Stressing Interaction in a Sit-and-Listen World

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about interaction recently, after reading Hadiya Nuriddin’s piece, “Building the Right Interaction” (registration required) in March’s T+D Magazine. I’ve been considering this topic so much because it’s one of my most daunting challenges at the moment. It's well known that incorporating interactive exercises in learning events increases both learner attentiveness and retention. Wait, sorry, I'll take that back. It's well known by instructional designers, educationalists, learning professionals and the like that providing opportunities for participants to interact with one another, with the content, and with the instructor all have positive benefits. The issue in my environment is that quite infrequently do we have instructional designers, educationalists, or learning professionals providing our learning opportunities. When dealing with high tech, specialized or restricted access topics it is often necessary to locate a vendor or presenter who is beyond reproach in terms of subject matter expertise but lacking in pedagogical understanding. This inevitably leads to a disconnect between the quality of the content and the quality of the delivery.

The audience, I believe, has everything to do with the design of a learning event. In my environment our audiences have been drilled into thinking that sitting passively, absorbing as much as possible from whatever expert happens to be standing in front of them, then regurgitating portions of it later is entirely acceptable. Not only has this process been acceptable, they've all been crowned as the best of the best “sit-and-listeners” so we begin to understand why a different tact might not be encouraged.

Prior to my taking on my position as administrator for high-tech training in my organization there was no one to question the effectiveness or pedagogical appropriateness of the training being provided. We were at the mercy of the expert, regardless of that person's ability, or lack thereof, to design an effective learning event. But (cue the trumpets), now I find myself actively working with our training providers to encourage all sorts of new-fangled learning stuff. Like measurable learning objectives. No, really - the concept of a learning objective as something different than an instructor action is foreign to most of these vendors. Also, and finally returning to the point of this post, the concept of interaction is almost unheard of around these parts.

I've begun working with one of the larger training vendors we use to influence the level of interactive opportunities they provide in their courses. As you might imagine, they are somewhat reluctant to change. Abhorrent is a more appropriate term I think. At first I couldn't understand why an organization that provides an educational service wouldn't want to jump at the chance to positively modify their offerings. Then, I took off my education hat and put on the business hat and realized - why would they want to change what they do when, first of all, the status quo has always been just fine (thank you very much)... and second, modifications cost money! If they can get away with continuing to offer off-the-shelf courses, and these sit-and-listen participants are just fine with it, of course they'd want to do so.

Again, we come back to the audience. I'm noticing a circular trend here. What I need to do is try to affect the audience. To say the least, it’s difficult to convince someone who’s been rewarded for success in a particular environment that there is a need to change that environment. In the end the argument must be made for a shift away from just knowledge and into the skills and abilities portion of competency. It’s a fight worth having.