Just enough information to permit practice and no more

I was at a client meeting the other day at which we were agreeing principles that would act as a foundation to their l&d strategy. We were discussing the all-too-common tendency to over-teach and under-practise in formal workplace learning interventions.Here’s how one of the participants in the meeting summarised how the principle should read:

Provide just enough information to allow the learner to practise and no more

I’m really taken with this. It captures the idea perfectly in plain language. So what are the implications?Training is not education. In most cases the end goal is for the learner to be able to perform a task effectively and efficiently, rather than to acquire knowledge. Knowledge is useful, but only so far as it supports this goal.As you design a new course and are researching the topic, you’ll probably consult a subject expert. Almost without exception, they will want you to pass over just about all there is to be known about the subject. Having long forgotten what it’s like to be a novice, they believe it is all important.That’s not how the novices see it. They’re anxious. They want to have a go as soon as possible in order to build their confidence. If you bombard them with information early on, they will be overloaded and that just makes them more anxious.So, here’s how I’d recommend teaching a task:

  1. Engage the learner
  2. Provide just enough information to allow the learner to practise and no more, including demonstrations and worked examples
  3. Provide an opportunity for practice, starting simple
  4. Have the learner critique their own performance / provide additional feedback / correct any misunderstandings / answer questions / add more detail where appropriate
  5. Repeat steps 3-4, increasing the difficulty until the learner is confident enough to carry out the task for real on the job

This might sound obvious, but it’s not what many of us do. We tend to want to provide all the knowledge up front, when it’s more helpful to feed it in gradually as we work through the practical exercises. Classroom, on-job instruction, e-learning, makes no difference.

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