Washington Trainers' Forum

Updated
7-21-2010

PAST MEETINGS

THURSDAY, JULY 20, 2000

LOCATION: Sughrue, Mion, Zinn, Macpeak & Seas, PLLC
2100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.  20037

HOSTESS: Jennifer Holehouse

TOPIC: Training Tips: How to Teach Effectively (an interactive presentation)

We covered the following topics and the notes for each topic follow.  The notes combine Jennifer’s presentation ideas as well as feedback from the interactive discussion.

·        Play “getting to know you” games.  Jennifer has a handout of games.  Email Jennifer with your name and address if you weren’t at the meeting and want a copy.

·        Cornell University Icebreaker links: http://www.cornell.edu/OHR/TNET/Icebreakers/Icebreakers.html

·        Personality Tests link: http://www.2h.com/Tests/personality.phtml  This link is great for smaller classes where playing a game won’t work.

·       To strike up a conversion with and among the student, ask them what their favorite cartoon is or what is the last movie they saw.  People love to share this information and it tells a lot about a person and makes for interesting conversation.

·        Ask students if they were stranded on a deserted island, what one book, food, and person would they want to take with them and why.

·        Have students that do not know each other pair up and interview each other for 1 minute.  Then have each person give a quick bio of the person they interviewed.  People may be more comfortable introducing another person than they are talking about themselves. 

·        Instructor Led

·        Case-based learning – a series of short demos by the instructor where the student doesn’t try to follow along.  They just watch and absorb the concept and take notes.  Then the students complete exercises (cases) on their own covering what they just observed in a demo.  For detailed instructions: see the June 1999 WTF meeting on designing Case-based classes.

·        Workshops – have the students bring their own work to class that they are having problems with and you become a coach and help people individually as they work.  Students can also help each other.

·       Personal Training Day – A day dedicated to one-on-one personal training.  Advertise this day well and get students to compile a list of topics they want to cover.  Executives and computer-phobics tend to love these special days.

·       Lunch-n-Learns – Short and fun lunchtime sessions.  Offer cookies and invite students to bring their lunch.

·       Learn by Help Desk calls – Even though we hate this method, it happens.  Try to get the repeat offenders into a class.  For example, if someone calls repeatedly on a header/footer problem, try to get them to sign up for the next class on that topic.

·       Web-based learning

·      Tips of the week – If you company has a regular newsletter, place a tip of the week in it.

·       Stump the trainer – Offer rewards for coming up with problems or questions that stump the trainer.

·      Get the students excited about the subject matter from the beginning.  Give examples of how the class relates to their real work.

·      Give prizes for really good answers, comments or questions.  

·       Make eye contact with one student at a time and SMILE!

·        Create a comfortable casual learning atmosphere.  I have highlighters, sticky notes, pads, pens and tissues at each desk for the students to use.

·        Give students time to respond when you ask if they have questions.  Out of habit we tend to only wait a few seconds for students to respond with questions.  Students need more time than that to come up with a questions, formulate it and get up the nerve to ask it.  Also try rephrasing the questions, “what questions do you have?”

·        Let students work in groups of 3 or 4.

·        The “Crab Award”.  For certain types of training session students tend to be crabby because they don’t want to learn or use the new technology.  Get a wind-up crab and tell them ahead of time that anyone that complains or grumbles, gets the crab award.  Tell the students that they are the ones who award the crab to each other – not the trainer.  This creates a fun edge during class and breaks the tension when someone is being crabby.  You’ll even have students asking for the crab just so they can vent their frustrations freely.  However, as we all know, just the right crabby student can put a class in a bad mood.  In these situations, try to put a positive spin on the complainer’s argument.  Many complaints are the source of company policy rather than software features.  Since the trainer generally doesn’t have control over company policy, try to keep the student’s focused on what you DO have control over.

