Teaching tips for training: Catch ‘em all! - Part II
By Nikki Rubinstein & Dr Christina Tuke Flanders
Foreword by Dr Christina Tuke Flanders:
In last week’s blog post Nikki shared her experience of using Ice Breaker techniques to warm up participants so they are primed to learn. She also explained how giving your training participants the ‘Big Picture’ of your training can orientate participants to the overall objective of your training.
This week Nikki will explain:
- The importance of using Learning Objectives so participants clearly know what you want them to learn and why.
- How signposting throughout your training can keep your participants engaged in the entire training process
- And how to ‘scaffold’ learning so your participants can easily digest the learning objectives
Learning Objectives
It can be really hard to take on new information if you don’t know why you’re doing it! What are the objectives for the class and what steps do you need to go through to meet these objectives? For example, learning about the use of different brackets without any context may feel a bit useless - why do I need to know this? In contrast, if you know that the goal is to be able to analyse your data with a programming language, then learning the basic syntax of that programming language is useful.
It’s important that you convey to students the reasoning behind what they are learning and why. If you give them an overall ‘road map’ of what will be covered and how it relates to the end goal, students will be more likely to attend to and engage with your lesson.
Signposting
The big picture is not only important at the beginning of a class, but throughout the class as well. Keep reminding students where you are located along the road map of your training in order to maintain focus and motivation. Referring back to the big picture in this way is called signposting. This will help with the training pacing, as well as maintaining momentum.
Scaffolding
Imagine being dropped in the middle of the ocean with some scuba diving gear and no scuba diving knowledge. Literally being dropped in the deep end! Expecting you to be able to scuba dive is ridiculous. However, if you went through a series of lessons to receive your certification, the dive may be a little more achievable.
Be careful that you don’t drop your students in the deep end - it will make your participants feel like a fish out of water! Don’t jump straight to teaching the learning objectives. It is important to start at your student’s current knowledge base and slowly build up their knowledge from there. This concept is called scaffolding and was first described by Lev Vygotsky. By breaking large tasks into small, more manageable tasks, students can build on their current knowledge base to learn new concepts.
Thanks Nikki. Stay tuned for next week’s blog post on: The power of using Peer Learning and Problem Based Learning.
