CHAPTER 8

How Can You Address Training Challenges?

With all the cognitive research, the emphasis on neuroscience, and solutions in general, there shouldn’t be any challenges to training. Science has fixed everything that might have been broken. Right? Not quite. This is the time as a facilitator when you may really need to be creative and artful!

Challenges still exist in the field of training. Besides that, many in the profession have not implemented what they’ve learned—not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know the facts or they may not know how to change. Many may still be operating under old myths, such as “people have different learning styles” or “schools kill creativity.”

The first step is to recognize that there is a challenge. The profession is changing; it’s important to understand why it’s changing and how to prepare for the changes. Certainly understanding the science of training is a start, but with that comes challenges, both old and new, and knowing how to address them.

The Multitasking Muddle

Many people refuse to believe it, but the brain cannot attend to two attention-rich stimuli simultaneously. Multitasking doesn’t work. A 2000 study led by Moshe Naveh-Benjamin, a psychology researcher at the University of Missouri, helps us understand what this means for trainers. The researchers learned that there were important differences between the encoding and retrieval activities involved in processing information created when multitasking. Encoding requires more attention than retrieval, which means that lack of focus or undivided attention during the encoding (intake) phase of learning significantly inhibits memory.

Encoding is the first of three memory stages, followed by storage and retrieval. The research implies that the quantity and quality of our memory is influenced by multitasking. In another study, a team led by Karin Foerde—a research scientist from New York University who specializes in cognitive neuroscience, learning, memory, and decision making—discovered that memories acquired when multitasking use the striatum (Foerde, Knowlton, and Poldrack 2006). Unfortunately this region of the brain is poorly suited to long-term memory and understanding, which means that learning that happens during multitasking can’t be generalized and probably can’t be recalled when needed. Even if it can be recalled, there is doubt that the content could be understood.

The bottom line is that learning that happens while multitasking cannot be generalized and does not result in understanding or the ability to recall when needed.

Continuous Partial Attention

Linda Stone (2008), former Microsoft vice president who became an educator and speaker, coined the term continuous partial attention to describe how many people use attention today. The term goes beyond multitasking, referring to a person’s desire to connect and be connected at all times. This is the reason people scan their current situation for the best place to be connected at any given moment.

People pay continuous partial attention because they do not want to miss anything. This creates an artificial sense of continuous crisis, which puts us in a constant place of high alert. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multitasking.

 

 

While this behavior can be useful on occasion, Stone warns that it eventually increases stress and prevents people from being able to effectively reflect, make decisions, and think creatively. Technology contributes to the stress and even a sense of being unfulfilled in the always-on world we live in. We focus on managing our time, but the real opportunity is to focus on how we manage our attention.

Whether you call it multitasking or continuous partial attention, the message for trainers is that more and more multitasking and attention studies demonstrate the importance and value of grabbing and holding your learners’ attention. Let’s consider how to do this.

Can I Grab Your Attention?

A multipart experiment studied the effects of novelty on the brain (Bunzeck and Duzel 2006). In the first part, participants were shown images of different scenes and familiar and unfamiliar faces. Some of the images were unusual, appearing rarely. Others contained negative emotional content, such as an angry face or a car accident. The subjects showed increased production of dopamine when they saw new images, but not the unusual or emotional ones. You’ve probably heard of dopamine—it’s the chemical that controls our reward and pleasure centers.

Then the experiment was repeated, with some of the images being more or less familiar. In this segment of the study, only brand-new information caused robust activity in the brain, stimulating the production of dopamine.

The third segment of the experiment focused on testing the participants’ memory on the new, familiar, and very familiar images. This segment was conducted two more times—20 minutes after viewing and a day later. Subjects performed best when new information was combined with familiar information. Surprisingly, even the familiar information was easier to remember when it was learned in conjunction with new facts. While novelty and tapping into prior knowledge may seem contradictory, they are both parts of learning. Novelty helps the brain initially attend to a stimulus; once the novelty is acknowledged, the brain makes connections so the content can take root.

This tells us that the brain needs to make connections, but it also likes things that are new and unique. Our brain is actually quite fickle; it quickly begins to recognize that the stimulus is not new and, through a process called habituation, the idea becomes less exciting. When we see something new, we think it could reward us in some way. This expectation motivates us to explore our environment for rewards. Once the stimulus becomes familiar, it has no reward associated with it and so it loses its prestige. As a result, only new objects increase our levels of dopamine (Duzel 2006).

So tapping into prior knowledge and introducing “novelty” are two powerful strategies to gain attention. This suggests that:

• You should learn as much as you can about your participants’ experiences and expertise. Certainly surveys work, but have you thought of speaking with their supervisors? Have you ever tweeted a simple assessment question? Have you visited your participants’ workplace? Or have you asked them an unusual question before the session, such as “What can you contribute to our discussion?” or “What’s your greatest fear about this class?” or “What do you think your boss wants you to bring back to the workplace?”

