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Learning: I Do and I Understand 

I hear and I forget
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
                          Confucius

These simple words attributed to Confucius clearly state the intent of many of our education and training programs – to help our learners to understand. How many times during our educational and training careers have we found ourselves faced with the situation below?

It is that time of year to meet the annual training requirements in ethics, workplace diversity, sexual harassment prevention, etc. The setting is generally the same; you are in a classroom environment with a number of your co-workers. The thought at the forefront of your mind is not about the training subject, but about the mounds of other work that is piling up on your desk and how long you are going to have to work to catch up from this training. The instructors are trying to do their best to make the training meaningful and present the materials in an interesting manner. But there is something deeper that is bothering you other than the work piling up on your desk. What is that? Why are you so defensive about this training session? Then it comes to you. It is not the training that has you uneasy. It is not the loss of time. It is the fact that suddenly you have been transported back to a former classroom setting – you are back in high school! It will just be another day of lectures and memorizing, just to forget the information by tomorrow.

Lectures, reading materials, questions, examinations, being embarrassed because you might not know the correct answer, peers laughing at you because you make a mistake, peers thankful because they were not the ones singled out to answer the question or write the solution or proof on the board – these are all real fears that I have had, and I do not think that I am alone in my past learning experiences.

In this age of technology, e-learning, and the myriad other means and methods of education, why do we still have this educational angst and anxiety? It seems that there ought to be a better way for us to learn other than sitting in a classroom listening to someone lecture or read from the organization’s policy and procedures manuals. How can we get adult learners involved in their learning and make the learning experience interesting, engaging, and meaningful for all involved?

A number of academic graduate level programs and some companies have begun using case studies or descriptions of situations that require the students to work together in small groups and present their collective analysis or solutions to their peers. However, in spite of the apparent success of such programs, the normal approach to corporate level training and education still appears to be passive students and lectures in the classroom.

Cases, descriptive situations, and scenarios place the learner in a realistic situation working with others and having to make decisions based on incomplete and perhaps inaccurate information, much the same situation faced in the toady’s fast-paced and changing business environment.

How can we make our education and training programs a more realistic learning experience, more reflective of the day-to-day situations and decision that we expect our executives and other employees to face in the workplace? How do we get past sitting in a classroom listening to another lecture? How can we move beyond listening and forgetting, seeing and remembering, and move to doing and understanding?

There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but it requires creativity, initiative, and innovation on the part of trainers, teachers, and learners. It will require risk taking by senior leaders, risk in the form that this is a change, something that is new, and it requires having trust and confidence in employees. It will also necessitate having trust that they will involve themselves in the training and take the learning opportunities seriously. Finally, it requires confidence that the method will work and that the employees will apply what they have learned in the workplace.

One method to accomplish this “doing and understanding” is to adopt the method and process outlined below:

• Providing information – the background
• Setting the stage – the story
• Developing solutions – the doing
• Supporting decision making – the game
• The crucible of learning and understanding - the review

Providing information – the background. Providing a common base of knowledge and a common lexicon of terms is the first step in clearly communicating thoughts and ideas. Establishing this baseline of knowledge can be accomplished by many means. Naturally, using the usual means of books, notebooks, other printed documents, and CDs are the most prevalent. However, with the advances in e-learning technology, using the internet may become the most efficient and effective means to provide the information to the audience in a quick and relatively easy manner, an electronic “box of books.” Of course, access to computers and the internet is a requirement, and there may be areas where this means is not practical. The nature of the learning audience and the means they have at their disposal will determine the most effective medium to use and may very well include a combination of many means.

Setting the stage – the story. The story sets the stage for the rest of the learning event and is the important personal and emotional immersive portion of the learning experience. The story can be as simple as one or two paragraphs, or it can be a complex situation requiring a few pages to establish the learning environment. Embedded within the story are the learning objectives. It is within the story that we personally and emotionally involve our learners in the situation and capture their attention. The story whets our learners’ appetites and makes the creative and innovative juices begin to flow through reflective thinking. Our story does not have to be a writing prize winner; it just needs to establish a realistic setting and present the information in a believable and realistic mode. As with the background information, the story can be provided to the learners in advance, and small work group teams can be assigned.

Developing solutions - doing. Adult learning (andragogy) is vastly different than the commonly accepted approach to learning (pedagogy). Adults learn actively – by doing; they learn by developing their own solutions, discussing those solutions with other adults, defending their positions, and developing alternate solutions. Pedagogy, on the other hand, is what we are used to experiencing in the setting described at the beginning of this article – passive lectures in a classroom setting. The lecturer dispenses knowledge, the learners memorize the information presented, and examinations are administered to assess the level of comprehension of the dispensed information.

In our professional lives we must work collectively in groups to solve complex problems and benefit from the knowledge and experience that each of us brings to the table. We apply our knowledge, experience, and judgment during this “doing” phase. Generally, we work collectively with two to four others in small groups and present ideas, work through problems, weigh the factors, and make decisions. We evaluate options and weigh “what if” scenarios to determine if there is a better solution available.

Relying on our creativity, innovation, and imagination, we develop insights and solutions to the problems presented. We engage our creative thinking skills and develop them through practice. Creative thinking leads to reflective thinking, and thus our comprehension of the issues at hand deepen, and we gain more insight and perhaps begin to see things in a different light.

Through active learning and learning by doing, we practice and apply our thinking skills; we begin to learn “how to think,” rather than being told “what to think.” Learning “how to think” demands that we allow adults to learn as adults. Higher order skills are developed effectively only if adult students become responsible for their own learning and “do and thus understand.”

