Picture the scene; a corporate training session. Students, who are, of course, employees of the corporation, file into the room where the instructor is already waiting. They take their seats. Roll is called to make sure that everyone who is supposed to be in training is actually in training and didn't slip off for a three Margarita lunch at the restaurant across the street.
A Familiar Training Session
Once it is confirmed that everyone is present, the instructor stands and begins lecturing. The students take copious notes and highlight key points in the three ring binders they've been given which contains the course material. The instructor steps slowly, painstakingly through the material, asking if everyone understands at every step. Rooting out confusion and misunderstanding before moving on.
At the end, a test is given to confirm that everybody understood what was “taught” and the class ends. Sound familiar? It should. It describes in general terms just about every training course ever offered by the vast majority of training departments in companies around the country.
Two Things Are Wrong
Sadly, it underscores two glaring misconceptions about learning that are in desperate need of remedying, because organizing whole courses of study around these two misconceptions does a great disservice both to the students learning the material, and to the material itself. It also diminishes the importance of the role of the instructor, making them little more than “knowledge mechanics.” This is fixable, and it should be fixed immediately, if not sooner.
What's Wrong With The Above?
The problem with the scenario painted above is that it makes two very bad, very wrong headed assumptions. The first bad assumption is that the instructor is the fountain from which all knowledge spills.
That's not the way it should be; the instructor is a guide. The instructor is there to set the parameters for the thing to be learned and to monitor, by way of testing and grading, that the subject matter was indeed learned by the end of the course. There are many roads to that outcome and the least attractive one was described above.
Rather than sitting passively and being lectured to...rather than obsessively underlining passages in a three ring binder, a much more effective way of teaching would be to outline a scenario and give the students the tools they need to find the information out for themselves. For example, if you're teaching a class on business ethics, you could begin with the following:
“A representative from a company that we do business with approaches you and wants to take you out for an afternoon of golf. You've got vacation time saved up, put in for it, and get approved. During the course of the golf game, the representative asks if you'd like season tickets to watch the Mets play. He offers them, apparently with no strings attached. The question is, have you violated any laws or corporate policies by going golfing in the first place, or if you accept the tickets in the second.”
Once you've outlined the scenario, give your students some resources to go looking for the information and give them 30 minutes or so to research, and another fifteen to write up a brief report on their answers, then do a round table discussion about what each student found.
Sure, you could just lecture the relevant information to your students from on high, and the ones that didn't fall asleep might even remember it the next day, but they're guaranteed to remember it if you use the approach outlined above.
And The Second?
The second gross misconception is that confusion and misunderstanding is the opposite of knowledge. This is also incorrect. Confusion is to learning what sweat is to exercise. It's a natural part of the process. If, at some point in your learning, you are not confused, then you already knew the material and had scant need to study it. Or alternatively, you have completely misunderstood the entire subject, in th eway that students who say that the exam was easy often fail.
It's pretty simple to fix these misconceptions in your training department and take learning in your organization to a whole new level.