• How about novelty? In her book Creative Training, Becky Pike Pluth (2016) tells a story of placing an industrial sized roll of bathroom tissue on the front table and asking each participant to take “as much as they need,” with no further instruction. She later uses it as a recall mechanism to review the content.

How Can I Hold Your Attention?

So how can you hold someone’s attention and manage it? While we generally think that focus is good—in fact, scanning is often better (Jonassen and Grabowski 1993). It may seem counterintuitive, but the human brain is more proficient at noticing detail by scanning rather than by focusing intently. The brain evolved this way to enhance our probability of survival.

We exhaust our neurons if there is a constant demand on the same ones for a long period of time. So what can you do to help your learners attend to new concepts? Two things:

• Instead of requiring learners to “pay attention,” you can offer ways to look at something from various perspectives. How about from their boss’s perspective? Or the customer’s perspective? Or how about finding the most creative, the most ideal, or the most realistic?

• Instead of expecting learners to sit in one place, ask them to move around so that they can see details (Zull 2002). Have participants form a pair with someone at a different table, or plan a gallery walk after small groups brainstorm ideas on flipcharts.

Be aware of what is involved when learners shift their attention from one topic to another. Shifting attention requires three discreet brain processes:

• Disengaging or concluding the current topic and content.

• Moving from the present content and preparing to switch to new information.

• Re-engaging or initiating a new topic.

Each process activates different parts of the brain and engages working memory. Richard Wright and Lawrence Ward’s (2008) award-winning book Orienting of Attention shows us that this process takes time and is energy depleting.

When you use these shifts in your classroom or asynchronous learning event, you must allow learners enough time to make the switch effectively and efficiently (Wright and Ward 2008). This is equally true if you have a group of “task-switching” learners who are eating up neuron energy by shifting from the discussion to their smartphone to the PowerPoint slide and back to a text.

 

 

So, back to your participants who truly believe they can multitask—research supports that our brains cannot multitask. When you think you are multitasking, you are really only task-switching, which is energy draining. To prevent task-switching, find ways to grab and hold your learners’ attention.

Changing Mindsets and Attitudes

What is a mindset, why is it important, and what can we do for our learners? According to Peter Senge (2006), mental models are conceptual frameworks consisting of generalizations and assumptions from which we understand the world and take action in it. We all have mental models that explain our thought process about how something works in the real world. They represent our surrounding world and our perception about our own behaviors, beliefs, and the consequences. Within that mental model we develop mindsets and attitudes about its value and effectiveness. This mindset influences our choice of behavioral strategies, and our attitudes toward the mental model support the strategies we create for how to react in specific situations. This is a very brief overview of a complex topic, but you get the idea: What we believe today is based on our past experiences. It may or may not be accurate. Often we have not examined our mindsets in any depth, but a strong and wrong mindset can interfere with learning (Dweck 2008).

Researchers haven’t figured it all out and there are plenty of debates, but you will know when you are working with learners whose mindsets, beliefs, and attitudes collide with the data. No matter how much data you present, your learners will insist that their way is better. Can you change their minds? Can you persuade them?

Visuals

Numerous studies demonstrate the persuasive power of visuals. Are they as powerful as Ruth Clark tells us? The brain has an extraordinary capacity to remember images. Memory experiments with pictures have shown that people can recall seeing hundreds, even thousands, of pictures (Standing, Conezio, and Haber 1970). Some believe that pictures may operate as “chunks.” Because the brain can hold only a few chunks in working memory at one time, visuals incorporate more details and help the brain grasp and expand the scope of those chunks. Our visual processes have evolved over millions of years, making the brain highly efficient (Medina 2008). So yes, they are effective and persuasive.

One study at Dartmouth University showed the persuasive power of visuals by using highly emotional topics (the war in Iraq and unemployment, for example) to convince individuals to change their minds. The researchers:

1. made the case using words

2. added flattering comments, such as, “You’re a reasonable person”

3. presented information in the form of charts and graphs.

Option three was most effective. The researchers reasoned it was because the brain is more likely to see visuals as “true,” but words as “debatable” (Nyhan et al. 2011). Visuals work best because that’s how the brain prefers to receive information. More of our brain is devoted to visual processing than to verbal processing.

Visuals aren’t only good for persuading, they are also good for locking in learning. If your learners need to change their mindset and remember why, use graphs, images, and tangible examples. In another experiment, researchers tested subjects’ visual and auditory memory three times after an initial learning event (same-day, next-day, and a week later). In all three tests, learners remembered significantly more of what they saw than what they heard (Bigelow and Poremba 2014).