Simultaneously, because we are working closely together in a collaborative learning environment, we are developing our collective skills. We have to learn to work together in small groups because none of us has perfect knowledge, because today’s environment is too fast paced, and there is just too much information to process, and because there are often too many variables that affect the situation at hand for any one person to process. Learning to work together is not an easy task. It requires constant practice, meaningful interaction, and developing trust and confidence in one another and in the process.

We want learners to make decisions, realize the outcome of those decisions, and recycle through the decision-making process practicing their skills until they have confidence in them, know decision-making processes and procedures, appreciate the outcomes of their decisions, and become comfortable with uncertainty. People become comfortable in uncertain circumstances when they know the processes and procedures that are in-place and that they are expected to follow, and they learn where to turn and who to call when they need help.

Supporting decision making – the game. It is in the game portion of the process that the integration of technology most likely occurs, and, if applied correctly, it will greatly enhance the learning experience. In a perfect world, we could turn the outcome of our analysis over to a technology enhanced means to assist us in determining a better answer. There are many people who still believe that we can enter certain data into a computer and it will spit out the right answer. However, as we well know by now, technology, computers, and games do not give us the right answers; they merely give an outcome based on the input we provide which is based on what we tell the computer we want to do. Unfortunately, not every situation lends itself to a “game” decision support activity. There are those situations where a game may not be applicable. However, in the broadest sense of the word, when people discuss different options and solutions, it becomes a form of a game. If we structure the process correctly, the game will be invisible to our learners.

Games can range in complexity from a simple spreadsheet to large, complex, and expensive simulations. Quite often, we become enamored with the technology available and lose sight of what we are really trying to do – helping learners make better decisions.

The crucible of learning and understanding - the review. The review is the “crucible of learning” for it is here that the various participants come together to forge true learning and understanding. Each of the small groups has the opportunity to present their group results, engage in discussion of those results, and defend them in an open forum. It is here that they are able to share their ideas, insights, and conclusions with their peers. The review is more than a post-mortem activity. It is a continuation of the active learning process initiated when the learners were first presented with the situation to analyze or problem to solve.

This approach to learning dramatically changes the roles of the learners and the facilitators of learning. The learners are adults treated as adults and expected to be responsible for their own learning, for working collaboratively, and producing results that can stand up to the scrutiny of their peers. They have changed from being passive students being told what to think into being active learners thinking for themselves because they know “how” to think.

The most significant and dramatic changes occur with the teachers/instructors. No longer are they omniscient judges filling the empty heads of students with knowledge; they are now active participants in the facilitating of learning. They do not pass judgment; but they point out where the difficulties were, encourage learners to develop options to overcome them, and allow the learners to make mistakes. They encourage the learners to engage, interact, discuss, argue, compromise, and make their own assessments. They become facilitators of learning.

Of course, as with new things, this changed role will not be readily accepted by all. For some, it will represent a threat to their personal and professional security. To others, it will not be accepted because it is not the way we have always done things. However, there will be those who readily appreciate the change and can see the benefits and opportunities that this approach brings to make the learning environment active, focused on the way adults learn.

The review is where it all comes together. It is that time and place where emotions run high and people learn from doing and understanding. It is where judgment is formed and decision-making is practiced. It is where the memories are formed that the learners can fall back on when they face similar experiences in the future and have the confidence to know that they are making good choices because they have been in similar situations before and understand the implications of their decisions. Therefore, the more thorough the review is in this crucible of learning, the more prepared our learners become for the difficult and complex situations they will face in the near future.

How can we incorporate this approach in the situation we looked at earlier? What will we need to change to move from students and trainees to learners? What will we need to change to move from instructors and lecturers to learning facilitators? How would the opening situation be changed using this learning model?

It is that time of year for our annual training program. This year appears to be quite a lot different than past years. I received a read-ahead packet by e-mail two weeks ago. In the packet were two case studies; one is about an ethical situation a manager recently faced, and the second was a situation involving an employee that believes she has been the victim of sexual harassment while on the job. I did some background reading based on the material that is located on the company web site and made copies of the policies and procedures that seem to apply. I was pleased to find out I will be working with one person I met last year and another person I had not yet met. We have been in e-mail contact, and I think we are ready to start working through the issues in the cases. I have some questions and hope to be able to ask them before we start or find out where I might find the answers. If we do not get a chance to ask them, we will make some assumptions and go from there. I heard that the end of session review is really interesting and that we will get the opportunity to present our solution to the entire class. I am a little nervous about that, but I think it might be fun. At least, I do not have to sit in here all day listening to someone read to us from the policy and procedures manual. I never have been able to remember all of that information and always look it up when I need it anyhow. This should prove to be an interesting experience.

This approach may not fit every situation and maybe only parts of it might be applicable to others. However, the intent is to get adults involved in their own learning experience. Any methods we can employ to allow this to happen, we should try. We owe it to our employees and learners to make their learning experience more effective and meaningful. We can make it both more effective and meaningful if we can help them become actively involved in the process and, thus, “doers.”

I do and I understand.

©2005 by Michael H. Vernon

Mike Vernon is president of Management Vectors, Inc., (MVI) an independent consulting firm focused on assisting clients in developing innovative and creative solutions based on their specific goals and objectives. MVI provides independent advice and assistance about organizational development and the integration of leadership, technology, and management processes to ensure success. MVI offers help to our clients in the following areas: organizational development; requirements-based, capabilities-focused strategic planning; technology integration; training and education; and workshops and seminars. Recently, Mike has been working in Romania, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan assisting various governmental agencies and businesses in developing future technology integration plans and in dealing with the rapid cultural changes that are underway in these countries. Mike can be reached at mvernon@managementvectors.com and 407-312-5775.