My daughter, a high school senior, is presently working through a college-level literature course on-line. One of the assigned books is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Ironically, she read this same book as an eighth grader in a different school district. When she looked at the course syllabus, her initial thought was, “This is great. I’ve already read the book.”But then she discovered that rather than being asked to write an essay or two about the novel’s premise and characters, she would have to answer more than 40 questions that might be categorized as meaningless busy work. These include, “What kind of gum did Scout find in the tree? and What caused the laughter from inside the Radley house?”
This has turned Erin’s interest in the course into resentment, because it seems to demonstrate that the instructor does not trust his or her students. Rather than pushing students to think critically about the plot, character development and approach to writing, they are forced to slog through minutiae. Surely, the instructor could have taken the time to develop a series of assignments that would compel students to read the book. In truth, that’s part of the job. It makes me shudder to think how many students have been dissuaded from pursuing additional classes in literature after being exposed to this approach from this instructor and others.
But all this got me thinking about corporate training. The objective in Erin’s literature course should not be to memorize meaningless trivia, but to develop and understand the construction of literary writing and relate the plot and characters to the students’ life experience. The same thing is true in training. Sure, there are lots of instances where it is necessary to learn minutiae that may seem irrelevant at the time. Memorizing the hundreds of produce labeling units (PLU) in a supermarket comes to mind.
When it comes to tasks requiring problem solving, however, compelling learners to think is essential to ensuring that they will thrive on the job. The objective here is not to force trainees to memorize step-by-step instructions, but to develop a sense of confident reasoning. Take a look at the courses you teach and the training you provide individually. Are you focused on the right objectives? Are the techniques you are using to train truly meeting those objectives? Are you measuring the outcomes of these efforts to make sure that the learning is landing?