1.
Assessing Needs & Entering Behavior
2. Setting Objectives & Terminal Behavior
3. Analyzing Participants & Situations
4. Eliciting Relevant Responses & Testing
5. Applying Classroom Facilitation Skills
6. Forming Questions & Probes Effectively |
7. Maintaining
Adult-Adult Relationships
8. Giving Feedback & Reinforcement
9. Building Toward Transfer of Training
10. Getting All Learners to Participate
11. Managing Classroom Time Effectively
12. Displaying Good Flow, Logic, & Organization |
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Assessing Needs & Entering Behavior
Before beginning training, instructors must assess the
needs (organizational & individual) that they are
expected to meet. The “Entering Behavior” of trainees
(existing levels of knowledge, attitude, and skills)
is not at the levels needed to perform their jobs with
excellence. Hence the need for training. |
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Setting Objectives & Terminal Behavior
At the start of a course, the instructor should
announce the learning objectives. These statements
describe the behaviors expected of participants during
training and back on the job. Course objectives should
be measurable, criterion-referenced, and relevant. |
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Analyzing Participants & Situations
Effective instructors can size up participants and
situations so as to deal with them effectively in
class. An understanding of human behavior and
sensitivity to working and actions is central to this
competency. Your ability to analyze correctly the
actions you observed determines your score on this
competency. |
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Eliciting Relevant Responses & Testing
Instructors need feedback from participants so as to
assess learning and understanding. Participants need
opportunities to think about new concepts and
procedures, and to apply them to their own situation.
Both these needs are met when an instructor elicits
responses that are (a) relevant to the objectives, and
(b) calculated to show application and not merely
acquisition of new concepts and terms. |
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Applying Classroom Facilitation Skills
This competency is concerned with all the actions an
instructor can take to maintain a classroom climate of
openness, trust, and learning through participation
and shared experience. Facilitation skills include the
ability to lead discussion, summarize, probe, steer,
maintain an appropriate pace, use visuals effectively,
and act as a catalyst for group learning. |
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Forming Questions & Probes Effectively
The question may well be an instructor’s most useful
tool. When teaching inductively (lecture method),
questions are needed to test for understanding. When
teaching deductively (Socratic method), questions are
used to elicit information, experience, and insights
from participants. Probes are used to follow up on
questions when we want participants to go into further
depth without being prompted (and possibly biased_ by
further questions from us. |
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Maintaining Adult-Adult Relationships
Throughout our public schooling, the predominant
relationship between teachers and learners has been a
parent-to-child one. Students were dependent on
teachers for approval, for grades, for knowing what we
needed to learn, and why. Although the classroom in
corporate America should be conducted on an
adult-to-adult basis (interdependency), instructors
frequently lapse, often unconsciously info filling a
parent role and treating participants as children. |
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Giving Feedback & Reinforcement
Whenever participants respond, they should receive
immediate feedback on the appropriateness of the
response. This reinforcement confirms understanding
and increases the probability that the participant
will perform correctly following class. In a parent-to
–child classroom, the feedback usually comes from the
teacher of the textbook (answers in the back). But
with adult learners, feedback can come from fellow
participants working in subgroups or from the nature
of the assignment or task. |
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Building Toward Transfer of Training
New concepts and skills acquired in class are like
fragile seedlings nurtured in a greenhouse. They need
to be transplanted into the soil of the workplace and
helped to take root. This is a major difference
between training and education: trainers have a
responsibility (and many opportunities in class) to
help trainees transfer their new learning into action
back on the job. |
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Getting All Learners to Participate
In most training programs, the “20/80 rule” is alive
and well. The same 20% of the participants can be
counted on to give 80% of the answers. However, since
people learn best by participating, the effective
instructor must plan ways to elicit responses from all
participants. When we pose a question in class and
call on the first person to raise a hand, we may
unwittingly be short-circuiting the learning process
in all the other participants. They immediately shut
down their thinking and listen for an answer that
they’ve not had time to formulate for themselves. |
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Managing Classroom Time Effectively
A lesson plan is the tool instructors use to manage
their time in class. Time estimates can be written in
the margin. These reminders help the instructor to
know when to pick up the pace and when to make
tradeoffs between one exercise and another. Letting
the class know how much time has been allocated for
each activity is also helpful. |
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Displaying Good Flow, Logic, & Organization
This last competency measures your analytical thinking
skills and your ability to look at the design of a
course and the behavior of an instructor with a view
toward purpose and effect. Is it appropriate? Will it
work? How will participants react? Are there more
effective alternatives? The professional instructor is
always looking for ways to improve the design and
delivery of a course. |
