Safety Training Design

Some interesting discussions are going on in the Big Question for February The Learning Circuits Blog: Instructional Design - If - When - How Much. I thought I'd take a cut at an answer based on something we've been involved with recent - the design of safety training. This includes topics like driver safety, defensive driving, following rules, workplace safety, OSHA, operating machinery, wrist safety, food preparation, kitchen safety, first aid, fire, etc. There are striking similarities to most of the topics:

• Most of the core information is already known by the learner. They probably already know the 3 second following safety rule.
• There is likely content that is known, but ignored. Even though they know they should drive their truck 3 seconds behind the car in front, they don't because it feels like you are losing a lot of time when someone cuts in front of you and you have to slow down to allow 3 seconds again. (Note: it actually doesn't cost much time, but it does feel like it ... especially here in Los Angeles.).
• Performers need consistent reinforcement of these messages.
  

The reality is that much of the training on these kinds of topics is rather boring and mundane because it assumes that its purpose is to teach the person the information in the first place.

This is where design comes in ... We have to look at the larger picture and figure out what is going to make sense.

The answer we commonly come out with is a blended solution that involves various touch points including activities for managers, posters and a series of small (15 minutes or less) eLearning pieces that focus on reminding, reinforcing and on likely bad habits. Content around bad habits addresses things like - how much does it really cost you to let the person cut in front? On most trips it is almost nothing. It's almost all perception. Yes, there are lots of studies. And, in fact, stressing about it is bad for you. Be cool, follow the 3 second rule.

Corney, yes. But possibly very effective at attacking the problem. By the way, they already know the 3-second rule.

So, what does this case of Safety Training Design have to do with Instructional Design - If - When - How Much?

The recent post by Gary Hegenbart - Why Bother with Instructional Design? Gary tells us:

For eLearning I think careful planning is required, especially for self-paced courses. For classroom training, and maybe even live online training, almost no ID is needed. Huh? An instructional designer saying you don’t need instructional design? Yep, you need course developers not instructional designers.

In the past year I’ve spent a lot of time working on instructor-led training for both in-person classes and live online classes. What I’ve found is that no matter how much work I do two things are true:

• The instructor will always do things their way.
• Students don’t care about instructional design.

Wow, I don't really buy these arguments. I don't disagree that the instructor will take liberties with the instructional design. And Gary later makes the point that you need a good instructor - agreed. However, they should be given a decent road map. And "students don't care" - hogwash. If the safety training design was for manager delivered training, would you want to tell the managers to teach the three second rule or would you want them to concentrate on the real point - why people ignore the rule even though they know it. Would you want them to try to do it all in one shot, or over time. Design is needed here. And you often see really poor design around exactly this kind of topic.

So, Gary's argument around this topic don't hold water for me. I definitely need some level of instructional design or my training is going to be focused on the wrong things.

What's interesting about the design of safety training is that it feels like a topic where you would need very little ID. After all, you can quickly find a list of the topics that go under something like driver safety. You'd find out that you need to teach the 3 second following rule. And you quickly jump onto a really boring (since the learner already knows the information) course.

To me, this is where Common Sense and Intuition is Not Enough around when, if and how much instructional design is needed. Common sense and intuition is why there's so much really horrible safety training eLearning in the world today.

Making the Most of Attending a Conference - Ideas Needed

In comments in the post Death of Magazines - Broader Deeper Coverage, Virginia Yonkers commented:

I have to wonder what you expect to get out of a conference. I have never gone to a conference with the expectation of learning anything (although it would be a nice aside) but rather to network, discuss issues, and market (myself, my institution, my discipline, my theories/philosophies).

and later

I just had two papers accepted at the AERA conference in NYC this year and am dreading it. Last year's experience was horrible when it came to the conference itself, because I felt no sense of connection with such a massive organization.

However, the learning took place when I came home and was able to read through the papers and journals I picked up while there. I also contacted some of the people whose papers I found interesting. Unfortunately, at this point in my career, I must attend these types of conferences. So I will suffer through a trip to NYC (I'm a small town girl) and give me 10 minutes of presentation.

Sadly, I've felt the same way about going to conferences. I'm going to present at the conference and I'll get together with folks for networking and discussion. I'll learn through those things, but it seems that creating a conference where I also get to have a great participation experience is not on the agenda of conference organizers or attendees. This is something I've lamented about frequently.