What About the Other Senses?

“Multimodal” or “multisensory” learning is also effective for changing mindsets, according to several studies. In one study, participants were trained for five days on a task that had either congruent audiovisual stimuli, incongruent audiovisual stimuli, or only visual stimuli. The results showed that training with congruent audiovisual stimuli resulted in significantly better results than training with incongruent audiovisual stimuli or with only visual stimuli (Kim, Seitz, and Shams 2008). I’m not sure about you, but this gives me rationale to add pictures to my PowerPoint slides!

How Can You Help Your Learners?

Attitudes are formed or changed during a training session. Sometimes the differences are obvious, sometimes not. But how does this change take place? Is it the change caused by the content or the activities or the other participants? The answer is, of course, all three. A mindset may be difficult to measure, define, and explain, even so, it’s important for transfer of skills and knowledge. Facilitators must consider what they can do to support their learners.

In previous books I’ve written that we can’t train or change attitudes and mindsets, but we can influence them. During these times it’s important to remember that our job also consists of coaching and mentoring our learners. It starts with building a foundation of trust and truly recognizing that we require permission from learners to help in this area. We also need to recognize that we can’t predict the outcome. Carol Dweck’s (2008) research describes various mindsets and reactions to them. Consider these ideas if you need to influence your learners’ mindsets, refocus their attitudes, or help edit their “story”:

• Lay a foundation of trust.

• Be authentic and consistent.

• Maintain a positive classroom setting.

• Listen, listen, listen—ask questions and listen some more.

• Demonstrate the benefits of changing.

• Use visuals and graphics to make the point.

• Design experiential learning activities, allowing enough time to process what happened, determine what it means, and identify what learners will do differently as a result.

• Use role plays, especially reversed roles to explore positions from a different perspective.

• Conduct self-assessments to help participants understand their priorities or values.

• Encourage journaling and schedule reflection time.

• Allow for spacing, as discussed in chapters 2 and 3.

• Create various small groups to provide a variety of attitudes and thoughts.

• Encourage discussion and ways that learners can acknowledge what a change could mean.

• Plan for follow up, such as making an appointment for a discussion, helping establish reminders, or assigning accountability partners.

Do you face a mindset challenge? Use a variety of visuals, engage participants in discussion, and use experiential learning that allows learners enough time to process what they learned, why it’s important, and what they will do as a result. Mindsets are often invisible, below the awareness level. They extend beyond the body in the classroom and the hours in learning. Encourage participants to surface, explore, discuss, and reconsider their mindsets. It’s your job.

Dealing With Disruptive Participants

Related to changing mindsets is addressing difficult participants, who may act like dominators, comedians, attackers, or deserters. Begin by ignoring the behavior. If the behavior is disruptive to others, stop it, but keep your cool; don’t take it personally.

Many people have written books about how to manage difficult participants. The following strategies will help you manage them:

• Stop talking until the behavior ends.

• Use nonverbal cues such as talking between two people who are having a side conversation or holding up your hand.

• Refer to the ground rules if appropriate.

• Directly ask for the behavior to stop or change.

• Take a break.

• Discuss the behavior with the individual at a break.

• Continue to respect the individual; consider that perhaps he does not know he is being disruptive.

• Keep the individual involved since you don’t want her to disengage.

• Maintain the involvement of the rest of the group. They want you to succeed and will judge how you handle the situation.

Relying on Subject Matter Experts

People think that because they are experts on a topic they can train others to acquire the same knowledge. Excellent trainers invest a huge amount of time and energy in preparing—even when they know the content well. Subject matter experts (SMEs) who are excellent at what they do may be rewarded with the opportunity to show others how to do what they do so well. But just because they are experts in a topic, it does not necessarily mean that they are experts in training others about the concepts. Just like any profession, training has its own expert techniques and processes that ensure that learners assimilate the content.

SMEs can actually be harmful to learners because they know too much. They are training because they have deep content knowledge and experience, which has earned them credibility. The risk is that people at this level may have forgotten what it was like to be a beginner. They will be tempted to deliver too much content and too many details. They will want to lecture at the learners. How do you ensure that your SMEs will be successful?

Chuck Hodell (2013) recommends that SME selection should be based on content and noncontent criteria.

• In the content portion, consider the relevance, depth, timeliness, location, and training or teaching experience.

• In the noncontent portion, consider communication ability, writing ability, and sociability.

Before the training session help them out by providing guidance; experts and leaders can be trained to be better teachers and coaches (Zsambok et al. 1997). You can begin by providing tools, training, and support. It could take the form of a short handout or booklet of tips and tools for the nontrainer. You could also develop a short checklist to:

• Help them remember what it was like when they first learned the subject they have now mastered.

