Questions, Questions, Questions?

Questions, Questions, Questions?

Rachel Burnham writes: A common misconception I notice amongst many people new to designing & delivering training is to see training as primarily made up of presentations or talks. Many new to Learning & Development also feel that it would be easier to deliver a presentation rather than involve learners in activities.  

Learning is always more effective when learners are actively involved throughout the process whether in identifying the need, choosing learning methods, engaging with the material or evaluating the value of the learning.  And involving learners in a face to face session from early on is a very effective strategy for taking the pressure off yourself if you are new to delivery or feeling nervous at the thought of all eyes on you!

This blog focuses on the value of asking questions as a simple way to get learners involved in training sessions.  

Questions are a very flexible set of tools.  Making even better use of questions is often an easy way of improving the effectiveness of group training sessions or workshops.  Questionning is also key to many other learning methods from coaching to action learning sets. 

 

Last week I did a very simple exercise as part of a ‘Train the Trainer’ programme I was facilitating, I asked the group to note down all the different reasons that you might ask questions to participants as a trainer.   And between us, we very quickly came up with over 20 reasons for asking questions – ranging from the simplistic – ‘to find out a participant’s name’ through ‘to deepen & challenge participants’ learning’ and to ‘encourage use of the learning in the workplace’.

I think that these reasons for asking questions can be grouped  into three broad areas:

• Asking questions to develop rapport with learners – finding out information to enable you to get to know the participants better and tailor the learning even more closely to their needs.  Questions about job role & responsibilities, previous experience (good & more challenging), hopes & fears for the training can all help with this.

•   Asking questions to involve participants & manage the group – questions which raise curiosity, get participants thinking & sharing from their own experience and get the group discussing & looking at the topic from different angles all play a part.  You can use questions to draw in quieter group members, to draw out & value the experience of individuals and to keep the focus of the learning.

•  Asking questions to assess and evaluate the learning – there are so many ways to use questions to informally assess learning both during and towards the end of a programme.   Questions can be used to encourage recall & recap learning, to review learning objectives, to identify unexpected learning, to aid planning the use of learning and to encourage self-reflection.  We can seek out feedback on what worked in the training and what we can further improve.

Of course, the questions don’t have to be all one way.  Questions from learners will add further relevancy and immediacy to the session.  Participants who ask questions are worth their weight in gold because they enable you to engage with what is on their mind and with their way of seeing the world.

Invite participants at the start of the session to jot down the questions they would like to be able to answer in relation to the topic – this is another way of getting learners involved in setting the objectives for the session.  Encourage learners to reflect on what questions they have throughout the session & give sufficient time to this – perhaps encouraging paired work to identify these.  Get participants to generate their own questions for inclusion in a knowledge check quiz.

There are times when it is good to hold back from asking questions eg if participants are involved in a group activity and by asking ‘How are you getting on?’ you will break the conversation flow – but overall more questions and more effective questions will lead to more effective learning.  But do give time for responses and do listen to those responses.

If you are new to design & delivery, one tip to encourage you to make more use of questions is to prepare some questions and include them in you session plan or notes. You may not use these exact questions when it comes to facilitating the session, but you are more likely to make good use of questions if you have begun thinking about this in advance.  Where there are specific factual answers to those questions, make sure you include these in your notes – particularly if these are to be used by other trainers as well as yourself.

So, I leave you with some questions (of course) to ponder:

• How do you make use of questions in sessions you design or deliver?  
  
• Are there any gaps in how you are using questions at present? 
• What value do questions bring to your sessions – for you & for participants?  How can you build further on that?

Rachel Burnham

9 June 2014

Burnham L & D Consultancy specialises in the development of L&D professionals, blended learning and evaluation

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD

Shake It Up! Ideas for designing L&D

Shake It Up! Ideas for designing L&D

Rachel Burnham writes: Sometimes when we are new to designing L&D workshops it is difficult to know where to begin to create a programme that will really impact on performance. Or we can find ourselves stuck in a rut and turning out similar design after similar design. Or perhaps we want to challenge ourselves to design something that bit more effective? Here are some small steps to help you rethink and refresh your design and delivery.