Lots of people chimed into the post Better Conferences and among the ideas were things like:

• Free wifi (top choice on the poll)
  
• Smaller sessions with more advanced topics and discussions (this worked great at the last DevLearn but unfortunately was at 7AM)
  
• Unconference within a conference
  
• Keynotes aimed at us
• Lots of demos
• Cheat sheets or other sharing to help you get more from the conference
  

But this was from the perspective of what the conference organizer should do to make it a better event. Clark Quinn told me back then that it really is up to the attendee (especially the "expert" attendee) to get more out of it.

I somewhat agree with him on this. And I've certainly tried to think through this (see Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee and Session Hopping a Practical Guide). I've also continually suggested that the key is Better Questions (see also Continuing Thoughts on Questions and What Questions Should We be Asking?).

However, Virginia's comments got me thinking. I thought about how great the conversations are at my CTO Forum where a group of peers come together. Why am I not getting value from conferences? Why is Virginia clearly dreading going to her conference? Shouldn't something that costs so much money and time offer me more value that something that's free (my CTO Forum). Something is wrong here. Maybe

As a practitioner with more experience, I'm not doing the right things to get more from my conference experience.

But what are these things? What do other people do to get more from a conference?

For more discussions on networking and LinkedIn see Networking Events in Los Angeles and Southern California, Secret for Networking at Events – Prenetworking, Pre-network with LinkedIn, Local Event Organizers Need to Adopt Social Media.

Death of Magazines - Broader Deeper Coverage

Rick Nigol posted and reminded me of a post by Donald Clark - Training magaZZZZZZZZZZines. Both are lamenting about the fact that picking up any publication tends to cover roughly the same ground over and over. I have a similar feeling about the limited value of these publications for me and it's something that I mention at most presentations I ever do on eLearning 2.0. In particular, I say that since I've begun to shift my scanning behavior to blogs (scanning is how you stay up-to-speed on a topic) - my rapid fire skimming of blogs via a Skim Dive Skim approach has meant that magazines have mostly become pretty irrelevant to me. I will bring copies of magazines on a plane to flip through, but rarely do I read articles in any great depth. They simply are not worth my Limited Attention.

In other words, my scanning behavior has radically changed because of blogs (see Time Spent on Blogging, Personal Learning Strategies).

I also lump into this most of the activities at conferences (see Better Conferences). In fact, my limited attention has made me into a Session Hopper. It's much like skimming, but at a conference.

But Rick and Donald got me thinking that the reality is that Magazines and Conferences continually must aim at introductory, novice, overview level content. That appeals to the broadest audience. And somehow, ASTD conferences attract 50-75% newbies to ever conference. If you look at it, there is a relationship here:

Introductory / Novice Sources:

• Conference Sessions
• Training
• Wikipedia
• Magazines

What's common about these is that they are higher level coverage from a more trusted source, but they only go to a certain depth. And, yes, after you've gone through these for a while, they tend to be fairly repetitive.

Expert Sources:

• Search
• Blogs
• Conversations with other experts
  

These sources tend to offer more depth along more narrow topics. Further, there is a tendency to involve other people in conversations to really explore the topic. The conversations can happen in all kinds of ways both online and offline.

The conference sessions I present on eLearning 2.0 and the articles I write on various topics (e.g., Learning and Networking With A Blog (T+D article)) have to be somewhat of an overview. You cannot assume that people come with a common understanding of a topic. And I would suggest that I normally focus on more advanced topics.

In Disruptive Changes in Learning, I point to how the long tail of learning is addressed through alternative sources...

• Mainstream media -> YouTube
• Mainstream press -> Blogs

And this has real impact when you see things like: InfoWorld Folds Print Magazine and you also see things like The Industry Standard coming back, but as an aggregator / prediction market.

It will be interesting to see what begins to happen to mainstream sources that chase large audiences. Can they survive with such broad coverage? Can they also add value for people looking for deeper content? I personally think there's an interesting aggregator role, but they may be made irrelevant by networked aggregation unless they get out in front today.

Certainly, for most experts, my guess is that they've lost much of their value and there are much better scanning sources.

Of course, this also relates to the same issues we face as developers of training. We currently focus on large audiences. We face much the same challenge as publishers and conference organizers. How do you pursue opportunity in the long tail?