Practicing listening to be a better instructor

Daniel Bixby's article in the April T + D, titled Shut Up and Teach! really activated my former teacher-self. In his article Bixby offers lists (and who doesn't like easy to read lists?) of strategies for trainers to employ with the goal of getting us to stop talking so much (and by extension - purporting ourselves to be THE experts in the room) and listen more to our participants. While I would rate his article as helpful in its own way, I can't help but feel that T + D's audience would have been better off with a richer or deeper look at the theory or pedagogy behind even his first three points.

It is into this void I step.

Without risking a copyright infraction I'll simply list Bixby's first three points under his heading "Listen for better learning" -

1. What do they already know?
2. How do they learn?
3. What did they learn?

Again, with Bixby's point being that we should "shut up" every once in a while and let the participants do some talking, I wanted to extend his thoughts by adding some good old fashioned educational pedagogy to the mix. To his first point - this is the piece that educators call 'activating prior knowledge.' One of the tenents of adult learning theory is that all adult learners come to the table with a wealth of life experiences. With the goal of getting participants to think about what they bring with them to the learning event, and how they relate to the learning, these activities are appropriately named "warm-ups" in the world of pre-collegiate education. With an opportunity to warm-up the participant's mind, getting them thinking about what they've heard, how they've used certain knowledge, admitting to preconceptions or bias, etc., instructors can virtually eliminate the first few anxious moments of every session by focusing on what the audience knows best - themselves. And what better way to set the table for an interactive event than by getting people engaged and actively participating through sharing in the first few minutes? That seems like a two-birds-with-one-stone opportunity to me!

Another method that instructors or learning departments can employ is something I've used recently to great success - a pre-course self-assessment. I work with my training providers or vendors to establish measurable learning objectives and I send those objectives to our participants a week or so ahead of time asking them to complete a few tasks. First, they rate themselves, and their prior knowledge, against the objectives. Then I ask them to share experiences and current or expected projects with the instructor so the instructor has a wonderfully detailed heads-up for most of the class even before s/he walks in the door. We all know how much time is spent, on the fly, making adjustments to content and pacing based on what we learn from the participants in those first few hours. With this process in place that guessing game becomes a thing of the past and we all hit the ground running.

All of this, of course, works hand in hand with the fundamental but critical step of linking new knowledge with prior knowledge, building new competencies into existing schema. By assimilating new information into our existing schema, or altering our way of thinking by accommodating new information into new schema, we expand our competencies and make ourselves more productive, well-rounded, and attractive to our organization. It is through the activation of prior knowledge that this transformation begins.

Bixby's next point, "How do they learn?", sent me immediately back to my old texts on Differentiated Instruction. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the art of being able to differentiate instruction, based upon the needs of a diverse audience, is what separates your "everyday" teachers with master teachers. We've all been there - standing in front of 10 or 50 very different people where some are with you, some are bored with your middle of the road style, and some are so confused you can see the glaze in their eyes. Bixby's intent is to encourage us, as leaders of any learning opportunity, to take time out to listen to those participants in order to learn what makes them tick, how they are assimilating or accommodating, and perhaps what we might need to change on the fly to make our session better suited to the audience. I've been around plenty of sessions labeled "fundamental" where experts sign up and vice versa where novices filter into an advanced conversation. We could just stomp our feet and ask them to leave, or we might need to adjust our expectations and differentiate our instruction to bring those different thinkers along for the ride.

This is, of course, extremely difficult to do. It's tough enough for teachers who see the same students day after day for 10 months. If you are leading a 60 minute conference presentation it's an almost impossible task. However, with a firm grasp of adult learning principles, you can set yourself up for a greater likelihood of success. By paying attention to the life experiences your audience are likely to bring with them, and tying the content or new information into those experiences, you're more prone to make the connections between old and new information necessary to succeed. Another way to focus on adults as learners is to take a moment to poll them to find out what they do and match the content to those answers. Making specific references to how the content relates to their work keeps the adult learner engaged and provides a scaffold for that information to be assimilated into the already existing schema of their work. Finally, respecting the adult learner, and showing them that by listening you care about their growth, will provide a sound foundation for a positive experience for all.

The final point of "What did they learn?" is near and dear to me. I've always been interested in assessment and what I've found since coming over from education is that neither side really has it all right. Educators are all over assessment, both summative and formative, but prior to stepping into a pseudo-corporate environment I'd never heard of Kirkpatrick, and I really wish I had. With education being stuck in the industrial-era, the mindset is "we teach, you learn, I test if you've learned, you pass or fail." I think educators could learn a lot from Kirkpatrick and the business community's efforts to evaluate. The goal is not to pass or fail, the goal is to grow everyone and through periodic evaluation and constant feedback this is possible.

Where business could stand to learn a few things is through the concept of continual learning. I've been so frustrated in my current role as I fight against the mindset of "training" as a discrete event. I recently brought up the idea of setting up a periodic check-in with participants from a successful, and expensive, training course. My thought was - our organization paid quite a bit to have 30+ folks attend this class but once it was over they were sent on their merry way. It's a rare occurrence to hear of a supervisor ask his or her staff member to report out on learning and I've never heard of anyone having to detail how they'll incorporate their learning into their work. If the standard was more in line with the continual learning mindset present in education, periodically asking participants to recall what they learned and how they're making use of their new competencies, the return on investment would be far easier to measure.

Bixby's point of spending time listening, while still in the learning event, is critical to starting this process. Creating a baseline of what participants are learning, in real time, allows for much richer follow-up opportunities while it allows for live adjustments to be made in the delivery. In terms supervisors can easily understand, it's much more cost-effective to be able to fix the product before final delivery rather than learn of problems after it's been shipped. A learning opportunity works the same way. I'd much rather learn that something isn't clicking as it happens rather than wait until I can read my level 2 evaluations or hear back from supervisors on a level 3 evaluation (if that ever occurs).

In conclusion, there's much to add to this conversation Bixby started but hopefully I've expanded into some relevant and useful topics. There's much more to be learned, and putting this into practice is extremely difficult as it expects learning leaders to be flexible and open to suggestion - but those are topics Bixby touches on later in his article and too much to go into here...