Slogging away trying to pep up yet another time management course? Godfrey Parkin suggests you stop and do something more engaging instead...
At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I am becoming increasingly exasperated by the extent to which “fun” is specified as a requirement of learning design. In fact, it is frequently the only need that is clearly expressed.
Now, I understand the general idea that if people don’t enjoy the training, they are less likely to give it high smile-sheet ratings, or recommend it to a colleague. But are they less likely to learn if the process is not liberally peppered with “fun” experiences?
In theory, we learn best when we are relaxed and in harmony with our learning environment. A good trainer can set the tone and help create the most appropriate atmosphere. Ice-breakers contribute to that state, and are particularly helpful for sceptical learners, those uncomfortable in learning situations, and inexperienced trainers.
But training does not have to be entertaining.
E-learning’s rise has brought this issue to the fore. The constant admonition from instructional designers that e-learning has to be punctuated every couple of minutes with “interactivity” is one of the saddest mantras of our time. It’s like the American notion that food cannot be palatable unless you smother it with ketchup. If you are working with training that is bland and dry, by all means bring on the sauce. But would it not be better to make the training itself more engaging in the first place?
The distinction between engagement and interactivity is crucial, and it’s one that many instructional designers – and those who commission the development work – do not appear to understand. Engagement is intense mental absorption; interactivity is often just busyness or sugar-coating. It is vitally important that learners be engaged. Interactivity, entertainment, and fun can contribute to cognitive engagement. They can equally well distract from it.
There are possibly three causes for the boom in gratuitous fun in learning: managers want motivational experiences disguised as training; instructional designers lack the skills or imagination to architect inherently engaging learning experiences; and trainers seek high smile-sheet scores and possibly a release from their own boredom.
Managers: Too often, when managers commission training, what they really want is a motivation activity. I can't tell you how often, for instance, I have heard the whine: "We can't make people take that course online, because we'd lose out on the motivation, energising, bonding, or social interaction that we get from the classroom course."
My response is to challenge the learning objectives: if the primary desired output of the "event" is all that warm fuzzy stuff, then why pretend to be running a training course? It is far more cost effective to structure a motivation session that achieves those goals, and does not come out of the training budget. (Through my focus on sales and marketing, I have designed and run many such events, some of them wild or lavish, and all of them very effective, but I have never called them "training" events). Naturally, if the self-discovery or bonding is germane to the learning (in, say, leadership training or some interpersonal skills training) then it may be relevant and appropriate.
But too often the kind of feel-good factor that is called for in training is (once again) training being abused as a surrogate for good management.
Instructional designers: Many learning experiences are atrociously conceived. The designer has to work with unrealistic timelines, limited subject matter knowledge, poorly specified learning objectives, and myopic supervision, as well as limitations or constraints in the way the training is to be implemented. That said the expedient approach often taken is a linear exposition of content, made less dull by the frequent insertion of bits of fun. “We’ll do an icebreaker at the start, a game here, bring out the Lego over there, run a video here, chuck in some role-playing and a bit of team competition intermittently, and make the tests like Who Wants to be a Millionaire. ‘Triple Bottom Line Accounting for HR Professionals’ will never have been so much fun! Who cares if a week later the only thing they remember is the egg-dropping contest?”
Trainers: From a trainer's perspective, "having fun" can be an acceptable way to leaven the dullest of subject matter, so long as it does not distract from the learning goals. And, because in too many companies the smile sheet ratings are the primary indicator of how good a trainer is at his/her job, "fun" is welcome. If you are running the same course over and over again, the entertaining components also serve to keep you from putting yourself to sleep.
From a learner's perspective, those who do not really want to be there in the first place may be distracted, if not seduced, by the injection of "fun" components; those who really want to learn ask themselves why they are wasting time on irrelevant padding.
