Hi TravelerJJim,

Yes, I am one of those people who prefer to learn something straight from the most expert person in the subject. I hate going to a workshop that is facilitated by someone who does not know the subject and does nothing but ask the participants what they think. That has turned me off to most conferences since that's about all you get. Sure, participants have a lot of keen insights and knowledge, but my preferred method of learning is to hear if from an expert. That's just me. But my preferred method of learning does not make it a good method necessarily. Anyway, I understand what you're saying.

In my earlier post, I was referring mostly to OJT since most technical training ends up being either pure OJT or a form of it (since it involves a lot of hands on stuff even if it is delivered in the classroom). In an ideal world, I think employees should be empowered to take charge of their own learning - and that this is entirely possible if we change the mind set that training must be delivered by trainers or facilitators as we currently do. If we encourage the participation of non SMEs up front in course, content (or whatever you call it) development, they learn as they question the SMEs and provide input to them. And in that way, their actual participation becomes a training experience for them. They then become as capable as the SMEs of delivering the training to others - sometimes more so. That happens all the time when OJT is developed that way - and very successfully. Eventually, most employees would be able to train others and maybe we wouldn't have to continue to spend billions of dollars annually on hiring SMEs (either internally or externally) to train, or facilitators to facilitate learning.

Do you not think that SMEs are susceptable to forgetting crucial details that trainees might need, or might not present the procedure as clearly as possible simply because you (the SME) have done it that way for years; or that you the SME might have developed your own shortcuts for doing things and thus leave out something that might explain to the trainee why you are doing it that way? Do you see any shortcomings in having SMEs do everything?

quote:

Originally posted by KaliKo:
In my earlier post, I was referring mostly to OJT since most technical training ends up being either pure OJT or a form of it (since it involves a lot of hands on stuff even if it is delivered in the classroom).

Hmmm, I tend to think of hands-on training as "training". It is such a natural thing for me. Maybe "real world" is better than OJT: one thing I like to stress in my courses that participants have the freedom to "play" and to make "mistakes" without consequences.

quote:

In an ideal world, I think employees should be empowered to take charge of their own learning - and that this is entirely possible if we change the mind set that training must be delivered by trainers or facilitators as we currently do.

I advocate this very strongly. I am working with a local high school where this is practiced to some extent. Getting adults in charge of their own learning is critical. One caveat is that they sometimes need to be guided to see the whole picture. We often see people who want to learn X because that's the way someone else at work attacks all the problems. When we delve into why they want to learn X, we discover that Y is a better solution.

This is sort of like the "to a man with only a hammer, everything looks like a nail" syndrome.

quote:

If we encourage the participation of non SMEs up front in course, content (or whatever you call it) development, they learn as they question the SMEs and provide input to them. And in that way, their actual participation becomes a training experience for them. They then become as capable as the SMEs of delivering the training to others - sometimes more so.

It totally depends on who the non-SMEs are. They at least have to have some basic foundation in the content.

quote:

That happens all the time when OJT is developed that way - and very successfully. Eventually, most employees would be able to train others and maybe we wouldn't have to continue to spend billions of dollars annually on hiring SMEs (either internally or externally) to train, or facilitators to facilitate learning.

Yes, in many cases it works quite well.

quote:

Do you not think that SMEs are susceptable to forgetting crucial details that trainees might need, or might not present the procedure as clearly as possible simply because you (the SME) have done it that way for years; or that you the SME might have developed your own shortcuts for doing things and thus leave out something that might explain to the trainee why you are doing it that way?

Of course SMEs leave out steps and are often focused on one way to do things. SMEs who are good trainers learn to overcome this. Iinput from non-SMEs in the design and revision processes helps, too. This is why I stongly advocate testing courses with real participants.

There is, however, the converse danger that the non-SME will explain the one way she learned the material and not explain alternatives either. At least the SME probably knows alternatives. It is the job of a train-the-SME-trainer (along with mentoring, coaching, whatever) to help the SME learn about and expose those alternatives.
A programming language I often use is called Perl. One axiom of perl programmers is TIMTOWTDI (pronounced Tim Tody with a long o): There Is More Than One Way To Do It. I learned early on when I started teaching at a university that I needed to explain alternatives; but to be careful not to overflow students' minds with so many that they could not select one to use. This brings op one of the reasons I shy away from non-SME-taught courses: the non-SMEs miss the alternatives because they never learned them.

quote:

Do you see any shortcomings in having SMEs do everything?

Of course. Someone, somewhere in the design and delivery process, needs to understand something about how people learn and what makes a good leanring environment. Using a traditional classroom as an example, someone has to know the mechanics of notes, presentations, room setup and so forth. Someone also has to know how to design the learning experience: from the content presentation to activities to the mechanics to everything. Most SMEs are not educated to do that. They need the help of someone who knows what to do.

