I’ve written many times about encouraging girls to be women in STEM, and this is an excellent article to support it. The author mentions something that I’ve written about before, which is that the UK and other nations are already implementing STEM programs for school-age curriculums, so why isn’t there more in the US? Compelling article. Do you agree? Comment below. –TechCommGeekMom
“What kind of training is this?” “COMPLIANCE TRAINING, SIR!” (Boom-chaka-laka, boom-chaka-laka, boom-chaka-laka, boom!)
I’ve recently taken on a new “adventure” working for a large pharmaceutical company. Now, I’ve worked for pharmaceutical companies before, but it’s been more than 20 years since my last job in the industry. One of the things I’ve been getting bombarded with in the past few weeks is that I have to do a lot of compliance training. This is not the first time I’ve had to do compliance training.
In the last two full-time positions I held, I had to do compliance training in the finance and chemical safety fields, even though my position had nothing to do with the everyday responsibilities of creating and handling chemicals, or handling financial transactions of any kind. But, because of strict regulatory rules on the international, federal, and state levels, I have to do this training. It’s the same with the pharmaceutical field, since that’s yet another highly regulated field.
Now, I will say this much–because of the work that I’ve been hired to do, there actually were several pieces of the compliance courses that applied to me, so that was fine. No matter where you go, especially if you work for a very large corporation, whether you are an employee or contingent worker/consultant (which I always am the latter), you still have to take all these compliance courses regardless of your position in the company to comply with all these regulatory groups. It’s just par for the course.
The information is usually incredibly dry, boring, and lifeless information–at least for me. It’s usually just a course that covers various policies, and you have to pass some sort of quiz to “certify” and help the company be in compliance with these regulatory rules. The courses are usually (but not always, as I’ll explain in a moment) a flat narrative that’s done in Captivate or Articulate, with small little quizzes in between to help you review and retain the information for the final test at the end. Considering that the information is usually so boring, and you may have several hours of it ahead, I usually don’t mind this training because usually there’s a narrator reading the information while showing some images relating to the topic, and it makes it easier for me to remember so I can pass the test.
After having already done four hours of compliance training and passing the test with a 97% (I missed one question) during my first week, I was given additional training that had to be done in the next few days. Of the nine courses I was given to do, only one was an Articulate course (I know it was because the server name in the URL said “articulate.com” in it), and that one made sense, and definitely applied to me.
However, the other eight courses I was given weren’t really courses at all. Since these “courses” were all handled on an LMS (learning management system), I thought I’d be jumping into legitimate courses. I was sadly mistaken. Each of these “courses” was simply the SOP (standard of procedure) policy document that I was expected to read in depth. All these documents were not written in plain English in a user-friendly format. They all were in legal-ese or pharma-talk–or both. This made the process of reading them a little harder for me to digest. Additionally, while there were only two or three documents that were less than ten pages, most were well over twenty pages–even over thirty pages for one or two of the documents. Some documents had a summary at the end, to which I thought, “Why didn’t they just show this at the beginning of the document? Then the rest of it would’ve made sense!” But most did not. With all of these eight documents, there wasn’t any kind of assessment to see if I understood the material. I just had to provide an electronic signature at the end that I read the material.
While I did my best to diligently read the material, it was much worse than dealing with the boring interactive courses. And other than me signing something electronically to say that I had, indeed, read the material, there was no way for the company to know if I understood it. Much of this could’ve easily been short Captivate/Articulate courses that would have not only made the information a tiny bit more interesting, but also there could be a way to assess that there was some semblance of comprehension.
Somewhere along the line, I had read later that in some instances, companies are in compliance as long as they have a policy and that each worker has read the policy and signed off that they read the policy. That sounds easy enough–read the material, and sign that you read it, and you’re done. But is that right?
I thought about this a lot after I finished this second round of compliance training, because reading almost 130 pages of technical jibberish on mostly common sense policies wore me out. I also felt that something was terribly wrong about this procedure. I might not have ended up doing instructional design as I originally set out to do when I started in tech comm (see early posts of TechCommGeekMom), but there were circumstances that bothered me about training employees this way, especially if they had to adhere to regulatory compliance training.