Fun can be very constructive. Well-designed entertaining experiences that are relevant and fully integrated into the learning process can work as powerful illustrations of concepts or living analogies. If the fun is designed as an effective instructional process, contributing to the achievement of specific learning objectives, I'll opt for fun over dull any day. But if it is gratuitous, I won't waste my time, or that of learners, by indulging in it.
Whilst at Abbey National I experimented with fun and created an intranet site called fun@work with the objectives of inspiring, motivating, stimulating and destressing staff. Drip feeding over two years, it worked like a dream, an oasis in a land of the other corporately standardised webpages.
Chris Coster , 25 October 2005 @ 22:43 PM Refreshing View
What a refeshing view it is to note that someone is actually thinking about why training exists. We tend to make decisions about training based on our assumptions of what people want. The assumption that people want to be entertained is as fallacious that everyone wants their job to be easier (the most common reason given for reform). It is my experience that people do not actually crave an easier job; they yearn for ways to be more effective. Similarly, whilst we tend to rate training on how entertaining it was, we actually only respect the training that is relevant and results in an improvement to our skills. If the problem / feedback is that the training is boring then we need to look at how we make it more relevant not necessarily the quantum leap to "to be less boring we need more fun" - what a ridiculous assumption.
More relevance, more effectiveness, less gimmicks, less fad surfing.
Thanks,
Chris
Robin Hoyle , 25 October 2005 @ 17:04 PM A general agreement
Its particular true that e-learning is increasingly being commissioned by people who don;t usually get involved in learning and when they take advice and recognise where their level of expertise lies all can be well (assuming learning designer has skills to influence). When they don;t we're left with thinly disguised propaganda enlivened by my favourite 'fun' element - the talking cartoon. Save us from learning = propaganda! Robin Hoyle
Amy Barnes , 25 October 2005 @ 09:33 AM Fun? Heck-
Hey people- lighten up! It's ok John Major, you don't have to disguise yourself as 'Jeremy Hall' ;) Amy Barnes
Craig Chappelow , 24 October 2005 @ 15:24 PM Unfair to Yanks
Godfrey, Your uninformed and stereotypic statement: "It’s like the American notion that food cannot be palatable unless you smother it with ketchup" detracts from an otherwise interesting article. The reality is that very few Americans smother our food with ketchup. Most of us use barbecue sauce. 8^)
Nick Hall , 24 October 2005 @ 14:40 PM Down with fun!
Absolutely Godfrey, let's ban fun from the training room all-together and all become NVQ assessors instead. Throw away those old Cleese videos, he's not funny anymore and did we really learn anything from him?. Fun, suprises, entertainment? No. What people need is neurolinguistic programming...PROGRAMMING not training. Let's concentrate on sitting in the same position as them and using kinaesthetic language and plant our information subliminally. The map, after all, is not the territory! Lets make everything match the e-skills competency framework. ISO, now thats the important thing, and IIP don't forget that. Templates, that's what we need more of, and e-learning. Keep 'em at their workstations to train themselves. Who needs trainers at all?! Roll-on the day when we can feed them the information they need through an implanted chip, while they sleep. Roll 'Fish' video... ;o) Nick Hall
Elizabeth M Pritchard , 24 October 2005 @ 12:11 PM I agree-no mre fun!!
