by Ken Burnett
This month I want to spend a few minutes on the topics of blended learning, reporting and Mark Twain. I hope you will find all of them interesting. The blended learning section is to introduce you to a learning strategy that is critical to your organization. The reporting section is a quick look at some guidelines for doing reporting. Mark Twain's short stories are included, because on a cold winter day here in Salt Lake with 32 days before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, it seemed like the right thing to do.
In the last blog, I introduced you to our products and services approach. In this blog, I thought we would look at blended learning overall, and provide you a few more examples of blended learning approaches that we use at the Bank. Some of the more critical blended learning approaches we have at the Bank are our core skills and our approach to teller training. I will talk about classroom, self-paced online learning, and structured OJT. Let me spend a few minutes on blended learning, before I focus on some specific examples.
Blended learning is a lot like what Mark Twain said about the weather. A lot of people talk about it, but no one does anything about it. My view of blended learning is that it shouldn't be the goal of a training program, but the output of a program that is well designed. Before I get too far into this, my definition of blended training uses a mix of various types of media to accomplish its training goals. During our February webinar, I will spend a little more time on discussing blended learning approaches.
Blended learning provides the training designer the option (I would argue requirement) of using the most appropriate media for each section of content. For example, we deliver bank wide core skills training in a classroom environment for many different reasons. Effective classroom learning provides a good way to deliver cultural messages about your organization. Having employees learn from each other and get a consistent voice around a topic is another advantage of classroom learning. The instructor can also hear if the learner is having trouble with a topic, and adjust the class to meet their needs.
Classroom learning is not the most effective way to deliver all types of content. For basic knowledge or to mimic a system for practice self-paced, online learning is effective. We also use online for proficiency testing, because of the options for randomizing questions, record keeping, and reporting the data, and for the ease of test delivery.
Let me tell you about the specific training approach we use to train our tellers at the Bank. We hire employees in groups of 2-5 per month, so it is very difficult to have a teller training "class." We had to figure out a different model. The approach we came up with is structured OJT (On the Job Training) with one-on-one mentoring for specific job skills, classroom for other skills training and online proficiency testing. We blend these training approaches to effectively train our associates.
The reason I call it structured OJT, is that for many of the core jobs at the Bank, we have built task lists. As part of those task lists, we also identify outputs for each task. Rather than just have the new employee sit with their coach, and they learn random tasks, structured OJT, provides a script or list of things the employee must learn. Unstructured OJT is, in my opinion, a waste of time. When the new teller sits with another associate to learn a job, the associate teaching the job is required to teach the new associate a specific list of tasks with the accompanying outputs. The task lists should tie into a knowledge management system similar to the Passageways knowledge management system as common repository of knowledge.
The next step in the process is to deliver skills like presentation skills or customer service skills in a classroom environment. We use the Passageways Learning Management System (LMS) for this part of the process. The last piece is the online proficiency testing part. To assist with randomizing the questions, and making sure the test chooses from the right types of questions, you need a test generating piece of software. We use the test generating tool from the LMS. The outcome of this strategy is a blended learning approach that meets the goals of effective training while taking into account the limitations of the organization and advantages of the software. We also use the same type of approach for the Bank's compliance training. To learn more about the compliance approach, please come to our next webinar.
Reporting
When you design reports for managers regarding the learning that happens in your organization, the most important questions to ask are why you are reporting the information, and what do you expect the person to do with the information you are giving them. I make sure that I have the audience, and the learning and performance expectations understood before the class, and that I am able to design reports to meet those needs. I will talk more about these and other reports during my February webinar.
Mark Twain's Top Short Stories (according to Ken Burnett)
I have long been a fan of Mark Twain. I think his short stories stand up to his novels. This is by no means a consensus.
• The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
• Eve's Diary
• Cannibalism in The Cars
• Experience Of The McWilliamses With Membranous Croup
• The Stolen White Elephant
• Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
• The Carnival of Crime in Connecticut
• The Curious Dream
• A Ghost Story
• The Coyote