This year I have delivered more face-to-face workshops than I have done since I was a fledgling trainer back in the late 1970s running development programmes for American Express managers. True, these are short workshops, whereas way back then every course lasted a week and involved a stay in a luxurious hotel in an exotic city location, but the dynamics haven't changed all that much. I know how ironic all this must seem when you consider that the workshops I deliver relate to the use of new learning technologies, but that's the situation I find myself in and I'm reasonably comfortable with the irony. Donald Clark may be bored with F2F apologists but, in most cases, I would stand by the decision to run these workshops face-to-face, even if these decisions were usually made by others. I'm going to come back to why I feel face-to-face is sometimes the right choice in another post; for now, I'd like to focus on the effort involved.
Basically, I'm at last beginning to respect the work put in by teachers and to understand the rationale behind their short hours and long holidays. There are not many jobs in which you have to perform in front of a new audience every day; in which you have to earn respect from unfamiliar faces; in which you put yourself on the line through the use of feedback forms; in which you frequently have to cope with demotivated, resentful or dominating individuals without losing your temper; in which you can't tune out for a second. And before you say that surely this depends on the style of training that you deliver, then I'd maintain that it doesn't matter one jot whether you're the 'sage on the stage' or the 'guide on the side', it's still hard. In fact I'd probably argue that non-directive, discovery-orientated and exploratory strategies are much more tiring and stressful to facilitate because you have so much less control over outcomes. Someone delivering a lecture knows pretty well exactly what they are going to say, how long this will take and what the results are likely to be.
Trainers may not always do a good job: they may irritate or patronise, they may hog the attention, they may insist on your participation in embarrassing group activities. But they have had the courage to put themselves out there and to risk the consequences. Not everyone can say that.
As expected - I'm not convinced. I don't see trainers as brave pioneers putting their neck on the line week in week out. Trainers, in my experience, are often in love with 'performance' and relish the attention. This is why training so often seems like amateur dramatics. The staple 'breakout' technique of groups, with chosen chairs (extroverts), discussions, feedback (chair's opinions), flipchart pages on walls and the broken promise of 'we'll get back to you with these results', is all too common. The real problem is that this approach IS hard work for the trainers but a lazy approach to 'learning'. It's easy to sit back and watch, contribute half-heartedly to forced, and often hokey, interactions. there's a lot of truth in the statement that kids go to school to watch teachers work. It should be the other way round.
ReplyDeleteYes, Training is hard work, but I don't think that should be an arbiter of whether it's good Training. I certainly feel physically and mentally tired at the end of a days Training. Done right it’s hard work, monitoring the class, constantly making those "in flight" adjustments that'll help the delegates learn and understand, being the subject expert that can answer all questions, or really “get back to them” at the end of the session. This is all hard work if done well, but the problem, as I see it, is that it’s also hard work even if done badly. It’s not enough to say “if you’re not tired at the end of the Training day you’re not doing it right”. However it is right to say its hard work, but that hard work has to be directed to the right outcome.
ReplyDeletedone the whole gammet - school teacher, trainer, online facilitator, online course author, online trainer - all different methods to attack a set of learning objectives - and i think the key thing is not the delivery method but the context. if the context is 'magnetically attractive' to learning it will work almost whatever you do - for example even a bad teacher can get students working when there's the key motivator of GCSE's looming. I think context also explains why some very good face2face training often scores negative comments - for example in teacher professional development - the school may have picked the course or the course may be covering the right topic but at the wrong level (so negative context).
ReplyDeleteIn the classroom with students a teacher is more in control of context (has time on their side to manage context).
Context could also explain why online training still suffers negative comments - many peoples exposure to it is under conscription to learn some new company protocol or other. Whereas i've seen lots of first hand real positive experiences in 'self-selected' online training.
My issues with face2face are the old chestnuts: travel, expense, time, lack of flexibility, reduced ability to personalise.
I'm also dissappointed in the number of negative comments flying around about the ineffectiveness of eLearning (can't believe we are still hearing this) but to me its like saying electricity is rubbish because someone bought a bad kettle.