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Evan Seder

The last post addressed how to develop a handbook's table of contents and alluded to the idea that The Handbook will ensure that the content from our distinguished authors will be practical and helpful. How will The ASTD Leadership Handbook be useful and practical for you? Those of you familiar with my work know that I am all about practical. How can I help you take any content and easily use it in your day-to-day work?What Constitutes Practical?We could turn to any number of definitions: adapted for actual use; results of action; engaged in judicious and sensible practice or work; adopt a means to an end; or others from many sources. The bottom line is that practical means you will be able to implement the content to accomplish something of use.To ensure that The ASTD Leadership Handbook is practical, we have asked the authors to contribute a tool that the readers can use to better understand the content, to implement the content with others (after all, you are trainers), or to adapt the content for actual use.What's a Tool?What's a tool? Well that's what our authors asked too. We suggested that a tool could be a template, worksheet, checklist, model, quiz, survey, or any job aid that helps the reader implement the content of the chapter. To make it as easy for our authors as possible, I provided few parameters. The tool could be:Previously published or not.Validated or not.Relative to the entire chapter or focus on just one area.The chapters and their accompanying tools are arriving every day. Here are a few of the tools you will have access to. These tools will help you implement leadership concepts you will read about in The Handbook.John Kotters Eight Step Change Model.Bill Gentry's Checklist for Avoiding Leader Derailment.Marshall Goldsmith's mini Coaching Survey.Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood's Personal Leadership Proficiency Leadership DNA model, they call the Leadership Code.Patrick Lencioni's Team Assessment to help you evaluate your team's susceptibility to the five dysfunctions of a team.Bev Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evan's "Jerk Checklist."Len Goodstein's Applied Strategic Planning Model.Ed Betof's Checklist for Mentoring Leaders.This list constitutes less than 1/3 of the tools that will accompany The Handbook. So what do you think? Do these sound practical to you?How Can You Use the Tools?Here's the best part. The tools will be found on a companion website. You will be able to download them. As long as you maintain the copyright and the "used with permission" state,emt on the tool, you will be able to use it for your daily work. Free tools! Now that's exciting!Next Up: How to Ensure QualityRespected authors are good. Realistic topics are good. Practical content is good. But what about quality? In my next post I will provide you with several ideas for how The ASTD Leadership Handbook will guarantee the highest quality possible.

