Teaching tips for training: Catch ‘em all! Part III
By Nikki Rubinstein & Dr Christina Tuke Flanders
Last week Nikki explained the importance of using Learning Objectives and Signposting to orientate the learner to your curriculum. She also explained how to scaffold learning to make your content more ‘digestible’. If you are following these teaching tips you are evolving into a more sophisticated trainer. In Pokemon parlance you are becoming healthy and strong and ready to battle in the gym!
This week Nikki will share with you the power of Peer Learning and Problem Based Learning. These techniques will help you as a trainer to ‘activate’ your learners to to engage deeper in your training. Activated participants learn a lot more than passive learners who just sit and listen. It reminds me of the Confucius saying: “I hear and I forget. I see and I understand. I do and I understand”. Give it a try and notice the difference in your training. Over to Nikki…
Peer learning
How often have you heard a suggestion from your parents or a teacher and just completely dismissed it? But when your friend voices the same opinion, suddenly it’s worth listening to! We are often more open to ideas from our peers, compared to authority figures. A deeper understanding of key concepts can be achieved with collaborative learning, compared to learning one one’s own. Teachers can facilitate peer learning through group discussions or by setting group challenges.
I asked our Training Consultant, Christina, why peer learning was such an effective tool. She explained: “Take a look at the Seven Principles of Adult Learning. Adults learn best in informal situations, this is in contrast to children who need a highly structured curriculum. Adults come with all different kinds of experience and prior knowledge that they can share and offer to each other. Peer learning is far more compelling and interesting because you can relate better to your immediate peers and think to yourself ‘I can do that too!’ Of course, a good trainer needs to facilitate peer learning in the classroom and provide some structure upon which learners can springboard on to new ideas and thoughts.”
Problem-based learning
Learning-by-doing is not just a cute phrase. You will never understand the pitfalls better than if you have already made the mistakes yourself. What better to place to make mistakes than in the classroom, where a whole group of people can help you fix them? It’s much worse to make mistakes on your own and struggle to find a solution.
Didactic teaching (chalk and talk), where you talk and they listen, can be extremely boring for students! Problem-based learning provides an alternative approach. Explain a concept for 5-10 minutes and then let your students engage in active learning. Set the students challenges, problems and collaborative learning tasks. This allows students to actively engage in learning and encourages peer learning. This will also give you a break and make each block of teaching less exhausting!
Each person learns in a different way. Some people are visual, others auditory and some are kinaesthetic learners (VAK). If you can encourage all these forms of learning (seeing, hearing and doing) then you’ll be ticking all the boxes. Being able to ‘do’ something in the classroom increases motivation and engagement. And besides, it’s much more fun than listening to someone drone on for two hours!
Once again, thank you Nikki for unpicking the power of Peer Learning and Problem Based Learning. Lots of great ideas for trainers to use. Next week will be our final post. We will be looking at the value of Assessment and Reflection in training. Stay tuned!
