Fuel for the Accidental Trainer
Fuel for Accidental Trainer; men and women who train and develop others with or without being provided resources. These posts are for them.
For managers, parents, and VennLeaders of all sorts training is just one of the many things we have to do to keep the rest of our responsibilities on track. Most are not formally trained as trainers and yet find themselves having to train others on a wide variety of tasks. Sometimes, the Accidental Trainer is tasked by their organization to train others as an additional duty. in other cases, they have employees, children, teammates, etc. who need some sort of training to develop a skill or change a behavior.
Most Accidental Trainers are also required to be an end-to-end jack of all trades when it comes to the development and delivery of training material. In most cases they are the training developer, the instructional designer, and the training facilitator.
An Accidental Trainer is a person who finds themselves for one reason or another with a responsibility to train others, quite often without ever being provided formal training on how to be a trainer. I’ve met lots of teachers over the years who knew early in life they wanted to teach. From Elementary School teachers to graduate level college professors this path is often a calling for many who find themselves on it and very seldom do they wake up one morning to find themselves with a requirement to instruct others. On the other hand, the majority of people I’ve met with a requirement to train others as a part of their job did suddenly find themselves tapped with a requirement to train and more often than not, design, develop, and implement the training with little or no formal training on how to do it. The intent of these posts is to help the Accidental Trainer deliver outstanding training.
Accidental Trainer Links
1. There are better ways to ask questions, says a new study.
Ideally, trainers should wait three to five seconds for training participants to process a question, think, and formulate a response.
2. Gen Z: How they Learn.
An entire generation of digital natives who prefer self-directed learning is about to enter the workforce. Is there room in your training program for self-directed learning?
3. TED’s Secret to Great Public Speaking.
Chris Anderson provides the single reason why TED Speakers succeed and then gives a simple 4 step approach to getting it right.
4. Is PowerPoint a Crutch?
Here’s a tip on conducting meetings that may have some use for trainers too. Instead of using bulleted slides try tone-setting memos instead. Many of us use read-ahead material or advance sheets already. This simple tip could completely change the value your training adds to your agency.
5. Resources for Changing Minds
In this post we focus on “changing minds.” Changing minds is both an art and science and is the epicenter of what trainers do. We change minds to modify behavior. If your a mind changer, this post is for you.
6. Gamification for Instructor Led Training
MIL/LE Trainers have used competition and “games” for as long as we’ve had MIL/LE Trainers. From marksmanship badges to fitness leaderboards this is not a new concept in our industry. But what’s next? GAMIFICATION for online training now includes levels, badges, and point-based reward systems. How can progressive MI/LE Trainers integrate these same techniques into live and tactical training?
7. Professional Development as a Benefit
According to Gallup only 4 in 10 employees say they have had an opportunity to learn and grow at work in the last 12-months. Growth and development take several forms and each of them can motivate officers – personally or professionally. How can agencies leverage training and professional development as a benefit – like insurance, pay, vacation, tuition reimbursement, etc?
8. Are you ready to Harness the Transformative Power of Adaptive Learning?
A trending buzzword or the reality of training in the future? Adaptive learning is a personalized, learner-centric approach to computerized learning. It harnesses the power of artificial intelligence, brain sciences, predictive analytics, gamification, and microlearning to offer real-time adaptation based on learner activity and performance. Adaptive learning is mastery-based and technology-driven, which maximizes learner engagement, efficiency, retention, and effectiveness.
9. The Toxic Student – “I dare you to train me!”
If you’ve been an instructor for a while chances are you’ve experienced the student in your training who doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t hesitate to let everyone know. Our friend Brian Willis asks the question – how do you deal with the student who crosses their arms and doesn’t want to participate in training. Why is it that many instructors concern themselves with this student?
10. Forget Millenials – are you ready for GEN-Z?
Generation Z is knocking on the department door and have been leading their peers in your department’s Explorer Program for years. While trainers and management were distracted by millennials their younger siblings have slipped in under the radar and they bring with them a whole new set of training challenges – are we ready?
11. Risk Assessments – Do you do them?
Does your department do deliberate Composite Risk Management (CRM)? Here’s a quick and easy read on how to correctly and effectively integrate CRM into your training.
12. ADDIE, SAM, or Spaghetti?
Instruction Designers and Training Developers use a variety of process to put together their training. Some use the Spaghetti method of training development. Throw a training idea against the wall and hope it sticks… But most professionals use a developmental model such as the ADDIE Model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) or the SAM Model (Successive Approximation Model). Most of us that use ADDIE have adapted it to fit our needs and make it less laborious. While many people prefer the simplicity of SAM. This article and the two links below will help you get a better picture of the two. What are you using in your organizations – We hope it’s not spaghetti…
13. Analyzing Learning Effectiveness
The Kirkpatrick Model is perhaps the most well-known model for the evaluation of training. This four-step model looks at Participant Reaction (the degree to which participants find the training favorable, engaging and relevant to their jobs), Learning (the degree to which participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, attitude, confidence and commitment based on their participation in the training), Behavior (The degree to which participants apply what they learned during training when they are back on the job), and Results (The degree to which targeted outcomes occur as a result of the training and the support and accountability package). In this quick and easy read from Mind Tools you’ll find a good review. We encourage you to check out the Kirkpatrick site too.
14. 5 Steps to Metacognition
The Effortful Educator is a website devoted to better classroom performance at the High School level. But don’t let that fool you. This site is a treasure trove of tips and tactics to enhance adult learning. The author challenges fellow educators to try these five methods of promoting effortful retrieval and reflective practice: provide questions or a prompt, answer using only their brain, evaluate your answers, compare/contrast answers with neighbors, and finally grade your paper.
15. Can Empathy be Trained?
Empathy is a skill and skills can be trained. However, there’s no class that a learner can sit through to make them more empathetic – it is developed, like character or physical endurance, over time and through intentional repetition. This post lays out five ways we can intentionally activate empathy for the purpose of development.
16. Tips and Tricks for PowerPoint
PowerPoint remains one of the most frequently used presenter tools. While there are others (Google, Prezi, etc.) we’re just going to focus on good ol’ PowerPoint. The purpose of this post is to help our fellow trainers to develop the best possible presentations to support their training.
17. Innovative Andragogy
In this Trainer Fuel we’re going to focus on the science of progressive training of the adult learner using the well known, Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of the different objectives and skills that educators set for their students (learning objectives). BLOOM’S taxonomy was proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist at the University of Chicago. The taxonomy now includes six levels of learning; Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. The well-known version of this taxonomy focuses on the learner’s cognitive domain. In this post we’ll also look at the learners affective development and psycho-motor skill improvement as well.