Sequencing Active Training Activities
V. Your Conflict Style Is Situational (Checklist)
4. You could teach from theory to practice or from practice to theory
You begin a counseling module by explaining how direct confrontation in-creases resistance in defensive employees. You follow your theoretical input with a chance to practice indirect ways to correct performance and lower resistance. Alternatively, you might begin by practicing indirect ap-proaches and then discussing why employee resistance is lower when this strategy is used.
In addition to reversing sequences, you can also place design components in a variety of positions. Take, for example, practicing a complex skill. The prac-tice session usually is placed at the end of a long sequence of explanation and demonstration. It often makes sense, however, to have participants practice a skill at the beginning without benefit of prior instruction just to see how well they do. You can then go back and examine the skill, piece by piece. Frequent practice sessions can also occur during the explanation and demonstration phase.
The trainer can show the skill as a whole, and the participants practice it; the
trainer then focuses on a specific aspect of the skill, and the participants prac-tice the entire skill again. Each time, the skill is broken down further and fur-ther by the trainer, but the participants always attempt to practice it as a whole.
The success of an effective training sequence often lies in the flow from one piece of the design to the other. The worst kind of training sequence is a steady progression of topics with little regard for building participant interest, highlighting the links between pieces, recycling earlier material, or conclud-ing satisfactorily. Here are some tips to improve the flow of a design:
1. Use what Ruth Clark (1994) calls the “Zoom Principle.” When introduc-ing participants to new information, give them a broad picture before gointroduc-ing into the details. The learner needs what Clark calls an “advanced orga-nizer” before being able to sort new information out. After presenting the big picture, the trainer “zooms in” on some detail, returning to it periodi-cally to show the participant how each detail relates to the whole. Clark provides the following example.
When teaching the customer service representative job to new hires, you could describe the process flow of work among functional units in the cus-tomer service department. Then you might proceed with an explanation of the representative job, returning at critical moments to the flow chart to show the interfaces between the job and other departmental functions. The new customer service representative could also be presented with an overview of the major types of customer calls he will be taking and how they relate to each other. Then, as detailed information is given about each call type, the big pic-ture can be presented again, giving more detailed information on how the call types relate to each other.
2. A training sequence should look like a spiral rather than a straight line.
Reintroduce later on skills and ideas taught earlier in a sequence. If the skill or idea in question is complex, introduce it first on a simple level and then teach it at greater levels of complexity as the course unfolds. Train-ing in conflict management provides a good example.
A core skill in conflict management is the ability to listen attentively to one’s opponent. Typically, active listening skills are stressed early in the program.
As she introduces mediation and negotiation techniques, the trainer can eas-ily point out how active listening is the basis of these more sophisticated tools.
Moreover, being in the difficult spot of mediating or negotiating these intense conflicts of interest dramatically tests the ability to listen attentively.
3. Avoid the urge to plunge right into an important part of your design. Add a brief activity or short presentation to set up the main event and build mo-tivation. Before an important task, warm up a group with a lighter exercise similar to but not as serious as the one to follow. Sometimes, a shift in the
design that widens or redirects the focus is necessary for the next experi-ence to be more effective.
In team-building or leadership development programs, a crucial moment oc-curs when each participant is about to receive serious peer feedback about her or his behavior in the program thus far. The anxiety level of the group rises precipitously. Before giving the final instructions, a trainer can use the following analogy: “Feedback is like a gift. Take it as such. Like any gift, you may not like it. But if it’s from a reputable source, you can always return it ‘to the store’ without the giver knowing.” Inserting this piece in the design helped to reduce the tension, and participants were more receptive to their first ex-perience receiving peer feedback.
4. From time to time, build a training sequence around a critical incident, a problem to be solved, or a task to be accomplished rather than a set of con-cepts or skills to be learned. Often, trainers employ didactic teaching meth-ods when the participants can learn instead from their own inquiry. Inquiry modes of learning are always more active than trainer-dependent ones.
Novice bank tellers are required to learn how to identify counterfeit bills. The usual training sequence is an orderly presentation, with handouts, of the flaws to watch for, such as the whiteness of the portrait, broken sawtooth points around the rim of the seal, uneven spacing of the serial numbers, and blurry lines in the scrollwork surrounding the numerals. A more active approach would be to ask the trainees to attempt to distinguish between counterfeit and non-counterfeit bills without benefit of prior instruction, sharing their evidence as they do so. The trainer could then point out other telltale signs of forgery. Yet another approach would be to ask the trainees to examine some genuine bills and develop hypotheses about how they are printed to discour-age counterfeiting.
5. Closing a training sequence can be climactic or reflective. Sometimes a se-quence should end with a bang to emphasize the accomplishment. For ex-ample, a dramatic finish could consist of a scintillating final lecture, an intergroup competition, a role play that serves as a dress rehearsal for later application, or a challenging case study. At other times, however, it may be more appropriate to wind down by processing reactions to the material, making connections to skills previously learned, or generating final ques-tions about topics that are still unclear.
In designing the closing of a training module on how to assess the roles played by members of an alcoholic family, the trainer might use two approaches. One is to end with a live interview of a family in treatment so that, watching and listening, participants could test in their minds how they would assess the fam-ily roles in an actual situation. The trainer would easfam-ily be able to arrange such an experience, and it certainly would be memorable. The other approach is to end with a panel discussion in which participants would take turns an-swering questions posed by the moderator (that is, the trainer).
The sequencing of strongly experiential training requires special considera-tion. In such training, learning flows not from didactic presentations but from what participants discover for themselves as a result of powerful experiences the trainer has designed for them.
The value of any experiential learning activity is enhanced by asking par-ticipants to reflect on the experience they just had and explore its implications.
This reflection period is often referred to a processing or debriefing period.
Some experiential trainers now use the term harvesting. Figure 8.5 describes a three-stage sequence for harvesting a rich learning experience, called “What?
So what? Now what?”
FIGURE 8.5. WHAT? SO WHAT? NOW WHAT?
What?
Take participants through an experience that is appropriate to your topic. These experiences might include any of the following:
• A game or simulation exercise
• A field trip
• A video
• A debate
• A role play
• A mental imagery exercise
Ask participants to share what happened to them during the experience:
• What did they do?
• What did they observe? Think about?
• What feelings did they have during the experience?
So What?
Next ask participants to ask themselves so what?
• What benefits did they gain from the experience?
• What did they learn? Relearn?
• What are the implications of the activity?
• How does the experience (if it is a simulation or role play) relate to the real world?
Now What?
Finally, ask participants to consider now what?
• How do you want to do things differently in the future?
• How can you extend the learning you had?
• What steps can you take to apply what you learned?
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING SEQUENCES