Health warning – None of these ideas will be effective if chosen simply for the sake of doing something different.  A particular approach will only be effective if it is relevant to the needs of the learners, appropriate for the type of learning & impact on performance required and if it fits with culture & context of the organisation.  Having fun with design, needs to start with effective identification of needs, thorough discussion with stakeholders and a robust understanding of the difference in performance that it is intended to support.

Here are 10 small steps you could consider:

1.  Go without - Many of us start out in L&D with the idea that all training involves the use of slides and sometimes our organisations confuse presentations with training (and sometimes we do too!).  So a simple step, is to design a programme without the use of slides and break free of this expectation.  There are lots of different ways of bringing in a visual element – flipcharts, workbooks, props, posters, video, cards, drama – so try something different.

2.  Shake up the start of your programme – many organisations have almost a standard running order for the start of every single L&D programme, which can lead participants to switch off.  Why not rethink the running order and do something unexpected to start? Tell an apparently un-related story, show a video, have a character with a crisis to deal with interrupt the beginning of the programme (played by a colleague) & get the group to respond to the situation.  Make sure that this links to the learning focus for the programme and give time to debrief this and bring out the connections.

3.  Break the ground rules and keep the phones on! – Usually we are very keen to get learners to give their undivided attention to our programme and so ‘instruct’ learners to turn their phones off or to silent.  Why not design a programme in which learners are encouraged to use their smart phones to enhance the learning perhaps through building in activities that use their phone’s capabilities eg a research task, or taking photos eg of examples of body language, or recording an interview with a colleague?  You will of course need to think through the issues of using personal phones for work and what if someone doesn’t have a smartphone etc but there is lots of potential here.

4.  Transform the Subject Matter Expert (SME) slot – many programmes, particularly corporate induction programmes include presentation sessions led by SMEs – these can be fantastic if the SME not only has current expert knowledge but is a good speaker, but so often fall flat if their presentation skills are not up to speed.  So, why not change this session from a presentation to an interview perhaps with you acting as the interviewer – this will help to keep the session focused, break it up and maintain the pace of the session?  You could even get the participants to work in groups to identify key questions they’d like to put to the SME and then act as the anchor-person for the session.  Or turn the session into a dialogue between the SME and another colleague.

5.  Homemade is the best! – nothing goes down so well at a village fete than the homemade cake stall, so why not learn from that and bring a homemade element into your session?   Why not get the participants making their own resources eg videos, posters, photos, job aids during the session?  For example, in one programme the first part of the session introduced the organisational expectations around health & safety and in the second part, participants set off round the premises armed with cameras to document examples of good and also bad practice!  You will need to think through what happens next with those bad practices.

6.  Peer to peer partnerships – There is great value in encouraging positive and helpful learning relationships between peers on a programme.  Use techniques such as ‘teach back’, where one learner teaches another or encourage peer provided feedback (with appropriate support) and build in follow up activities that encourage participants to work together to continue their learning after the session eg paired learning review, on-line discussion forum.

7.  Work with line managers – Consider how you can work with the line managers of participants in a programme both before and after the session.  How informed are those managers about what the programme will involve and what to expect from their staff after participating in the session? What can you do to help those line managers offer useful support to their staff after the session?  Consider a written or verbal briefing prior to the programme for managers; what about a taster session for managers; or a set of suggestions & resources to enable line managers to support their staff practicing and applying their new knowledge or skills?

8.  From participant to trainer – involve the participants in identifying their particular challenges with a topic and then in groups get them to create & deliver sessions to address those challenges.  You will probably want to swap over the challenges, so that everyone works on a different challenge to their own and it is useful to have lots of resources available both physical and electronic to help this to work effectively.  You will need to be available to provide support & encouragement to the groups.

9.  Rethink your venue use – Consider the room layout, rearrange the furniture to best suit the design of the session (eg consider using a cabaret layout to enable group work, rather than a U-shape); change the way the room faces (eg from front to side); consider using different parts of the room for different activities.  Or for a complete change think about how an unusual venue could add value (see this blog post by my colleague Christine Bell on this very topic centreforfacilitation.wordpress.com - May 20, 11:25 AM).

