Pic­ture it: You’re a stu­dent in a class­room. The instruc­tor is throw­ing out fact after fact. At first, you lis­ten intently, try­ing to grasp every­thing that’s going on. After about 15 min­utes, your atten­tion drifts.  After try­ing to focus a few more times, you feel so over­whelmed (and pos­si­bly irri­tated and bored) that you just give up.

Hey-how did you like being on the receiv­ing end?

Train­ers, have some sym­pa­thy. The instruc­tor was just try­ing to “cover the mate­r­ial.” (How many times have YOU used this line?)

The fact is, more con­tent does not pro­duce more com­pe­ten­cies. Infor­ma­tion over­load can pro­duce con­fu­sion, anx­i­ety, and inde­ci­sion. It does NOT help stu­dents trans­fer learn­ing into the real world.

Train­ing Rule: “Less is More”

Iden­tify the most impor­tant pieces of con­tent. Spend train­ing time to ensure that par­tic­i­pants can process the infor­ma­tion and apply it to real-world situations.

Here is a short list of instruc­tional strate­gies you can use to bring your lesson’s con­tent alive:

• Dis­cus­sions
• Sur­veys
• Contests
• Case studies
• Drills
• Reflec­tive writing
• Mind maps
• Jigsaws
• Brainstorming
• Role-plays
• Simulations

The moral is: By try­ing to “cover all the mate­r­ial,” you do just that—cover up what’s really important.

Related posts:

1. Wild Class­room: How to Pre­vent the Chaos
2. Pre­sen­ta­tion Is Not Training
3. How to Help Adults Learn Best
4. All Pre­sent­ing Is Persuasive
5. What Sep­a­rates Great Train­ers From the Merely “OK?”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Blog, Presentation Skills, Training Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.