Google Ad #1 - desktop - 728x90

Google Ad #3 - desktop - 728x90

Google Ad #1 - mobile - 300x200

Google Ad #3 - mobile - 300x200

ATD_Half_Page

Googel Ad #1 - Side Bar - Content pages

ATD Footer Logo

Patti Ross is vice president of the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation.

Patti Ross

May 2015 - TD Magazine

Tomorrow’s Leaders Build Their Emotional Intelligence Today

Patti Shank explores when and why performance support is often needed, and how performance support and training target different aspects of performance.

Science of Learning 101: When to Build Performance Support, Part 1

ROI, return-on-investment, is a metric fundamental to business and government alike. Executives and chief administrators recognize it, and business and operations managers appreciate it. It is calculated consistently and recognized across sectors around the world by those stakeholders with fiduciary responsibility for investments in people, projects, and processes.Unfortunately, misinformation and misuse cloud the value of this simple, yet powerful, metric. While its existence in performance improvement, learning and development, and human resources is not new, when reading much of the literature and comments made in conference sessions, one would think ROI is a new phenomenon, and one from which people should run.ROI’s use in learning and HR began in the 1970s when my husband and business partner, Jack Phillips, conducted the first ROI study on a cooperative education program. It has been used for years in quality and productivity training. In more recent years, it has grown to be a standard metric for many leadership development and coaching programs, as well as other “soft” solutions.Yet, confusion around ROI remains. The crux of the confusion lies in how and when to use ROI, and how to report it so stakeholders recognize the complete success of a program or project.Fear and angst around ROI exist, because like most investments, a negative ROI is inevitable for poorly implemented and misaligned programs. On the flip side, if the ROI is extraordinarily high, fear exists that the results will not be perceived as credible. This fear is unwarranted if you use a credible approach to develop it, follow fundamentally sound standards, and apply it consistently across all types of programs.Indeed, too many people would rather listen to the naysayers than figure it out for themselves. Jack and I have published more than 40 books with ASTD, as well as other publishers such as SHRM, Berrett-Koehler, McGraw Hill, and Wiley. These publications describe ROI’s use and importance in showing the contribution of programs and projects. They, along with many conference presentations and workshops, offer learning and development professionals opportunities to understand what ROI is, what it is not, and how to use it.Unfortunately, many professionals still fail to get the point—they miss the bottom line.Reported alone, ROI describes the economic impact of programs, projects, and processes. Reported in the context of other measures, it contributes to the complete story of program success and informs decisions about resource allocation.To learn how to measure the impact of your programs, projects, and initiatives, register now for an upcoming offering of ATD's ROI certificate. 

Bottom Line on ROI

October 2019 - TD Magazine

Sales Figures Look Rosy but Don’t Tell the Full Story

Science of Learning 101: Are We Doing the Right Things?

One of the issues to consider when designing instruction is how much instruction to provide. This question isn’t always considered, though, and we either provide too much instruction (or not enough).This brief story will emphasize one aspect of this problem.Joanna, a new hire in food service at the local hospital, is using an online course in hand washing. The course contains key facts about germs and how hand washing destroys them, but also statistics about hand washing, facts about different types of hand sanitizers, and the history of hospital-acquired infections and how they spread. The primary message is that feces contains life-threatening germs and that tiny amounts often get onto hands after using the bathroom or handling objects that others have touched. People in the hospital often have compromised immune systems and if they come into contact with these germs, they can get very sick or die. Hand washing can prevent spread of these germs.The problem: There is so much other information in the course that Joanna doesn’t get the seriousness of the message. She mostly comes away understanding that it’s a “very old issue.” Joanna passes the quiz but misses the critical message.Consider people handling the following work tasks:Situation A: an accounting clerk in an accounts payable department has a vendor on the phone with a question she doesn’t know the answer toSituation B: an armed guard at secure military facility gate is talking to a driver who is acting aggressively and trying to hand him a wrapped package to deliverSituation C: an air traffic controller sees two planes on the screen who will shortly be in each other’s air space.We often build training as if everyone needs to know everything about everything. And it’s easy to overload working memory and make it so people learn less than we want them to.We say it’s the SMEs fault. They gave us too much content. But that’s like saying a poor building design is the architect’s fault. Oops it is! And in this case we are the architect. We need to make sure people learn what we need them to learn.Cognitive OverloadOne reason why we need to provide only what people need is explained by “Cognitive Load Theory.” Cognitive load theory states that we have mental “bandwidth” restrictions. In other words, our brain can only process a certain amount of information at a time. And one of the things that can cause overload is too much information. Figure 1 is a diagram that shows the three types of cognitive load.Figure 1. Three Types of Cognitive Load (Source: Patti Shank and Cecelia Munzenmaier, Writing Better Learning Content)When Learners Don’t Need to Know EverythingDo we need to train the accounting clerk in situation A on every answer to every possible vendor question? Probably not. For that matter, why shouldn’t we train everyone on everything?People don’t have unlimited time.The important information will be drowned out by the “just-in-case” information. See the example of Joanne’s hand-washing training. And no, it’s not because they remember 10 percent of what they read, 20 percent of what they hear…If there’s too much information, it’s easy to get overwhelmed (see Cognitive Overload section).I hear you asking, “Where will they get other information if they need it?”  This may be non-obvious, but they’re probably not going to go open their previous training materials to find the answers they need. So build performance support materials (or have them do it). Let people get help from their social network.But Some Workers Do Need to Know EverythingOn the other hand, the workers facing the issues in B and C don’t have time to look up or ask someone the proper response. They need to know what to do in these situations, and how to do it effortlessly--even if these situations don’t happen very often. We call this “automaticity.” Automaticity is the ability to do a task effortlessly without any conscious effort or attention. Making something automatic includes accuracy and speed. Automaticity frees the mind to do other things, such as assess the situation, determine what is important, and find alternatives. Benefits of automaticity seem to be consistent across cognitive, perceptual, and motor tasks. But methods for training to automaticity for these different types of tasks are different (see resources). And training to automaticity requires a lot of work for the  training designer and the learner.We make fun of rote learning, but in some cases, it’s required—especially when dealing with the need for automaticity. The alphabet is an example of where rote learning is required in order to move on to more rote learning for reading proficiency and fluency. Not many tasks require the kind of automaticity described in examples B and C, but many do require the capability to recall information quickly, such as answering guest questions at a hotel desk while others are waiting or medical staff helping patients and families during pivotal moments.Imogen Casebourne wrote a good Science of Learning blog post about supporting the learning and remembering of this type of information.Key Point: If the task doesn’t require quick recall or the worker has time to look it up, it may be a waste of training time to add the additional recall practice.ReferencesThalheimer, W. (March 12, 2015) Debunk This: People Remember 10 Percent of What They Read, ATD Science of Learning Blog.Holt, B., & Rainey, S., (April 2002). An Overview of Automaticity and Implications for Training the Thinking Process, Western Kentucky University.Casebourne, I. (January 27, 2015). Spaced Learning: An Approach to Minimize the Forgetting Curve, ATD Science of Learning Blog

