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Methods & Media for Instructional Delivery (Domain 2)

3. Accommodating Various Learning Styles

Think back for a minute to your history of education, whether it was in high school, college, technical training programs, gaining certifications, You've probably identified certain ways of learning that work for you, and they may not work for someone else, and their ways of learning may not work for you. But over of a time you start torealize that you have a learning style. And when you are designing and implementing a technical training course, you need to remember this about the adult learners in your class: that they fall into different categories of learner styles. And a very common model for identifying learner styles is called the VAC model. VAK, and that is an acronym for three learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. So this refers to people who either like to learnwith their eyes, or those who learn with their ears,or those who learn through touching and doing. And again, you'll want to have modules in your course that are adapted to each of these learning styles and not leave one out, but make sure everybody is covered. To begin with, how do you assist visual learners in acquiring information? Well, they're going to do best with a slideshow where they can see the bullet points very clearly and follow along with their eyes while you're talking. They're also going to benefit from technical demonstrations where they can watch somebody who is very skilled perform the technical task. Visual learners will benefit from that. Also, they'll like videos, which we all do, but visual learners in particular will gravitate toward that and benefit greatly from videos as well as written notes. This could be in the form of a handout that you provide the class. So visual learners prefer to have these notes, sheets, or main points written in a worksheet that they can take home and review later. Auditory learners learn through listening. So when you explain technical topics through speech, they're going to benefit from that. Also, they have group discussions where they hear other people explain the same topic in their own words and exchange questions and answers. So auditory learners like to process through dialogue, so they're going to ask you questions and listen to your answers. As a result, make sure that those features are included in your course design to assist auditory learners. And then finally, you have the kinesthetic learners. These are individuals that really need to get hands-on; they need to do something; they need to move around, and that's going to help them learn. So with guided instruction, perhaps with technical skills, they might be doing a follow-along where you perform the technical task and they do the same thing step by step with you. Kinesthetic learners will benefit a lot from that. Exercise is an experiment, so allow plenty of time for practice. So there is some open-ended time in the computer lab where they can play around with the features of the technology practice.Doing different activities based on their new learning is going to benefit them a lot. So remember, when you're building out your course, you want to have a little bit of all of this. Also, in your demonstration for the CTT exam video submission, make sure that you incorporate all of these learning styles and modules into your course to accommodate all of them.

4. Gagne's Theory of Instruction

Ganye's theory of instruction is the first of our adult theories of education that we're going to talk about in this section. So we're really getting into some psychology here. how the human mind goes about learning new information. And what we know about educational psychology can really help you as a technical trainer to develop a course that harnesses the power of the mind. Basically, that really works with the cognitive processes that are involved in learning. So, according to Ganye, there are five categories of learning or different ways that the human mind learns. first of all, by taking in verbal information. So basically, we use our ears to listen to somebody teach. When an instructor is giving a presentation, explaining the logical steps of a process, or talking about the practical value of the information, the student is listening, and that is part of their learning process. There are also intellectual skills, so this is bringing up old information and connecting it with new information. And there are individual cognitive strategies, so this varies from individual to individual, but they will have some internal processes that are familiar to them that enable them to assimilate and remember new information. Attitude is also important to learning, and another factor involved in learning how a student feels about the material is their emotional state, their emotions surrounding the instructor and the course, and the relevance of the material to their lives. and finally, motor skills. So this is in the realm of muscle memory, or repeatedly performing a task, and the link between actually doing it and remembering it. So these are just five different ways that the mind learns. Now, Ganye went on to talk about how these can be incorporated into class design, and he did that by talking about nine steps for introducing new material and for teaching. So you can definitely follow this process when you're developing a course. And if you do so, it really helps to convey the information in a way that students will remember. So let's talk about these nine steps. First of all, you gain attention. So gaining attention means saying something funny upfront, having a nice interest, having an arousing introduction, making the practical value clear to the student, and really drawing them in and making them want to be there and see why it's important for them to be paying attention. After that, inform the objectives by means of an asyllabus or a clear statement about the learning objectives. The student needs to understand what they are going to learn in that class. After that, you want to stimulate the recall of past knowledge. So you might do this with a question and answer it in a group discussion. But basically, you want to facilitate this process in a student's mind where they think a little bit about what they already know about the topic because it is connected to this that you're going to introduce new topics, and that is in Step 4, presenting stimulus material. So this means that you're now presenting new information that they don't already know. Following that, you want to provide learning guidance so you can provide extra information. Case studies, examples, stories, anecdotes, activities, games All of this is guidance towards the learning process that happens after you have introduced it initially. After that, you want to elicit performance. So this is where you actually have them do the task. And then as they're doing that, you provide feedback. So you're correcting them as they go. You're letting them know what they do right. You're encouraging them when they do something right. You're correcting them when they do something wrong. That's providing feedback. And then, after you've done that, now you need to assess performance. So this is an unguided performance of the new task. This is where you allow them to perform or instruct new material. You let them get through the entire thing, and then you assess them on how they've done. and then finally enhance retention and transfer. So this is essentially where you review. So you can be very strategic about this and space the reviews out over time. This helps them again to bring back the information and then connect it to what they already know and reiterate the information so they remember it. So come back and look at this. When you're designing a course, if you put the material in this order, you'll find it very beneficial. It gives you a framework to work through as a designer, a developer, and a teacher. And it was also very beneficial to the students.

