Inside the June issue:

Question of the month: Why is interaction important in the learning process?

Find the answer at the end of this newsletter.

BY Chris Anderson
June 30, 2005

Training was our topic of discussion in the month of June. The learning process is one of the most important components in process improvement and is an integral part of policies and procedures development. While the design phase gives you a clear insight into what to produce during development, training provides the end users the insight required to understand the purpose and use of the newly developed policies and procedures.

Ensuring Training Effectiveness

Training is used to improve skills and increase competencies in order to drive out variance that reduces performance. Lecture is the most widely used method of training, but lecturing is mostly about the presenter and not enough about the student. People learn much more by “doing” than simply listening or reading.

Interaction is the key to effective training and learning. Devoting less time on lecture, which helps introduce the concepts, and more time on interactive activities helps student retention.

Read more about training effectiveness…

Increasing Training Performance

Employing the PDCA learning loop in your learning project can greatly enhance the learning experience for the students as well as the teachers. PDCA stands for Plan-Do-Check-Act, a four-step process.

As the name suggests, the first step is to think about the objectives and plan the training. The second step is to execute your plan and deliver the training. Check is the most important step in the learning process and involves testing whether the objectives are being met. The final step—Act—is a reevaluation of what you have learned from the first three steps and make changes to improve the results.

Read more about PDCA and training performance…

Understanding How People Learn

People learn in a variety of ways and the three main factors that influence the speed at which you learn anything new are aptitude (IQ), prerequisite knowledge and the quality of instruction.

Aptitude indicates the ability to grasp new ideas and concepts quickly. Prerequisite knowledge is the extent to which you already possess the foundation for the material you are attempting to learn. The third factor, quality of instruction, is the most important part of learning and needs to take into account the first two factors for maximum effectiveness.

Learning About Learning

Learning is not all in your head. It takes place throughout your entire body and deeply involves all the senses.

The entire body, including the brain, learns through movement and repetition, but learning can be altered by stress and emotions. Movement is needed to engage the brain while repetition is used to move the information into your long term memory. Stress needs to be minimized as you learn while your emotions need to be tuned to learning. Feedback is critical to learning and is the primary driver of improvement.

Read more about the how learning involves the entire body…

For you to gain maximum benefit out of your policies, procedures and processes it is important for all end users to be on the same page. Training is the bridge that gets them there. Without a carefully planned and delivered training program, you risk your procedure documents ending up as shelfware decorating your bookshelves because the end users are not interested in using and benefiting from it.

You can learn how to improve your organization by attending the next How to create well-defined processes or ISO 9000 Lead Auditor training classes offered by Bizmanualz.

Reader Feedback

As always, we thank you for your feedback and words of encouragement. One of you wrote:

“I am learning more how will I increase productivity and improve our QMS. Your topics helped me improve my credibility as QMR in our company.”

Some of you have also provided us suggestions on possible topics and ways to improve the articles. Please keep your feedbacks coming. Contact us with any comments, questions or relevant stories. As always, we will incorporate your ideas and suggestions in future articles.

On That Note

Answer to this month's question:

Interactive learning makes the training process more effective. With interaction, both teachers and students can get feedback to measure and adjust their progress; students are encouraged to use the newly-learned concepts for better retention and teachers are able to direct the most important information to the student faster. Interactive learning units also complement the idea that learning is not just in our head but involves our whole body.

In the weeks and months ahead, we will continue to bring you useful information and helpful tips pertaining to policies, procedures and processes. Let us know if you'd like any specific topic addressed.

Best regards,
Chris
Bizmanualz, Inc