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This message has been edited. Last edited by: LoveLearning,

I will tell you a story. I was working under contract to a large client. I was tired of their sage-on-the-stage focus. When it came time to update a training course I'd written, I added a lot of participant involvement -- especially participant content creation. The client had another contractor join the design reciew and tell me that this was "not the company way". The alternative was to go along or lose the contract. After much protest, I chose to go along. Sometimes food is important.

When clients ask me what to do for a design, I generally try to get them to adopt participant-centered, as opposed to instructor-centered, designs. I often meet with resistance from clients and the instructors that would ultimately deliver the materials. One client preferred a two hour long lectures over any participant involvement; and they have plenty of takers for that course.

I would love to have clients that want more learner-centered designs. I have been searching for them and trying to convince others to change their focus. Statistics, testamonials, etc, have not helped in most cases.

One of my difficulties right now is finding clients that want consulting to help them towards learner-centered designs and who want out-of-the-box (not off-the-shelf) WLP solutions. Oh, and who want to pay for it (see the thread on working for free).

Sometimes it boils down to two cliches: "you can lead a horse..." and "ya gotta pay the rent".

HTH

As far as food being important, I agree and have done the same.

Today I use some very important questions I ask the sponsor client before going on. I note that the learners are not the ones to judge the effectiveness of the course. I ask sponsors if they think the learners are experts in how people learn best? Hopefully get "No". I point out that how people learn and transfer to the workplace is a major discipline and whole advanced degrees MS & PhDs are built on them. (I hold a PhD).

I go on to ask if they are interested in the people simply being exposed or do they just want the people to get a break from their jobs. Usually I get a workable answer. The sponsors want people to learn something except for compliance courses that they have to teach. So if they really want people to learn and carry back to the workplace, then how is that going to happen when the learner just sits and listens for 2 hours? I ask them about their past experiences. Usually get some support. I use the analogy of telling someone a phone number and they are likely to be able to remember it. But if you give them a 20 digit number, the 1st of which are the phone number, they are likely to fail remembering even the first 7. Same holds true for a course. Most times the client gets the idea.

Stuff has to be chunked down, delivered, and then the learner has to have a chance to apply in some kind of activities or exercises or it is lost. Even with that, likelihood is still not very good unless there is some support, content reinforcement, and motivation back on the job.

I ask them what behaviors the expect back on the job. I ask them don't they think that would be a good idea to see some of that before leaving the class. I usually get a Yes when it is important.

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Why do people continue to take professional, salaried positions in this field and then cowtow to even the most bizarre, non-sensical directives without so much as a "can we please discuss this?"

Probably because these people are not training/learning professionals in the first place. Unfortunately, training departments will often hire most anyone to do training, ISD, etc. Why expect professionalism out of non-professional people?

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WHERE IS THE PASSION? Where is the heart-felt desire to help ensure that every learning opportunity IS a learning oppornity and not some brainless information dump? Learners deserve trainers/teachers who are passionate about what they do. Where is the passion???

I can only speak for myself and from my observations of, and discussions with, other friends in the business.

First, the passion is there with many. Sure, some of them are in the business because it's "what they do". Others do it because it is a business. I know contract trainers who see it as a way to get consulting clients -- they teach a course about Oracle, and get Oracle consulting clients. But myself and others do it because we are committed to lifelong learning.

Second, I and others have found corporate resistance to more "engaging" forms of learning. Conversations, simulations and the like are eschewed by many organizations. At first I thought it might be a generational thing (I do not want to get into the politics of that here), but I found that many HR and upper management folks of all ages and experience levels had the same attitude. It squishes passion when exciting "new" techinques cannot be deployed.

I have taken classes from Dave Meier and Thiagi. I would love to be able to employ their stuff. My passionate pleas have usually fallen on deaf ears. The general response is "we don't do it that way." I have worked extensively with a local charter high school. They use a teaching methodology called "Paideia" (check out www.paideia.org for more info). An essential component of all classes is the Socratic Seminar. In its general form students discuss a paper, chapter of a book or whatever, with questions and guidance from the teacher (I'm way oversimplifying). I have found that when I have materials incorporating discussion, other instructors of that material refuse to do the discussion portions -- they are fearful of losing control. This lowers the level 1 eval scores significantly.

I am beginning to look at WLP increasingly in the same light as Jaffe dlooks at marketing in Join the Conversation. He sees it as a conversation; not as a broadcast of information. I have always been a strong proponent of interaction, activities and the like, but his goal is different. He talks about Customer Generated Content. This goes well with Thiagi's advice to let the learners create direct their learning. (The actual quote is, "Let the inmates run the asylum. Invite participants to generate training content and to conduct training activities.") I am passionate about involvement and conversation.

Unfortunately, I am growing less passionate, after twenty-five years, about the technical content I often teach. Intellectually I know that it's important to the learners, but to me so many things are so much more important. I gin up enough passion when I actually write or deliver materials, but between gigs, I long to do something more "relevent" -- at least as I see it. But that's me. Right now I'm trying to find a way to illustrate some of the points from a couple of tech classes by generating little videos. I know there is a lot of content already out there, but I haven't found good and accurate visual content about these topics and I want to address the visual learners better.

I hope I've been honest and thorough.