The problems with training

Next time you attend a training session or event, see how many of these different learning styles the instructors or organizers take advantage of. As far as learning what your own learning styles are, there are online questionnaires that do a decent job of it. There are several academic institutions that study learning styles.

 

Food / Location / Time

 

Just like throwing a good Friday night party, underneath all of this fancy planning are some basic logistics. If you have a bad location, with cramped, poorly lit rooms, with lots of background noise, it’s unlikely that any learning (or partying) will take place. A good location for a mid to large size event offers you rooms of different sizes, the opportunity to rent needed equipment, and nearby provisions for food or catering services. If you’re doing a smaller event, you may need to provide for all equipment and food needs on your own.

Food and location are often the most expensive parts of an event. It’s not uncommon for these two things to take up 50-70% of an event budget. Most attendees never even think about the costs of these things, but it’s the truth. The reason is that while great food and location won’t make your event (unless it’s a food or architecture conference), they will definitely break your event.

On locations: Depending on the size of your event, you can often find good deals at non-traditional conference spaces. The local museum, church, YMCA, or historical building may have large rooms or conference areas that are available. I think that while some logistics might be hard, the unique location creates a special experience for attendees. If your looking for many built in services, hotels, especially business class hotels, is the place to start. They often have package deals, and are prepared to rent you most of the services you need. However unlike non-traditional spaces, most hotel conference centers feel exactly the same (just like the hotels they are housed in). Even on the cheap, it’s often worth going somewhere other than the hallway conference room. Basic psychology: if you want something new and different to happen, increase the odds of people having open minds by changing their surroundings. When people are a little unfamiliar, a little off balance, they are also a bit more curious, and with the right leader/teacher, a bit more adventurous.

On food: There’s no easy way around this one. Food is just expensive. Some catering services to do offer good deals if you’re willing to sacrifice some level of pretension. Sandwiches or pasta buffet service can often be much cheaper than the alternatives, and most people don’t mind the gap in culinary class if the food is good: good sandwiches are better than mediocre entrees. Another tip is to always provide a variety of food and balance of junk food, which people crave, and fruits and healthy stuff, which people often ask for (but often don’t eat anyway – see what I mean about frivolous complaints?) Lastly, depending on your schedule, make caffeine easily available. At Microsoft we had the budget for portable latte carts in the conference area (Being in the Seattle area, coffee addiction headquarters, this is sort of expected at things that start early).

On time: There are two schools of thought on using time. On the one hand, people are busy, are often attending on the company dime, and want as intense an experience as possible. They don’t want long breaks, or for things to sprawl out across many days. On the other hand, a good learning experience includes downtime, includes the opportunity to have chance encounters with other people or things, and takes the locale of the event into account as part of the experience. (This is why doing training at a space away from your office makes so much sense. People can’t even think about sneaking back to their offices to check their email or other non-urgent things).

I think the best advice is to make the schedule flexible. Provide detailed information about what will happen when, and then let people decide. If you’re doing it well, most people will opt in most of the time, for most of the things your doing. And for those that don’t like what you’re doing at a given time, you probably don’t want them hanging around complaining anyway.

 

Remove barriers to interaction

 

Most people don’t like to introduce themselves to others. Just because they want to meet people, doesn’t mean they will go out of their way, even at a conference, to say hello and start a conversation. This is doubly so for speakers and presenters. There is nothing more intimidating than a commanding speaker, who has just amazed an audience with his subject knowledge and speaking prowess, standing 5 feet away. Most people will run away, or watch as others step up and say hello (which speakers always appreciate).