This is part of my complaint about the public schools. For the most part classes are taught by educators, not SMEs. Sure, the Calculus teacher needs to know calculus to teach it, but the writing teacher may never have written even a magazine article. No Child Left Behind requires "highly qualified teachers". This has been interpreted to mean "teachers with teaching degrees". In my area we lost some good teachers and administrators because they were experts at what they did and darn good teachers, but did not have teaching degrees and did not want to get them. Likewise I would not want to forego a class with a true expert because she did not have an ID background or degree...

Sorry that was so long. I am enjoying this a lot. Thanks KaliKo.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by travelerjjm:
Hmmm, I tend to think of hands-on training as "training". It is such a natural thing for me. Maybe "real world" is better than OJT: one thing I like to stress in my courses that participants have the freedom to "play" and to make "mistakes" without consequences.[QUOTE]

Not sure I understand this. I too think that hands-on training is training. I think we're on the same page here. And one of the steps in the OJT process is for the trainee to perform the task without any coaching - so they can get to make mistakes without consequences. The only time this is not so, is if there is some safety critical aspect to the task.

Quoted by TJ:
I advocate this very strongly. I am working with a local high school where this is practiced to some extent. Getting adults in charge of their own learning is critical. One caveat is that they sometimes need to be guided to see the whole picture. We often see people who want to learn X because that's the way someone else at work attacks all the problems. When we delve into why they want to learn X, we discover that Y is a better solution.
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I'm interested in what you're doing in the high school. One of the projects I'm thinking about is trying to help bridge the gap between what employers want and expect from new hires and the actual capabilities of some high school graduates (or other new hires for that matter). It would be nice to have the high school students work in OJT design teams. The design teams do task analyses and create the content for the on-the-job training sessions for the company (in their particular work area). As mentioned earlier, the design teams (made up of mostly SMEs) also have less experienced employees, and ideally, a trainee or two. That's the only way to make sure the training material (written in a structured two-column format - with the what, why, where, when, how, safety, and quality) ends up at the right level of detail for trainees (because of the afore mentioned drawbacks of relying solely on SMEs). Anyway, the role of the high school students would be to play the role of the trainees and question the SMEs about anything they discuss and write that is not clearly understood. The high school students would not only learn about different jobs, they would have first hand experience observing the tasks being verified on site thereby getting a good idea of what the work involves. They also learn teamwork, communication and a lot of other workplace skills that are often lacking in new hires these days.

Quoted by TJ:
It totally depends on who the non-SMEs are. They at least have to have some basic foundation in the content.
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Completely agree with you.

Quoted by TJ:
There is, however, the converse danger that the non-SME will explain the one way she learned the material and not explain alternatives either. At least the SME probably knows alternatives. It is the job of a train-the-SME-trainer (along with mentoring, coaching, whatever) to help the SME learn about and expose those alternatives.
A programming language I often use is called Perl. One axiom of perl programmers is TIMTOWTDI (pronounced Tim Tody with a long o): There Is More Than One Way To Do It. I learned early on when I started teaching at a university that I needed to explain alternatives; but to be careful not to overflow students' minds with so many that they could not select one to use. This brings op one of the reasons I shy away from non-SME-taught courses: the non-SMEs miss the alternatives because they never learned them.
_______________

I can see where college students in a classroom should be exposed to alternatives - and so should most trainees in a classroom. But structured OJT is just the opposite - the way I see it. You're trying to prevent having people doing the same tasks in different ways. A major goal is standardization of task accomplishment and also training consistency.The design teams (in team-driven structured OJT) actively discuss how to do the procedure, process, task, etc., and also decide on a "best" way for a new trainee to learn the task. That is key to successful OJT. The reason the team decides on and agrees on one way to teach trainees is because alternatives would only end up confusing a lot of the trainees. One of the biggest pitfalls of UNstructured OJT is that everybody teaches the task the way THEY do it (everybody does it differently) and there is no resulting standardization of anything.

Quoted by TJ:
Of course. Someone, somewhere in the design and delivery process, needs to understand something about how people learn and what makes a good leanring environment. Using a traditional classroom as an example, someone has to know the mechanics of notes, presentations, room setup and so forth. Someone also has to know how to design the learning experience: from the content presentation to activities to the mechanics to everything. Most SMEs are not educated to do that. They need the help of someone who knows what to do.
___________________

Agree with that. SMEs, whether in the classroom, on-line, or OJT, should have some knowledge about what they are doing - things you mentioned.

quote:

You're trying to prevent having people doing the same tasks in different ways. A major goal is standardization of task accomplishment and also training consistency.

I can see a need for this kind of thing, but I cannot recall teaching or designing with those goals in mind. This probably gives me a different perspective.

[I think K-12 (or preK - 16 or whatever) is a bit off-topic. PM me and we can discuss the school stuff off-line.]