5. Piaget's Constructivist Learning Theory

This charming fellow here is Jean Piaget. He's a psychologist who also researched the way that the human mind learns. And he developed a constructivist learning theory. And again, you can leverage this information in your course design and the way that you implement your technical training class. He said that first of all, a learner will assess the value of the information and connect it with their goals and daily activities. So, as we said before, very early in the course, you want to tap into learner motivation and make sure they understand how the material will connect to their day-to-day lives and job responsibilities. Then the learner will examine the instruction and make a judgement about the outcome. So they're going to sit back and think, OK, what am I going to learn and what am I going to be able to do when this course is finished? and they're going to make an assessment of that. And then the learner will divide tasks into subtasks to realise the desired outcome. So they're going to say, okay, well, in order for me to be able to do this new, overwhelming task, I'm going to have to do the smaller tasks to get there. And that's good to remember when you're dividing up technical tasks and creating step-by-step workflows. Recognize that this is how the human mind works, and you want to make those steps very clear and easily digestible when you're creating these workflows. Then the learner will collaborate with the instructor and fellow students to experiment with the new knowledge. So they're going to take this technical task and now interact and practise it with the help of the instructor and their peers. So you facilitate this with group activities, challenges and games, group presentations, and also by having plenty of practise time in computer labs and training labs. Finally, the learner will apply their newly acquired knowledge to envision alternative approaches to the task goal. So this kind of final step in learning is when a learner feels so confident with new information that they can actually create new ways of doing it. So you may present some sort of challenge now that a student has learned new software or new technology. You might present them with a problem that they have to use that new learning to solve. And this is something they could work on in class together, but they're learning based on what they already know and really being creative with it to solve a new problem. So this is the constructivist learning theory, and you can use it as you design your course and make sure that you tap into the way that the human mind learns.

6. Techniques for Delivering Instruction

Now that we've talked a little bit about learning styles and educational psychology, let's talk about how you can structure your class and apply all these concepts to the different styles of delivery. First of all, here we have a framework that's kind of like a pared-down version of Ganye's Nine Steps. And you can use a simple four-step process in the development of any technical class or any technical class module. One, preview the material and let the students know what's coming and the learning objectives of the class. Number two: present or demonstrate the new information or technical task. Three have an activity so they can practise and tone down the learning. and four, review what's been learned. So you can follow this with every module of every class to make sure that the students are really getting the most out of the information presentations. We talked about this a bit in the course design section, but remember, avoid death by PowerPoint. Break up your slides and mix them in with other activities to avoid losing people and becoming boring. Get creative with your slides. You can use different colours in clipart. It's helpful to use reoccurring stylistic elements, so maybe everything under one topic or one domain of understanding will all be the same color. That's a good way to guide the learner along with the logical development of your discussion by means of your visual aid. You could also use an icon every time there's a tip or a trick, or every time there's an exam question, using a similar icon. It just helps add to the organisation of your material. Remember not to get too creative, so don't use every feature of PowerPoint that can be a little bit distracting to your audience. Use dark text on a light background and make sure that your font is no less than 24 points so that everybody, even in the back, can see what you're displaying. And remember that you are teaching the audience. You're not reading the slide, so keep the words down; maybe 15 words per slide. Speak to the audience and then allow the slide to simply be a visual aid for those who are visual learners. And if you take a look at the image here in this slide, you'll see that this technical trainer is standing in the correct position. He's to the left of the presentation slide. And the reason you do this is because that's how we read. We read from left to right. So you want your audience to look first at you and then read the slide after they've looked at you. So stand to the left. You might use a wireless presenter like this. Those are good because they allow you to move around freely and thumb through your slide deck without having to bounce back and forth to the laptop. Next we have technical demonstrations, and this is where you actually demonstrate the new tool or technology for your technical class. Make sure that you perform a task analysis ahead of time. So really break it down. Remember, we talked about tasks and subtasks to really delineate every process of the demonstration. And you might use this to create a classroom handout so that students can follow along while you're demonstrating. Practice before the training session because you want to make sure that you're comfortable doing the process very slowly and speaking your way through it. You might know how to do this with your eyes closed. But when you're teaching it, it has to be slow and deliberate, and you have to articulate every movement as you perform it. Another thing to remember is that you need all of the workstations to look similar. When interfaces look different, maybe somebody's computer screen or software is configured differently and it looks unlike yours. It can be very distracting and confusing. The student might think they're doing something wrong, or what have you. So make sure that all of the computers are the same and you have no distractions there. And finally, perform a review so you can perform the task again, perhaps at a slightly faster speed, again speaking through it as you go. But the second time around, it can help the learners catch up on what they missed the first time. Group activities are a great way to break up the class. Here are some examples. Learn by Teaching: This is where you actually assign a topic for the student to teach the audience. And again, we talked about this as one of the last processes in the educational psychology part. But when somebody can teach information back to the instructor or their classmates, you really know that they understand it. So activities that involve learning by doing are great group presentations. Along a similar line, you might break people up into teams of three and four and have them demonstrate a feature of the technology or explain a concept to the class. As well as game-show-style activities. In one technical training institute that I worked at, we used Cahoot. And Cahoot is a little game show-style app for your phone that also connects to the presentation screens so that everyone can pull out their smartphone and as soon as the question appears on the screen, they have to punch in like on a game show. So people get up on their feet. It gets the blood moving around, gets people engaged and interesting, and it breaks up the monotony of a technical course. So you might look into that. There are plenty of other ways that you can get creative to implement these group activities. Keep in mind some things, though of course we're going to use these to maintain engagement. You might want to pair experiencedstudents who are less knowledgeable. Great way. If you have somebody lagging behind, make sure they're in a group with somebody who really knows the material well. Create clear instructions. You might write them on the whiteboard or print them out on a handout, but make sure the activities are clear so nobody gets lost. And you want to monitor the groups, so you're going to move around the classroom, maybe stand behind people at their workstations, checking in on the groups as they're working on the activities. So make sure that you maintain engagement the whole way through. So those are some group activities and some presentation styles that really incorporate the theories of learning that we know from educational psychology.