I run an NLP Practitioner Course which takes place over 10 weekends, almost a year. I did ask this year's group to release me from the 'be entertaining' burden! Loathe the balloon bursting, jolly japes style, prefer genuine belly laughs... Elizabeth 01326 212959 www.zeteticmind.com Elizabeth M Pritchard
Lynda Hudson , 24 October 2005 @ 12:04 PM Satisfaction they have learned something new
What a good article! Actually I think that if participants can go away feeling that they have learned something they didn't know before or they can do something significantly better than they could do before, they will be very satisfied. What's more that satisfaction will remain with them over time. One of the courses I run is for Accommodation officers at English Language schools. There are seven training days; the two they like best are the ones that are packed full of information on formal legislation and regulations from the British Council whereas I always used to expect them to like best the ones that had more of a dynamic content. Lots of common sense in your article
John Mitchell , 24 October 2005 @ 11:39 AM Learning and Fun
The educational theory behind what you are saying Godfrey is well established. I find it embarrasing knowing that colleagues in our profession are behaving as they do and bringing training such a bad name. The people with whom we need credibility are the senior people; and it is they who are put off. I have a 14-point set of professional values which I give to potential clients. Point 3 is: 'We believe learning should be fun. However, we don’t do fun for its own sake.' So this issue is high on my professional agenda. (Whilst I am on my soap box, this is only exceeded on my priority list by: 1. We provide coaching, training, materials and consultancy advice that is based upon intelligent, established, tried and tested principles of management – we avoid quackery and fad. 2. We strive to be well informed and contemporary in everything we do. But that's another couple of controverial issues.)
John Mitchell, MA FCIPD John Mitchell Associates Plymouth John Mitchell
Jeremy Hall , 24 October 2005 @ 11:24 AM Boring is Good!
I agree. Engaging is the important thing. Fun, especially in the context of bells and whistles (line chrome and fins on 1950's American Cars) can be counter productive. In fact a recent paper by Professor Vladimir M. Sloutsky, Cognitive Development Lab, Ohio State demonstrates that over eloboration can detract from learning.
I often wonder why some instructional design companies feel that elabouration is necessary for mankind to learn when a kitten has no such problems with a cotton reel!
I attended a seminar not so long ago in which the speaker urged us to add fun and creativity into training, and proceeded to use props and tricks to help us generate random moments of such 'joy' to be inserted into training sessions.
These random moments were just that though: there was complete disconnect between these joyful activities and any learning objectives. As such, I'd argue that they detracted from the learning rather than added to it, not only in terms of emphasis away from the worthiness of the subject matter, but also in terms of time.
To my disappointment, the majority of the audience walked out of that room saying things like "she's right - training does need to be made more fun!".
It's not true: if people care about the results they'll achieve by undertaking the learning, and if they can see / feel that the activities they're undertaking are indeed building up to achieving those results, then people will 'enjoy' the learning. No juggling balls necessary. John Salt
Candy Piercy , 24 October 2005 @ 10:04 AM You can have too much of a good thing!
I believe people learn more when they are enjoying themselves. So I think fun is a key element when writing training.
However, too much fun can become boring and pointless. Worst of all if the trainer is the one having fun and the participants end up just sitting there, watching a performance.
A good course needs to challenge previous behaviour and approaches - and being challenged seldom feels like fun.
What it comes down to is that training needs a wide range of approaches and moods. I find that keeps the participants fully engaged - and changes their behaviour once the training is over.
Graham O'Connell , 24 October 2005 @ 09:06 AM The role of fun
At last, a sane voice in a world of superficiality. I entirely agree that far too many training designs are built on very insubstantial concepts and are too often fluffed up with fun activities.
Really good learning is usually pretty engaging and does not need lots of fun activities. If the training isn't working then fix it, don't gloss over the cracks with paper thin humour.
Now, anyone who knows me will be a little surprised at this point as I do enjoy a laugh, especially when training. But I believe that this is at its best when it is natural, spontaneous and fits with the culture and dynamic of the group.
The role of fun is not to provide entertainment nor to obscure the learning. It can, however, play an important part in dissipating tensions, changing energy levels, unleashing creativity and in supporting an elgalitarian, humanised atmosphere.
I might design in 'fun' in some very particular circumstances. Firstly, if I though it might help break an unhelpful culture and secondly, drawing on accelerated learning principles, if it could help create a strong emotional link to a piece of learning so that it becomes more embedded.
So, I think fun has a part to play. Sometimes and important part. But, like Godfrey, I am concerned about the overuse of sugary, trival or ill-conceived activities whether in courses, team events or e-learning.
Slogging away trying to pep up yet another time management course? Godfrey Parkin suggests you stop and do something more engaging instead...
