Sticky Learning

Where in the world are you?

1. Discuss why illusions of knowing mislead our learning.

2. Identify several EBE strategies that your education should embrace for greater attendee ROI.

3. Define & explain why elaboration is critical to make new learning stronger & more memorable.

Which one interests you most and why?

Untitled Slide

Untitled Slide

If it weren't for attendees, we'd be out of jobs.

Attendees are our raison d'être

The reason we offer education, conferences

Our Attendees are Our

• Key stakeholders
• Customers
• Strongest critics
• Ardent supporters
• Learners

Our attendees are changing & evolving.

Important to remember:

• What this session offers will never be adequately understood or even visible until you step out and practice them.

Important to remember:

• We need to be open and embrace Learning, Unlearning & Relearning.

How do you prefer to learn?

Shooting An Azimuth

Shooting An Azimuth

• Navigation term
• Sighting an object on horizon in direction you're traveling

Climb a height & sight an object on horizon in direction of travel

Then adjust your compass heading to safeguard that you are still gaining on your objective while you tread through the forest below.

Learning illusions are potent persuaders.

Going about learning in the wrong ways.

We are misguiding our attendees & giving them poor advice.

Too much of what we think we know about learning is taken on faith and intuition but does not hold up under empirical research.

Persistent illusions of knowing lead us to labor at unproductive strategies.

How do you know if you've learned something?

Why don't we implement these strategies of telling another, teaching another, or explaining it in my own words at our education efforts?

How do you quantify the value of your education programming?

Most of us would agree that that we don’t deliver nearly as much value as we thought when it comes to our education offerings.

Many of us believe that all education has some inherent & intrinsic value.

In an increasingly competitive, global and knowledge-based biz climate

Learning effectiveness has become more important.

Learning effectiveness is the source of competitive advantage.

Your education should yield a greater return on investment for attendees.

When does education create a real value for attendees?

Education produces real business value only when it's applied to the work of individual & organization.

Most education is learning scrap.

Learning Scrap

• Wasted efforts
• Wasted time
• Wasted opportunity
• Is expensive

Learning Scrap

• Information delivered but is never mentally processed, connected to past knowledge and experiences, understood or applied

Adversely impacts attendees' & their company's competitiveness.

Untitled Slide

Untitled Slide

Learning Scrap

• Typical Conference 45%-53% education

Education Spend Per Employee

• Average spend from 27,000 companies per employee on education $1,195 - CEB Metrics 2014

Conference Learning Scrap waste

• 45% X $1,195 X 5,000 Attendees = $2.7 million dollars wasted
• CEB Metrics 2014

Value Of Performance Improvement

• 6% X $60,000 (avg salary) X 5,000 Attendees = $18 million dollars
• CEB Metrics 2014

Value Of Performance Improvement

• Increase of $30 million if tweaks made to education that increases performance improvement
• CEB Metrics 2014

Learning Means

• Acquiring knowledge & skills

Learning Means

• Acquiring knowledge & skills
• Having them readily available from memory

Learning Means

• Making sense of content
• Connecting to previous content & experience

Learning Means

• Using that knowledge and skill for problem solving and opportunities

Where we Probably agree

• Learning requires memory. It has to be there later to use it.

Where we Probably agree

• We can't stop learning and remembering. We have to do it for the rest of our lives.

Where we Probably agree

• Learning is an acquired skill.

Where we Probably Disagree

• The most effective learning strategies are counterintuitive.

If learning strategies are counterintuitive and most of what we know about learning is wrong, how does this impact our education offerings?

Common sense practice: Attending education & listening to a speaker automatically produces learning.

Common sense practice: Attending lectures means learning is easy.

What do you need to build a house?

Building a house requires knowledge of countless materials.

Building a house requires conceptual understanding of other aspects like load-bearing properties, ground types, energy transfer, etc.

Building a house requires big picture understanding of how it all fits together and the purpose it serves.

Authentic learning requires knowledge, conceptual understanding of application and understanding of big purpose.

Mastering the lecture or text is not the same thing as mastering the ideas behind them.

Don't be fooled!

Just because you can repeat a speaker's phrase or read your notes,

Is no indication that you understand the principals discussed, how to apply them or how they relate to what you already know and do.

Illusion of mastery

Evidence Based Education Strategy

• Learning is deeper & more durable when it is effortful.

Evidence Based Education Strategy

• Trying to solve the problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning even when errors are made in attempts.

Learning that is easy is like writing in the sand, here today, gone tomorrow.

60 tips in 60 seconds.
Collecting all PPTs.
Crib notes and tip sheets.

EBE Strategies

1. Relaxed Alertness

Relaxed Alertness

• Social environment that elicits interests, purpose and meanings.

Relaxed Alertness

• Highly affected by our fear and pleasure centers.

Attendee feels confident, interested and intrinsically motivated.

1. Relaxed Alertness

2. Orchestrated Immersion in

Orchestrated Immersion

• Content, standards, subject matter must be integrated within events & experiences that engage emotion, thinking & imagination.

Orchestrated Immersion

• More importantly, must have personal meaning for attendee learning.

Term orchestrated means the presenter provides experiences that the participants interact with in concrete and physical ways.

Orchestrated Immersion

• Identify attributes
• Generate descriptions
• Diagram how
• Draft a model

Ultimately, the attendee must own the learning by asking the attendee to do something with the content before leaving the session.

3. Active Processing

Active Processing

• Participant must be immersed in rich, complex, dynamic experiences. Not passive listening.

Active Processing

• Presenter must guide attendees to analyze, demonstrate, display, discuss, summarize, reflect on and present their thoughts for feedback.

Untitled Slide

Untitled Slide

Which of these three--
relaxed alertness,
orchestrated immersion,
active processing
--do you need to work on
more for your education offerings?

What is elaboration?

If presenters just engage their attendees in listening or repetition, the audience quickly hits a limit of what they can keep in their mind.

They reach cognitive overload fast.

If you engage each participant in elaboration, there’s no known limit to how much material they can learn. Peter Brown

Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing in your words and connecting it with what you already know. Peter Brown

When a participant can explain how the new material relates to their knowledge

The stronger the grasp of content & the more mental connections that can be remembered later.

Putting the new info into larger context helps attendee learn & retain it.

3 Big Takeaways

1. Helping audiences learn how to learn is huge advantage.

1. When learning is harder, it's stronger and lasts longer.

2. Orchestrating education experiences is a must.

Learning is stronger when it matters; when the abstract is made concrete and personal.

3. Education needs to offer more opportunities for peer elaboration & less lecture.

Talking out loud, explaining what this means to me, describing how to apply it, is huge to hook the content & make it sticky so it can be remembered.