Get back to the 70's
When I started work in adult learning it was back in the day you worried if a bulb would blow in the overhead projector, you carried a crate of ‘stuff’ into the training room and flip chart under your arm, so I see myself as a traditional trainer. I believed totally in formal learning and the need for me and my trainers in my company was perpetuated and grown by my immovable belief. I saw 70:20:10 as a threat to all I loved; the smell of the felt tip pens, being the ‘sage on stage’ and teaching, teaching, teaching!
What I didn’t understand was that I was part of a long
learning chain. My learning chain was one that started with a conversation with
someone who perceives there is a need and ends up with improvements being made
by the person who has to do the job. All the way through the process the person
who is least involved is the individual who has to make the changes to their
behaviour or learn new skills. As we all know a chain is only as strong as its
weakest link ….. Was I the weakest link?
I would like to think not but in the chain inevitably there was a weak
link. It might have been in understanding the goal, having a crystal clear
objective, in doing the needs analysis
or in the instructional design. When you opt for formal training the learning
chain is longer than it has to be in my opinion. It is as if the
‘solutionising’ has been done to the leaner, not for them.
That is quite rude and I don’t mean it to be, in fact there
are so many L&D departments who make this work for them and they engage
their learners and care for them more than you would believe possible. What I
am coming out in support of is the 70 in the 70:20:10 model and as an old
fashioned talk and chalk trainer I never expected to do that. But the reason I am
now an advocate of the model is that it
shortens the learning chain and illuminates the weakest link.
Reflect back to ancient history when apprenticeships were
the norm, (400’s to 1400’s) were widely used training practices. The solution
for learning was all about the relationship between the expert and the learner.
Then as now an apprentice has a long term goal and the apprentice learns on the
job. This is a much shorter chain, with
less opportunity for misinterpretation of the outcome required and immediate
assessment by the SME.
During the 1800’s in the industrial revolution fast
up skilling became necessary to build the workforce as quickly as possible.
Workers moved from the agricultural skills they had seen used all their lives
to unknown skills. This started the
practice of Vestibule training where rooms were set up with all the machinery
found on the factory floor and an SME would put the trainees through their
paces. This was also known as ‘Near the
Job Training’. This was a slightly longer learning chain and relied on the SME
being able to recreate on the job conditions but gave them the benefit of not
interrupting the productivity.
Skip forward to the 1940’s and Job Instruction Training. Step by step (structured) on the job
training method in which a trainer (1) prepares a trainee with an overview of
the job, its purpose, and the results desired, (2) demonstrates the task or the
skill to the trainee, (3) allows the trainee to mimic the demonstration on his
or her own, and (4) follows up to provide feedback and help[1] Again a short chain. The argument against JIT
is that originally it was used for manual work. My response would be that most
jobs require understanding and then there is a physical output of some kind. Even customer service has a physical
output so I am now firmly converted to the 70.Keep the chain as short as possible; don’t overcomplicate a learning process we pretty much had nailed back in 400 BC.
Rachel Kuftinoff
Learning Consultancy Director
Rachel Kuftinoff
Learning Consultancy Director
[1] Read
more:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job-instruction-training.html#ixzz471LSe5ik
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