·        Play dumb:  when a students asks you a question, act like you don’t know the answer or ask another student how they would solve that dilemma.  This gets students to help each other which is something you want them doing once they leave class.  Don’t make them dependent on you.

·        Ask students to give examples of how what they learned will relate to their job function.  This not only gets them thinking about how they would use the software back at their desk, but gives you good suggestions on their needs which can help you fine-tune your future sessions on the same topic.

·        If you end up with a class clown, use them as the ringleader for people to focus on.  Involve the ringleader in questions, games, exercises, and examples.  Class clowns usually enjoy the attention and it makes the class more memorable.

·        Props:  one trainer said he had a talking gorilla that said things like “good idea!”  He would activate the talking gorilla when a student had a good idea and it makes every laugh, keeps them alert and makes participation fun.  I don’t know where to get a talking gorilla, but you get the idea.

·        The post-it parking lot:  Hand a parking lot poster on the wall (make one up).  Give the students two different colored post-it notes (pink/yellow).  Have them write things they like on the pink notes and questions, dislikes or stumpers on the yellow notes.  This is a good way to get anonymous and silent feedback.  Works well in policy or staff meeting with a lot of people.  You can also achieve the same thing by having the participants place their colored notes on index cards and turn in the index cards at the end of the session.

·        Case-based classes – because these classes are extremely hands-on for the students, retention in greater.

·        Create exercises with “real” documents and “real” scenarios.

·        Tie stories, analogies and props to lessons.

o       Word Styles are like Ragu Spaghetti Sauce.  Ragu’s slogan is “it’s in there.”  Everything you need to format your text is in that style!

o       The Jason Tab:  when teaching paragraph numbering, there is this mysterious tab on the ruler bar that keeps coming back again and again even though you remove it.  We call that the Jason tab, because like Jason in Friday the 13^th, it keeps coming back.

·        Get students to take a pledge to begin using what they learned right away.

·        Recent study: a good night’s sleep increases retention for what was learned that day.

·        Provide students with well organized documentation.

·        Manuals

·        Online written instructions.

·        Start a peer-to-peer support group (WUGs).  WUG stands for Windows User Group.

·        KnowledgeBase – create a knowledgebase out of your help desk data.  Make sure you record concise step-by-step instructions in the “solutions” field.  Create an easy way for the end-user to search this database for problems that will allow them to print your concise solutions.

·        Get students back in class on the topics for which they have problems.

• Train topics in the smallest chunks possible.

• Some topics can be demo only, hand-in-hand with good documentation.
• Prioritize what needs to be covered in order of importance and teach only what you have time for.  Students will probably learn enough to explore on their own.

·        Know the needs of your students - Interviews.

·        Ask people what they dislike about the program your are teaching.  Use these dislikes as challenges to show them a better way.

·        Define which features you need to teach to reach the goals.

·        Explore and learn the software yourself.

·        You must have the goals of your students clear.  Interview your potential students to get their goals.

·        Write down the goals in order of difficulty.

·        Create an outline to teach the features that accomplish these goals (in order of difficulty).

·        Use real documents from your students.

·        THE OUTLINE: create an outline template for yourself.  Outlines almost always begin with an introduction to the class handouts, what the topic or program is used for, overview of the screen, and then begin with basics features.

·        There are software packages on the market that you can buy that will let you pick and choose what you want to teach and an instructor outline, student handouts and exercises are generated for you.  Look at http://www.princetoncenter.com/.

·        Also research a package called “ready editor” which prepackages modules for software and can customize for your teaching style.  Has a 14 day free demo.

·        It depends on how much time you have and the goals of the students.

·        Which goals are shared by everyone?  

·        Which goals are shared by fewer people?

·        Begin with the basics and break the rest up into smaller modules.

·        Never cover so much that your students become BRAIN DEAD!

·        Use games to break up a long class to revive students and refresh them on what they’ve learned.  Flash cards are simple to make up.  Give each student one point for each correct flash-card answer and give a prize to the one with the most points at the end of the game

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