As an organizer, you need to invest energy in creating an environment that makes interaction natural. Here’s some ideas;

• Use round tables, even in large conference rooms: We are trained not to interact much in classroom style (rows and columns) seating. But if you put round tables in a room, the dynamic changes. People will tend to have to look at each other, and to talk. Place some interesting objects on each table: lego, puzzles, rubic cubes, nerf toys. silly putty. Give people something to do that has nothing to do with what they are supposed to be doing. I guarantee you’ll find people chatting and talking with people they’ve never met before during all of the interstitial time between sessions. You might not be able to fit as many people, but it’s worth it. If you have one large room that is reused several times throughout the day, it’s a great candidate for this approach.
• Make the presenters stay for the day, and ask (or tell) them to introduce themselves to people. If your conference or event is focused on presenters, then they are, in many ways, the heart of your event. If they set the right tone by engaging in conversations with attendees, and inviting discussion, it will echo and amplify throughout the day. If they disappear, or hide in the corner, there will be an artificial separation between speakers and attendees, that defuses the potential energy of the conference. If you are paying the speaker to speak, it’s within your right to request that they participate in the day: they’re working for you.
• Make workshops, small discussion groups, based on submissions or assignments, part of the format. If possible, do this before, or as the first session of the conference. A workshop gives 10-12 people an intimate format to discuss an area of mutual interest and expertise. If it goes well, they will have formed relationships that can be built on through the rest of the conference. Running a good workshop is another essay altogether: facilitation is a tricky thing. Though much of advice above applies well to workshops, not just events.

 

Do one experiment in every conference

 

To learn and progress, you have to take risks. If you always use the same formats, the same speakers, the same rules, you are guaranteed to have the same outcomes. If you’re risk adverse, or feel pressure from the sponsors not to do anything crazy, pick one area of the conference to try something new. Identify this up front, and sequester the risk. It’s a basic technique for driving innovation: if you create a sandbox you allow yourself to be creative without fear of ruining everything else. You can even make it public knowledge that you’re doing something experimental. Sometimes this will invite a different kind of participation from students.

 

Cheat when necessary

 

When you are worried about an idea or activity working, do not hesitate to plant shills. Hand pick people who will volunteer to ask the right question at the right time, who will sign up to participate in a new session format, or strike up a conversation at a certain table at a certain time. This is not wrong or disingenuous, it’s just setting the right tone. Once people see someone else demonstrating something, and see them rewarded for it (or minimally, completing the thing without getting laughed at or hit with tomatoes) others will often follow. It’s kind of like asking your friends to go out on the dance floor at your wedding. No big deal really, but what a difference it can make.

 

Collect feedback and use it with care

 

The first time people see feedback on a presentation or an event, they’re often alarmed at how critical and one sided people can be. I don’t know if it’s ever been proven, but I’ d bet a dozen real NYC bagels that people are more apt to respond to a self selecting survey if they have a complaint, than if they have a compliment. Not sure why it is, or if I’m just being cynical, but from doing this for several years I’m convinced it’s true. (Note: the opposite is true for what people will say to your face. Guess this makes me even more cynical).

What’s important then is to collect feedback regularly, and make comparisons year to year, from event to event. Once you have a baseline for what a good event is like, future feedback becomes useful, regardless of how biased it is, because you now have a basis for comparisons. The surveys themselves tend to be what you make of them. If you only have likert scales, you’re going to miss lots of great suggestions and ideas. If you ask biased, leading or negative questions, you’ll get biased, led or negative answers.

More valuable that the open surveys might be a group of trusted representatives that you ask to give you candid and direct feedback throughout the conference. Maybe you pick them randomly, or perhaps you choose people you know and trust to give you honest information. Either way, invite them to chat with you, or to send you their own personal feedback. Share with them your goals for the event, and ask them to comment on how each session they participated in lived up to them.

 

 

Literature

 

1. The problems with training (and what to do about it) Электронный ресурс] / Ресурс Федерации Интернет – образования. М., 2012. – Режим доступа: http://scottberkun.com/essays/29-the-problems-with-training/
2. [Электронный ресурс] / Режим доступа:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_problems_of_professional_training_on_the_teaching_effectiveness_of_teachers_in_secondary_schools_in_Delta_State