The first thing that came to my head was that as bothersome and boring as they were (sorry, instructional designers), the interactive courses were better. Students could see examples more clearly from images, for example. Or, in my case, seeing images, reading words, and hearing a voice read the technical gobbledygook connected with me better than reading pages and pages and pages of long-winded text. I partially blame my own abilities to learn this way because of my own learning disabilities, but at the same time–am I alone? I’m sure there are some out there who would rather read lots of text to understand information, but I have found that adding multimedia has always made a difference in learning.
I started to wonder if I was an anomaly in finding that I learn better this way. I know there are entire books, courses, and university degrees dedicated to this topic–what’s the best way to teach an adult? Is it any different than teaching a child or youth? Is reading text better than e-learning instances? Is reading text better than having an interactive, multimedia experience? In the case of the documents, I found that I was easily bored by the material to the point that I was more easily distracted, making me only skim the pages rather than read them in great detail after a while–especially with the thirty-page documents. It’s good that the company has policies on specific topics that are available for employees to read, but can employees easily relate to the policy information? How can we ensure that? Is just having them read the policy enough?
To say the least, I was rather disappointed with this method of training of reading text and electronically signing that I completed the reading. My own studies in e-learning made me realize how we are lucky to live in an age where we can make use of voice, images, video, and other multimedia tools that can help enhance the learning process, and in effect, allow learners to better retain the information by making it more relatable–even the boring, compliance information. I’ll bet that I still retain some of the information about financial transaction handling and chemical safety in the inner recesses of my brain because of interactive training. I remember much of what I just learned about drug safety and marketing compliance from my initial training. But what was in those documents. Don’t remember. Not a clue. I think much of it was the same as the stuff in the original compliance training, which also made me question why I had to do it again when I passed that original training. But was reading text and signing effective training? No. Did it fulfill compliance rules? Yes.
Whether it’s this company I’m at, or other companies, having workers understand regulatory compliance policies is important. They are procedures that keep us safe physically and ethically to ensure the best standards for all. So why not take the time to ensure that ALL policies that you feel are important are delivered in a way that helps to insure that employees understand ALL the information? That just seems like common sense to me.
What do you think? What are your experiences with these types of corporate or compliance training? What kind of learning worked best for you? Should companies put a good effort to make all the learning more learning-accessible? Add your comments below!
“Ever hear of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? MORONS!”
Scott Abel recently wrote an article titled, “Why Thought Leaders Aren’t Usually The Best Trainers,” in which he makes a valid point that not all thought leaders who push out books and PowerPoint slides are trainers or teachers. I get that. He backs up his thesis with some facts to support this. And yes, it wouldn’t hurt for those who are thought leaders who haven’t had to go out in the world to present their expertise to learn some fundamentals of teaching/training.
However, I feel Scott has done a disservice here. Sure, I admit I’ve seen some of the thought leaders he’s described, people who are incredibly brilliant and have a lot of great information to share, droning on with dull PowerPoint slides and who don’t know how to present it in a compelling way to actually feel like you learned something. It sounds like much of my entire higher ed education. I’m willing to bet that many of these thought leaders merely wanted to write a book to share knowledge, and didn’t think that they’d end up training people on their methods or data necessarily.
But with method that Scott used to frame his position, I feel like this article is a big slam against half the thought leaders in our industry, simply because they haven’t had those educational fundamentals instilled in them at times or the presentation skills he seeks. In doing this, his commentary implies, in my opinion, that those with the expertise shouldn’t even bother, because without these skills to be a trainer, you’re not worth the time or effort. “Learn to teach/train, or don’t waste my time.” That’s not quite right.
The thing to keep in mind is that understanding different learning styles, etc. takes TIME, as well as trial and error. It’s not something learned in a day, and most thought leaders aren’t going to go back to school to get an education degree. It’s not rocket science either. Budding educators are even given time–a learning curve of their own–to student teach before being sent out to teach. In the corporate world, there is no learning curve before being sent out in the world. You are thrown to the wolves and told, “Okay, you know this, you are an expert on XYZ. GO TRAIN.” This isn’t to say that there aren’t “train the trainer” programs or other resources out there that we can learn from, but I’m willing to bet that more experts are let loose to learn how to train others by trial and error, rather than be guided themselves. At least they go out there and try, which is more than I can say for others.
