The only way to build confidence is to practise and get feedback

Over the past couple of years I've been making quite a play on the need to design formal learning interventions so that they focus on inspiring and confidence building and not on dumping knowledge. In my experience of talking to 100s of trainers, the typical workplace intervention consists of 75% theory and 25% practice. This has two effects:

1. Learners are overwhelmed with new knowledge that they cannot hope to retain.
2. Learners have nowhere near enough time to develop confidence in applying new knowledge and skills, meaning they often leave the course in a state of 'conscious incompetence'.

Well, there's one thing saying that training should be mainly about supported practice, it's another doing it. Although I've been trying to apply this principle for many years now, I've never felt that I've gone far enough - like many so-called 'experts' I can't stop finding things to say and practical work gets squeezed. This week I've had an opportunity to go the whole way, as I've been working for two days with a group of experienced trainers looking to build their skills in facilitating within a virtual classroom. Historically a course like this would have contained one main practical exercise, conducted only once a whole load of new concepts and principles had been introduced. It didn't work. Trainers know quite a lot about facilitation, but they're often extremely anxious about using these skills within the unfamiliar environment of a web conferencing package.

So, here's how it went this week:

• A quick introduction to and discussion of the principles of live online learning and a look at the basics of the tool, in this case WebEx. At this point I applied the principle: 'provide only as much knowledge as is needed to allow learners to practise and no more'.
• A first practical session conducted in groups of three. Each group designed a short session about a topic related to the use of virtual classrooms, then ran it and got feedback from the rest of the participants.
• I ran another virtual classroom session on using audio, video, graphics and text online.
• Again in groups of three, they designed and ran a second online session, this time restricted to the use of images and audio (to get them out of the 'designing with text' habit).
• I ran another session on using interactivity in virtual classrooms.
• Once again in their groups, they designed and ran a third session, about other important aspects of the use of virtual classrooms. The idea was that much of the content would be researched and presented by the students themselves. This worked perfectly.
• And finally, they individually designed and ran a fourth session, this time on a topic of their choice.

I reckon 80% at least of the course time involved them practising. As a result, all participants reported that they felt completely confident of their ability to go straight out and run a real session.

Most of the time I had very little to do. Much of the feedback was provided on a peer-to-peer basis. As a result I reckon this course could easily have been run on a very large scale basis, with many hundreds if not thousands of students (online, of course, not in one physical space).

I'm pleased to report that the model worked, at least for me and for this group. No-one said they felt short-changed by the fact they weren't exposed to mountains of theory. Everyone felt they were busy and engaged from start to finish. This will be my plan for any future skills-based course.