That was what my father always told me and he was right. Learning by doing is not a revolutionary notion. It first promoted by the educational philosopher John Dewey in the 1920s. Learning by doing takes time and who has time to spare these days? This blog is for those of you who want to develop content right the first time.
Practice as an instructional strategy is stronger than Lysol®, but to work it has to be realistic, start out easy, gradually become more complex, and be rewarding.
Be Realistic
Nothing diminishes the credibility of content more than practice that is trivial or unrealistic. For practice to be meaningful it has to require people to exhibit something that has value to them. Gone are the days when learning was viewed as valuable in and of itself. They need to perform actions similar to the ones that they are expected to perform on the job. This can get tricky, because exhibiting those actions may require expensive equipment and prerequisite behaviors which are beyond the scope of your content. For example, if you are training military personnel to troubleshoot paper mill equipment, do they really need to repair the equipment, or is identifying the parts that need to be repaired enough? What type of responses would be meaningful? Would circling a picture of a failed component be meaningful, or do you need to have a mini-mill and a couple of sets of wrenches in the classroom?
If this were a perfect world, bring on the mini-mill, but in most situations, I recommend going with the circle. If you are teaching adults to read, forget Dick and Jane. Stick with documents that they have more of an interest in, like job or credit card applications. If you are training folks to use computer applications, don’t go with vanilla. Use forms and spreadsheets that members of the audience are familiar with. You don’t have to be boring. Incorporate data that is unique and even entertaining, such as a information from a company that imports tropical fish, or even exotic zoo animals.
Start Out Easy
You have to crawl before you can walk, but at some point you do need to get off your knees. At first you can take a little reality out of you practice exercise to make sure that people get the rewards they need to continue moving on. Don’t stop there! Provide more practice, each time adding a little more reality until you approximate the complexity of the real work.
Be Rewarding
People may be rewarded by donuts and deli sandwiches, but what really lights their fire, is being able to do something that they were not able to do before. Something that will help them Monday morning when they return to work.