To understand my perspective, you have to understand that I am an educator’s daughter. My father did some form of teaching either on the high school or university level for over 40 years, and in his spare time, his idea of “fun” was reading books about learning styles and testing the theories on his kids. (Ask me sometime about family vacations at historic cemeteries instead of the beach. 😕) I also have learning disabilities, which provides a different perspective. I have trained others, including those with learning disabilities as well. There is no right or wrong way to teach if the information is learned. Just as there are different learning styles, there are different ways to teach. As long as comprehension is accomplished, then the task has been completed.
I have been a trainer, and still consider myself a trainer. I don’t know how good a trainer I am, but I know I’ve had my successes and failures in teaching people different concepts. I do know that there are many times I have to re-explain a concept to a learner in a different way so that they understand a concept.
In the end, I’ve realized that as a trainer, the process of learning is a two-way communication. As a trainer/teacher, you can present all the facts you want, but if no conversation ensues as a result, then the lesson has failed. At the end of every presentation, workshop, or one-on-on training I’ve ever done, I’ve always invited the students to not only ask questions, but to share their insights or experiences as well. My goal is that students come away with learning something new as well as validating their own knowledge, since I find that to be the best learning for me. It’s a good deal for me as a trainer because I learn how I can explain concepts better to students, as well as gain some new perspectives.
So rather than be a motivating article to spur thought leaders to improve their skills, I thought it was discouraging towards thought leaders. As a community, tech comm should be more pro-active in lifting those thought leaders who have the great ideas into being BETTER teachers. Writing their books is already an effort on their part to teach us, and many write excellent resources. Summoning up the courage to train people on these concepts can be hard enough. I have no disagreement with encouraging those who are going to share their ideas publicly to get some foundational training in how to train and learn how to assess comprehension. But build those budding trainers up, don’t tear them down. Tell them what they did right, but give them constructive criticism. I’m willing to bet that they will appreciate it, and get better over time.
The expression of “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,” ran through my head as I read Scott’s article and while writing this post. I always thought that this expression was rather insulting to the many teachers I know. In so many respects, teachers are more capable than those that “do”. But conversely, there are “do-ers” that can’t teach, just as there are teachers that can’t “do”. Scott himself is a university instructor and trainer. Does that mean he can’t do what he lectures about? Of course not. He’s an expert in his field, plus he’s evidentially taken the time over years to learn the most effective ways to teach for his audience. Not everyone makes that same effort, or for that matter, is expected to do that. Thought leaders do need to learn some teaching fundamentals, but we shouldn’t diminish their contributions simply because they aren’t the best trainers.
As I said, as a community, let’s work on raising thought leaders to their fullest potential, which includes encouraging that two-way conversation related to learning, which will help them become better teachers and trainers. After all, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle didn’t have written books or PowerPoint to share their ideas, and they were revered teachers because of discussions. Let’s work on that, instead.
(In the meantime, if you are inspired to improve your training skills, I’m sure there are plenty of resources out there that can help. I think my first stop would be searching through SlideShare to see if there are any pointers out there. I would also watch any video or listen to audio presentations done by those who I think are good trainers, and figure out why I respond to their methods. How was the information presented? What verbal tone did they use? Things like that. Emulate your favorite teachers, because they evidently did something right.)
As I’ve written about mobile and memory and done presentations/workshops that relate to this topic, I would argue that this is just an evolutionary step. There is too much data on the Internet for a human to fully absorb, so steps are made to capture the knowledge the best way available. Doing a proper search takes some skill to find the right data, after all. Since time began, Walter Ong would argue, we’ve had to learn things in small pieces, and technology–whether it was repetitive storytelling, songs, or writing–has weakened the human mind. What do you think? Include your comments below. –TechCommGeekMom
When I was in grad school, we had an entire course that talked about the integration of technology with human kind. As time has progressed, technology has been adopted with mixed feelings. On one hand, technology can enhance our lives. On the other hand, at what point do we lose our humanity? The Six Million Dollar Man (look up 1970s television shows if you don’t know who he is) , Luke Skywalker’s robot hand–and heck, his dad, Darth Vader–should be included as examples that come to mind when technology and humanity come together. Oh, and Bicentennial Man, too. On the other hand, you could have Cybermen (see Doctor Who) or the Borg (see Star Trek), where humanity seems to be lost altogether. So, this begs the question, where does it stop? Even if the tech is helpful, what do we do to not lose our humanity in the process? Include your comments below. I’d like to know what you think. –TechCommGeekMom
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