBI:
- Pre-task
- Task cycle 1: Failed Task + Commentary on task (or discrete skill) + controlled discrete skills practice
- Task cycle 2: Re-plan and re-perform task + Final assessment and feedback.
As the name TBI implies, the primary goal is to get learners to engage in a task and to learn by doing. What is not implied is that there is little pre-teaching before the task, so the learners are expected to be unsuccessful in their attempt. I call this approach “task-to-fail”. If the instructor understands his audience, he knows what they can and cannot do well. Therefore, his goal in Task cycle 1 is to let the learners experience for themselves what they can’t do to create a need for the training and the controlled practice. After this, the learner re-plans and re-performs the task in Task cycle 2 and should be able to clearly see a before/after difference. This is further pointed out in the post-mortem assessment.
This approach to instruction flips and expands the traditional P-P-P teaching model where the Teacher first Presents the knowledge, then gets the learners to do structured Practice, and finally gets them to be more creative and actively Produce their own version. The TBI model variation described here is P1-P-P-P2-A: the learners first Produce1 without help or instruction, listen to the instructor Present or demonstrate the knowledge, do controlled Practice and then revisit their task to Produce2 again, which is filled by an Assessment and feedback.
Let’s explain this “task-to-fail” task cycle in the context of a science communication training. Here, the scientist participants have to immediately produce something, such as a 240-character summary of their current research project for the news social media Twitter. The instructor analyzes key problems with the tweets (already anticipated and confirmed with quick analysis from the Produce1 phases), such as tone or overuse of jargon or overly academic/formal phrasing and syntax. The learners are guided through structured practice, like transforming statements of formal tone into informal tone. The learner-scientists are then given time to revise and re-perform the task. Finally, samples are then highlighted in an individual or group post-mortem Assessment activity to finish the task-based cycle.
In keeping with the EDU-tainment style of training, this training sequence and progression has a story-line structure. The hero (trainee) is forced to confront the problem she has (lack of a certain skill). The learner is forced to struggle at this stage, which is like the rising action of a story. Here, the conflict becomes clear: she lacks a skill and can’t successfully perform the task. The instructor enters the picture and becomes a guide who helps the hero understand the problem with insight and provides practice to help her raise her ability. Once the hero is equipped to resolve her problem, she must re-perform the task for an audience; here, the learning narrative reaches a climax: is she able to use her new knowledge/skills to complete the task for an audience? At the end of this progression, the story is resolved in post-mortem fashion, where the learners share their task production/performance with comments and feedback from the instructor and audience.
The two obvious drawbacks to this Task-to-fail approach is that it requires a smaller audience and it takes a lot of time to cover a skill. However, if the training aims to develop skills during the training with assessment and feedback, then these are necessary trade-offs.