Creating a Leadership Handbook: Part 3

Video is the New Flip ChartVideo has been a part of adult learning for as long as anyone can remember.  So why all the fuss today about video and learning? Learning video started out with the old film strip.  Curtains were closed in our seminar rooms, the lights dimmed and then the film projector was fired up with that familiar sound of clackety-clack.  Movie projectors were superseded by big clunky video machines that often didn’t work.  Then DVDs came along and we played video from our computers.The Difference Is That We Can Now Make the VideoWhat’s changed is that technology has become so cheap that anyone can afford to buy video equipment and churn out video that’s half-decent. And while the technology has plummeted in price, the sophistication of this newly affordable gear has skyrocketed.  The quality of video we get from these new cheap cameras means we don’t need to do half as much work to get as good pictures as TV professionals do with higher-end cameras. Sure they need more control but the compromise gives us access to making great video.As a result, trainers now have the potential to make engaging video for next to nothing that extends the reach of our learning beyond the classroom while also giving us the opportunity to bring the outside world into the classroom. Learning is even more accessible. It doesn’t just help the trainer and trainee.For the organization, on-demand learning video offers learners the opportunity to fit learning around their disparate schedules. And it saves the time, cost, and stress of travel.Bringing the Outside World InTrainers who deliver the same class once a month or even several times a month understand the challenge of bringing subject matter experts (SMEs) into the classroom.  Having SMEs in the classroom makes the learning more “real world” and gives learners direct access to people on the ground.  But ask an SME to give up an hour every week or so and you get a flat no. “I gotta do my day job!” they’ll tell you.  Video gives you the opportunity to record your SME so you can have her appearance every time you run the class without having to imposing on her time.Plus, as the SME talks about a chemical process in the plant, you can use the video opportunity to cut to video that shows what she’s talking about bringing her content to life. This is more enriching than the SME talking about it, showing dull, lifeless PowerPoint slides or worse still using an overhead projector.Taking Learning Outside the ClassroomNot everyone in the workplace needs a whole course.  Sometimes it’s a quick nugget to help solve a problem on the run.  Video is very good in short, sharp nuggets.  It’s perfect for just-in-time learning.  Once upon a time, someone in the field could call a trainer for a quick learning moment. Nowadays, trainers don’t have as much time.  So video enables them to access key learning when they need it.On-demand learning, which is what you get from video, dovetails nicely into some adult learning principles we all hold close such as self-paced, interactive and at a place where the learner wants it as well as at a time the learner wants it.Of course video will be playing a big part in mobile learning as we make learning available in what I call the 4-As… learning Anytime, Anywhere, for Anyone, and Anyhow.Helping the OrganizationWe all know that organizations get excited when they can see opportunities to save money. So delivering learning via video gets the attention of the finance folks. Even if it only reduces face-to-face needs by 30%, it is saving money.It saves much of the time lost as high performers sit in airports and trudge through security lines waiting for flights to attend training on the other side of the country.  And it saves hotel costs because content that was formerly delivered face-to-face can be delivered via video. This can lead to four face-to-face days becoming two face-to-face days because content is pre-learned.Well-shot video also improves some learning.Implications for Workplace Learning ProfessionalsSo video offers a bunch of advantages for trainers. Having the skill to create video for e-learning, use in a classroom, or distribution by mobile is going to be very important in the next few years.Trainers who are seriously investigating video will find three areas of development crucial to their success. The first is technical. The second is psychological. And the third is workflow.First, trainers will need to learn how to get good shots using consumer level cameras. Good shots attract eyeballs. Bad shots do not. If you have shaky-cam, poorly composed shots, or poor audio, viewers will quickly click away from your video, or worse still, let their minds wander.Many techniques professionals use in the media business can be applied to entry-level and consumer-level cameras. This comes down to how to operate the camera as well as develop a sense for visual composition.Second, learning professionals need to learn the psychology of media and video communication. E-learning grows from the same root principles as classroom communication but requires a different set of skills.Third, learning professionals need to learn how to make video efficiently. It’s not something they should dabble with. Trainers should learn workflows that enable them to churn out more video rather than less. And workflows that minimize mistakes.Master these three areas and trainers will be creating fabulous content, doing it fast, and doing it affordably. And in the process they’ll be extending their learning beyond the classroom and bringing the world into the classroom via video. The net result will be learning for learners that can be taken anywhere, anytime, anyhow and by anyone.Jonathan Halls is the author of the ASTD Best Selling book, Rapid Video Development for Trainers. ASTD has just launched an intensive two-day workshop based on the book, Rapid Video Development for Learning Certificate.