• Clarify the exact content, objectives, and expected results.

• Review the material to ensure they are not trying to squeeze too much content in too short of time.

• Think about how to be effective, such as:

o arriving early

o establishing a rapport with learners

o using activities instead of lecture

o involving your learners

o scheduling a practice session.

Hodell suggests several best practices, including showing appreciation, providing clear guidelines for roles and responsibilities, making SMEs part of the design team, attending to the SMEs’ needs, and celebrating project milestones.

Few strategic relationships are more important than the one you create with your SMEs. Anecdotal data suggest training conducted by SMEs can be more effective than that facilitated by professional trainers. I predict this is the direction our organizations need to move; supervisors and managers will soon need to spend more of their time in a teaching and coaching role. If that is the case, we must start getting ready now.

What We Know for Sure

Science tells us that we can rely on several proven facts:

• Information and stimulation overload are here to stay.

• It is important to:

o Manage attention shifts, allowing learners sufficient time and space to make the shift.

o Utilize novelty and surprise while allowing learners to make connections with existing knowledge.

o Help learners apply attention management strategies back on the job.

o Call attention to productivity-sapping practices, such as multitasking and continuous partial attention.

• Learning as much as possible about the participants before you train them gives you the flexibility to customize a learning event that taps into the patterns in learners’ brains.

• The brain cannot multitask.

• Task-switching requires a great deal of energy and does not allow input to go to the most efficient part of the brain for later recall.

• Patterns in the brain are useful to accelerate learning by providing a “filing system” for new content. However, the prior experiences and beliefs of a learner that form these patterns can also create mindsets that interfere with learning.

• SMEs are a valuable resource to learners.

The Art Part

Your success depends upon how well you adapt to the situation and your learners’ needs. Tap into some of these ideas to help your learners grow, to develop yourself, and to add your personal creative touch.

Manage attention. If you provide learners with awareness and skills training in attention management, it could make a huge difference in how people learn to learn. Think of how you could make that happen.

Free your creativity. Go through a novelty catalog, such as Oriental Trading. Set your creativity free and think of ways that you can add interest to your learning event—think about new ways to keep learners focused. For example, if you are teaching change management skills, the theme could be “staying afloat,” symbolized by little yellow ducks. You could purchase yellow duck pads of paper, erasers, pencil toppers, candy, keychains, or baseball caps.

Virtual needs novelty, too. If you are conducting a virtual session, surprise your learners by mailing them something to open during your virtual training. It could be a booklet, gizmo, or gadget you found at a dollar store or in a novelty catalog.

Smartphone smarts. They’ll have them out anyway, so use your participants’ smartphones, tablets, and computers to search for data or concepts during your training events. How? Try these:

• Use Poll Everywhere to take minute surveys, brainstorm, or vote.

• Ask them to research content.

• Have them look for answers.

• Suggest they tweet comments that are pertinent to their learning.

SME toolbox. Build a useful toolkit for your SMEs, including things such as a list of acronym meanings, a simple ADDIE flowchart, a list of active learning methods and when to use them, training dos and don’ts, index cards with activities that can be used in various situations, a room set-up diagram, and a list of additional resources.

Art and Science Questions You Might Ask

These questions provide potential challenges for your personal growth and development:

• How can you actively incorporate attention management strategies during learning design?

• How can you ensure that learners’ self-esteem remains intact while eliminating multitasking?

• Can you minimize the load placed on working memory by limiting distractions?

• How can you help learners apply attention management strategies?

• How can you explain how multitasking and continuous partial attention hurt our ability to learn?

• How can you honor the need for flexibility so participants can focus on tasks without interruption?

• Are your visuals relevant and stimulating?

• How skilled are you in addressing mindsets and attitudes?

• What tools are in your toolbox to address participant disruptions?

• How can you best support your SMEs?

How Can You Address Training Challenges?

Science tells us emphatically that the human brain cannot multitask. Yet one of the biggest challenges we face is participants who check their devices an average of 74 times per day. A Time magazine article (2015) states that Americans collectively check their smartphones eight billion times per day. While we can establish ground rules that would prevent this behavior, it probably wouldn’t work anyway. So, what can you do? Keep learners busy. We know that movement and discussion enhance learning, so use that to your advantage. Constantly seek out creative and interesting ways to grab and maintain learners’ attention, and incorporate those when you train.

No matter what is happening with technology, we still have strong mindsets and disruptive participants to address. SMEs can be extremely beneficial if we invest the time upfront to ensure that they are successful.

Science hasn’t solved all our challenges and never will. Cognitive science has, however, provided proven research that can make our jobs easier. We can address many training challenges by implementing the resulting best practices.

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