Science of Learning 101: The Case for Less…Generally

Marla designs help documents for the software applications her company produces. She sits across from Sean who develops monthly training webinars. Marla would like to “move up” to building instruction like Sean does, but Sean tells Marla that he thinks that the work that Marla does is actually more useful for the company’s users.We could argue the merits of documentation versus training, but there’s always the question of what each user needs at each moment of time. Context is everything.The science of learning is a science that works to understand how we learn and how we can improve learning and instruction. But to be fair, humans have been learning on their own since, well, forever.For instance, if Corinne wants to know how to do something, she often asks the person next to her and then gets on with her job. Yan mentors Morey and they meet most Tuesday afternoons. Marlena uses self-study materials and is going to take the certification exam in less than three weeks.So why do numerous disciplines (neuroscience, psychology, education, computer science, and others) expend enormous energy and resources to figure out how we learn and how to best build instruction? Can’t we just leave people alone?We Learn All the TimeAn interesting study by D.W. Livingstone shows that the majority of workplace learning happens not in formal settings but in informal ones. Numerous studies, including those by Livingstone, Jay Cross, Jane Hart and others, show informal learning as a proportion of all workplace learning at greater than 70 percent.If you haven’t already looked into informal learning, you should, because training professionals need to understand it more. Saul Carliner’s book, Informal Learning Basics, on the subject is a good primer, as are writings by Jay Cross and Jane Hart.You might think that the definitions of learning and instruction are self-explanatory, but actually they aren’t so simple. And they help us see exactly what we are trying to do.Learning, DefinedThere are many definitions of learning. A favorite comes from De Houwer:  “Learning is changes in behavior that result from experience.”Some definitions don’t require changes in behavior, only changes in knowledge. For me, this doesn’t cut it. If you can’t do what you are learning, the learning isn’t quite cooked yet. For example, if you can’t use what you are learning, you are on your way but not there yet.Applied learning requires knowledge and experience with the range of possibilities, of course. As my colleague Catherine Lombardozzi reminded me, people need deep knowledge, not only to follow a script. So if a customer service agent is following a script for handling returns, but she cannot handle the variety of returns, she only knows how to follow a script. She hasn’t really learned the whole returns process.One definition of learning discusses how learning requires the ability to correct errors. Now this is truly deep learning. One of the biggest problems people have is correcting things that go wrong. Misconceptions and mistakes are a big problem in learning. So when defining learning, we may want to determine how far into expertise we are talking about. Are they proficient (competent or skilled) or are they expert?Why Build Instruction?People can and do learn on their own. But we also know that when there are very specific things we want people to be able to do, there are efficient ways to help them. If learning occurs when we interact with our environment, then instruction is the creation of special environments specifically to promote learning.Dr. Richard Mayer, professor of psychology at the University of California, in his book Applying the Science of Learning reminds us we are trying to change behavior as a result of instruction and there are methods to do so that are more effective than others (that’s what the science of learning and instruction are about).This view has very far reaching implications. It means that if we are building “instruction,” we have to impact what people do. That’s a high bar. Although it is may not be practical to expect that everything we do reach that high bar, we ought to reach that bar often.So that leads to two question that we should ask ourselves:How do we infer (assume changes in) learning after instruction?How do we determine if the change has made it from instruction to the job?We will answer these critical questions soon.This is article 1 of Science of Learning 101, and I very much want your comments. Is this helpful to you? Does it answer your questions? Your comments can change the course of this series.ReferencesCross, J. (2007). Informal learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that inspire innovation andPerformance. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.De Houwer, J., Barnes-Holmes, D. & Moors, A (2013). What is learning? On the nature and merits of a functional definition of learning. Psychonomic bulletin & review.Livingstone, D.W. (2001). Adults’ informal learning: Definitions, findings, gaps and future research. NALL Working Paper 21-20010. Centre for the Study of Education and Work, Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, University of Toronto. Retrieved from  Mayer, R. E. (2011). Applying the science of learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Science of Learning 101: What’s the Point of Instruction?

How do you brush up on your skills—or get started in developing mobile learning assets?

Search results for 'Patti Ross'

Categories

Refine By