Video is the New Flip Chart

Sally is the chief learning officer for a large well-known bank. She was recently brought in by her CEO to “professionalize” the Learning and Performance function within the company. Sally inherited a very extensive learning measurement system that rigorously cataloged the results of each training course using Likert-Like questions and numerical averaging.As Sally sifts through the data, she notices something curious. Instructors whose smile sheet ratings were consistently low were still teaching, even after several years of poor results. Sally, of course, is thrilled! She’s been mandated to professionalize the learning function and already she’s found a problem she can fix. She makes a plan. She’ll bring her team together to improve—or fire—the low-performing trainers.Brilliant, right? Maybe! It depends on whether Sally’s assumptions are accurate:Instructors who get the best smile sheet ratings will help their learners achieve the best learning results and the best on-the-job performance. Instructors who get the worst smile sheet ratings will produce learners who achieve the worst learning results and the worst on-the-job performance.Interestingly, Sally’s predecessors never thought to correlate their smile sheet ratings with learning results or on-the-job performance. Sally, like most L&D professionals, doesn’t think of doing this either. She just assumes that smile sheet results are related to learning outcomes. Indeed, as an industry, we tend to assume that smile sheets are telling us something important about the successes and failures of our training efforts. Are we right? Is Sally right? And does it really matter, anyway?In 2013, ATD and i4cp teamed up to examine how organizations measure the effectiveness of the learning programs. The research, reported in The Value of Learning: Gauging the Business Impact of Organizational Learning Programs, found that Level 1 smile sheets were by far the most common method of measuring our learning solutions. One implication from these findings is that we, as workplace learning professionals, get most of our feedback from smile sheet data.Consequently, because feedback enables improvement, the validity of smile sheet data is critical. In other words, if we’re not getting good data from our smile sheets, we’re not going to be able to create maximally effective learning.Research on Smile SheetsSo, what does the research say? Are smile sheets effective in giving good feedback? The short answer is No. Two meta-analyses in the scientific literature covering more than 150 research studies found that smile sheets are virtually uncorrelated with learning results (see Further Reading below). Specifically, both meta-analyses found that smile sheets were correlated with learning results with a correlation of r = .09.Statisticians tell us that correlations below r = .30 should be considered weak correlations. Therefore, a correlation of r = .09 is practically no correlation at all! It would be like correlating smartphone usage with hair color.Bottom line: Sally’s assumptions were faulty. Our assumptions, as an industry, have been faulty for decades. We’re all caught in the delusion that smile sheets tell us something important, when in fact they may regularly mislead us.A Smarter Smile SheetWow! What should we do then? Should we throw out our smile sheets? Should we collect data to be polite and then ignore the data? I don’t think so. After thinking about the smile sheet problem for a decade or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that if L&D professionals redesign smile sheets from the ground up—based on the science of learning and guidelines from the measurement field—we can build effective smile sheets.In Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form, (more info available at www.SmileSheets.com), I describe how to build a much more effective smile sheet. There are two critical aspects.First, questions should be based on the science of learning. Because we’re asking that our smile sheets tell us about learning, it makes sense to base our smile sheet designs on learning science. Second, we have to do a better job of designing our smile sheet questions. Most of us use Likert-like scales or numerical items, both of which are fundamentally inappropriate for smile sheet use. We also have to help our learners make good smile sheet decisions. According to research from Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014), as well as Kirschner and van Merriënboer (2013), learners don’t always know their own learning. Because of this, asking them questions about their learning may give us faulty information—unless we design our questions to support their smile-sheet decision making. Too many of our questions ask learners to answer questions they are not prepared to answer.Here are some of the major areas that smile sheet questions should target:ability of learners to successfully apply what they learned to their work learners’ full comprehension of what was presented to them learners’ capability to remember what they’ve learned level of motivation that learners will bring to implement what they’ve learned post-training resource that will guide and enable learners to persevere in putting their learning into practice.Most smile sheets do a poor job of targeting these issues, which is unfortunate because it is through these types of research-inspired factors that learning effectiveness can be discerned.Bottom LineMost of our smile sheets are ineffective and provide poor feedback. Fortunately, we can build better ones. Of course, smile sheets will never give us all the information we need. It’s critical that we also measure learning by focusing on learner comprehension, decision making, and memory, as well as measure application by examining the factors and results produced in the way of on-the-job performance.While smile sheets are never enough, most organizations will continue to use them, so we ought to make them as effective as possible. Scientific research makes it clear that our current smile sheet efforts are ineffective. Fortunately, the science of learning and wisdom from the measurement field give us hope for better smile sheets.Like what you read? Join us at the ATD 2016 International Conference & Exposition in Denver, CO, May 22-25 to hear Will Thalheimer speak.Further ReadingAlliger, G. M., Tannenbaum, S. I., Bennett, W., Jr., Traver, H., & Shotland, A. (1997). A meta-analysis of the relations among training criteria. Personnel Psychology, 50(2), 341-358.Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L. III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Kirschner, P. A., & van Merriënboer, J. J. G. (2013). Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education. Educational Psychologist, 48(3), 169-183.Sitzmann, T., Brown, K. G., Casper, W. J., Ely, K., & Zimmerman, R. D. (2008). A review and meta-analysis of the nomological network of trainee reactions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 280-295.

Evan Seder

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