For the past two weeks now I have had to sit in training for work. The first part of it I had to travel to Washington DC, and this week I'm in a basement computer lab of a building on campus. Which has caused me to start pondering the functionality of "training." Is it useful? Is it really helping? What are we supposed to take away... and of course my practical mind has allowed me to find the following things:
- Effectiveness- This is day four of the four day training and as I look around the room right now, I can see no one on task. The woman next to me is looking up recipes, the guy across the way is Googling something. I have been emailing my friends in this class trying to make them laugh or scream as way to shake things up. And just the fact that I'm typing this blog... I'm not on task, obviously.
- Education- I have to ask, what was the objective of this training... was I supposed to learn something? I would imagine that's the case... The irony is that the only time I have paid attention I was trying to think of ways I could have been broken down and taught the same information in any other way. I guess that's the educator in me... and the COMPLETE irony of education in general... right now we are being taught more "effective" ways to educate, by a educational model that is very ineffective. Boo, hiss.
- Sanity- Anyone that is asked to sit still and listen for 6-8 hours at a time is fueling the discipline fire... in the sense that it is abnormal to sit for that long, (especially in a society that is producing an ADD population... another topic , for another day) and as a effort to remain sane, you start to inwardly revolt against the teacher, inner monologues become paramount and I have even found myself yelling at the teacher to "stop talking" in my head... this eventually comes to an outward manifestation if left idol for too long. For instance, yesterday I caught myself giving an unintended loud, frustrated sigh when we were asked to do something in class. It just escaped, but the trainer heard it, as did the rest of the class... and although I was briefly reprimanded by the trainer with a sharp look, several other members of the class gave me a "I feel the same way" smile... or a preverbial high-five for my display, so it has only encouraged me to do more of the same things... poor trainer.
- Group Reaction- I suppose it is a hard thing to do to read your audience and know how to restructure content to engage the group. Lots of people can tell when the audience is bored beyond words, but don't know how to fix their presentation. It is the sign of a master teacher who can successfully do this... and very few people possess it. So I guess in this instance, is gives me pause to stop and think about how I would not train... and in essence I do think of more effective ways to teach... WAIT... woah... this might just be an underhanded training model. (Though I highly doubt it)... but if so... bravo (golf clap/ standing ovation).
The way I see it is you have about one day (about 4-5 hours) where you can really train with an engaged adult audience. Anything beyond that is wasted money, because people just don't care. So here I am... a-wastin' money. :)
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