10.  Do away with the course completely – Is a workshop based course really the best way to meet this learning need or would another format work better?  Could a number of different learning methods be combined eg a workbook, video clip combination? Or some background reading & research plus coaching combo?  Do all the participants need the same learning or would it be even more effective to include different routes through the material to suit different needs? Is it a learning solution that is mostly likely to improve performance or do we need to address other factors in the workplace?  This is a huge topic and there are lots of different issues to consider, but it is always worth asking the question whether a face to face workshop is the right approach, rather than assuming it is as we so often do.

This post has been written to get you thinking about small steps you can take to make your L&D design & delivery even more effective at meeting the real needs in your organisation and impacting on performance.  I hope it gets you started.

Rachel Burnham

21/5/14

Burnham L & D Consultancy specialises in the development of L&D professionals, blended learning and evaluation

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD

Sea-Change at CIPD L&D Show 2014?

Sea-Change at CIPD L&D Show 2014?

Rachel Burnham writes:  Reading the multiple blogs and Tweets arising from last week’s CIPD L&D Show is a bit like suddenly developing the compound eyes of an insect, in which the world is seen through many lens all at once, each with a slightly differing view.  At least, that’s what my experience has been of this year’s show.

Each person attending has their own take on the event, in part because we all participated in a different mix of sessions, spoke with different people, engaged with a variety of stall-holders in the exhibition, read different tweets and also brought with us our own experiences & particular biases.  We each have our own tale to tell.

And telling them we have been.  There have been blogs which reported and reflected upon sessions within the main conference – here’s Ian Pettigrew’s live blog on ‘Creating a New Generation of Trustworthy Leaders’ from the first day of the conference http://kfcoa.ch/PQe91s ; Phil Wilcox’s blog on a session on MOOCs https://e3ctc.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/i-like-to-mooc-it-mooc-it/   and from the 2^nd day Phil Wilcox’s blog on the enthusiastically received session about Google http://e3ctc.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/letting-go-of-control/ Blogs and Tweets aplenty about the shorter free sessions in the exhibition hall.  And blogs which have reflected on how we can improve future shows to better enable learning and model effective learning practice to meet diverse needs – from Helen Amery http://wp.me/p45I4E-8O .

My highlight was the short session led by Andy Lancaster, the new L&D person for CIPD and Ruth Stuart, responsible for the L&D research agenda, also at CIPD.  Together they presented a whirl-wind tour of the new developments taking place at the CIPD, which are making good the noises made by Peter Cheese over the last year in relation to L&D.  At long last there are changes taking place in CIPD in how L&D is viewed.   Ruth Stuart reported on the new emphasis being place on research into L&D.   Already reports are available from CIPD on: the real experiences of middle managers; skills policy and of course the Annual Learning & Talent Development survey.  Future research includes more on neuroscience & learning; volunteering as an L&D method; the future of L&D and new insights into change management.   There will be opportunities for L&D practitioners to engage with this research agenda, so do take up these opportunities.

Other exciting initiatives which Andy Lancaster reported on included the new ‘Leaders in Learning’ network to bring together people engaged in L&D.  He is hoping to develop networks outside of London and this is likely to include Scotland, Manchester and the West Country.  The aim is for these networks to be about involvement, so that CIPD moves on from its traditional ‘broadcasting’ approach to a more ‘engaged with practitioners’ approach.  New partnership working with other organisations such as ‘Towards Maturity’ is planned and you may already have noticed that ‘People Management’ is including more L&D focused articles than previously.   

It feels like the door is unlocked and that there is a real opportunity for those in L&D to push against this.  I feel more hope and optimism about the L&D agenda with CIPD from this short session, than at any time in my career previously.   We mustn’t let this opportunity slip by.

Rachel Burnham

5^th May 2014

Burnham L & D Consultancy specialises in the development of L&D professionals, blended learning and evaluation

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD