Over the years, I’ve had my share of facilitating learning programs for reluctant groups of employees, who were there not because they had chosen the learning but because somebody else in their organisation had thought they needed it.
Totally agree with this 200%!!! I’ve had to coach people who were required to get coaching as part of a course. Some simply didn’t want to be there. After some time I took a similar approach and just brought up the observed resistance. It did help clear the air and made for a much better experience all round.
I hope the day comes when there are no more participants who did not choose to be there. That means so much more work from program oragnisers- both internal and external- as getting buy-in for learning is the hardest thing! But it’s so worth it!
This is really smart. Teachers know the importance of ownership -- no meaningful learning happens without it. A profit-driven corporation ignores the principle at its own peril. Universities are not profit driven, which I think creates a deadly situation where regulatory compliance (for accreditation or perceived liability) is sometimes the primary "why" for mandatory training. And the consultants designing the plug-n-play modules don't seem to care about the learning experience if they're still getting paid. I sat through more Title IX and DEI trainings than I can count as a professor, and while I understood that they were well-intentioned, they were often poorly designed and very ineffective for a teaching audience. They say that teachers make the worst students, which is definitely true when teachers are subjected to inferior teaching.
I'm with you, Joshua. I would just add one caveat - in certain countries, Universities have become profit-driven, as public funding has dropped and their survival has started to depend on growing their own revenue streams. In Australia, for example, the over-reliance on international students (with the huge fees they pay) has actually had a negative impact on the quality of University education. As for the L&D consultants and the plug-n-play approach - very few org clients are accepting the 'off the shelf' programs nowadays, and I am really happy that is the case. The higher the standards of our participants, the more we'll be forced to grow ourselves as learning designers/facilitators.
Totally agree with this 200%!!! I’ve had to coach people who were required to get coaching as part of a course. Some simply didn’t want to be there. After some time I took a similar approach and just brought up the observed resistance. It did help clear the air and made for a much better experience all round.
I hope the day comes when there are no more participants who did not choose to be there. That means so much more work from program oragnisers- both internal and external- as getting buy-in for learning is the hardest thing! But it’s so worth it!
This is really smart. Teachers know the importance of ownership -- no meaningful learning happens without it. A profit-driven corporation ignores the principle at its own peril. Universities are not profit driven, which I think creates a deadly situation where regulatory compliance (for accreditation or perceived liability) is sometimes the primary "why" for mandatory training. And the consultants designing the plug-n-play modules don't seem to care about the learning experience if they're still getting paid. I sat through more Title IX and DEI trainings than I can count as a professor, and while I understood that they were well-intentioned, they were often poorly designed and very ineffective for a teaching audience. They say that teachers make the worst students, which is definitely true when teachers are subjected to inferior teaching.
I'm with you, Joshua. I would just add one caveat - in certain countries, Universities have become profit-driven, as public funding has dropped and their survival has started to depend on growing their own revenue streams. In Australia, for example, the over-reliance on international students (with the huge fees they pay) has actually had a negative impact on the quality of University education. As for the L&D consultants and the plug-n-play approach - very few org clients are accepting the 'off the shelf' programs nowadays, and I am really happy that is the case. The higher the standards of our participants, the more we'll be forced to grow ourselves as learning designers/facilitators.