As the senior care industry struggles to curb rampant employee turnover and deal with regulators, competitors, and the economy, many companies have embraced new, often technologically advanced, approaches to operations.
Training is an area of operations whose widespread impact is just beginning to be realized, at least in the senior care industry. As its importance grows, it too becomes the target of efforts to update, upgrade, or otherwise improve existing processes and methods.
Although technophiles and born-again trainers are quick to adopt the latest fads in training, this can lead to a misguided rush to dump the bathwater, baby and all. Traditional methods do have serious shortcomings that can be addressed by newer approaches, but they also have features that cannot yet be mimicked by technology and they can still be a vital part of a thoughtfully integrated training program. That will be the overriding theme of this 3-part article as it explores both traditional and new approaches to training frontline caregivers.
First, the bad news…
In their report “Blended Learning for Compliance Success”, authors Kapp and McKeague point to a number of disadvantages of classroom style learning, including the following.
Challenges of Classroom Training
- Poor use of classroom training time. Pouring coffee, finding seats, passing around sign-in sheets, organizing papers, looking for a missing pen under the table, all take time that has been allotted to training. And this doesn’t take into account the preparation necessary to conduct a training session, from learning new information to scheduling the room and equipment, tracking down the manuals or videos, and reviewing notes.
- Disrupted training plans. Coordinating several individual schedules in a 24/7 environment where “emergencies” are the norm, is also problematic and often delays the start of the learning process. Such delays or discrepancies can lead to regulatory deficiencies, but also incur hidden costs such as those related to worker satisfaction, quality of care, and workplace injuries.
- Different strokes for different folks. A bigger problem arises out of diversity, not only in language or ethnicity, but in learning styles, intelligence, current level of knowledge, interest levels, peak alertness times, shifts, and job roles. In a classroom setting where everything must be told to everyone at the same time, it’s hard to accommodate diversity. Instructors may try to do an end run around this problem by aiming at either the highest or lowest common denominator. Among other serious results, this can lead to an insidious effect, reported by some training leaders, in the diffusion of boredom from those who “know it all” to those who would like to. This transference isn’t limited to pupils; instructors can also radiate their displeasure with teaching the same remedial subject to the same disinterested crowd over and over again.
- Consistency in training. Ironically, while consistent instruction within a diversified classroom can be detrimental, consistency across a teaching program is a key component of success. Consistency allows for apples-to-apples measurements of learning across employees and across time. Unfortunately, human instructors can be the source of unwanted variance. Important information may be rushed, truncated, or skipped altogether due to personal or professional emergencies; instructors may focus on star pupils and talk “over the heads” of other attendees; on any particular day an instructor may be brusque, friendly, talkative, reserved, expressive, loud and clear, hoarse and quiet. Variance can also arise out of the preference for, or availability of, particular content delivery formats (e.g., chalkboard vs. videos).
- Measuring the results. A final problem with classroom learning is measurability. Counting the number of blank stares aimed at a projection screen is a popular, albeit not very useful, method of measuring the success of a class. A post-test is better, but many times these are pass/fail or ridiculously simple. Once collected, such tests may be filed away in the deepest recesses of storage, left for surveyors or future archeologists to find.
- Finding a Solution. A 2002 report by the Office of the Inspector General that included responses from over 1,000 nurse’s aides, administrators and trainers echoed many of the problems noted above. But if classroom instruction is left wanting in so many ways, why is it still in such widespread use? One possible answer is that compliance is the driver, not learning. Whether employees absorb the material presented is less important than their name on the sign-in sheet. This compliance mentality misses many of the key benefits of effective learning, however (the detailing of which must come in a future article).
A more optimistic hypothesis can be explained by the parable of the grizzly bear and marmot. Grizzly bears are known to hunt marmots for food, even though the effort required to overturn the boulders the marmots call home is greater than the caloric energy returned by these tiny rodents. Scientists believe that there must be some benefit gained through the effort to capture marmots that exceeds their food value (and apparently science’s ability to figure it out). So what is the added benefit of classroom instruction that is above and beyond the mere content disgorged?
Most of the key benefits of classroom instruction revolve around its potential for discussion. If allowed to move beyond the didactic, live instruction provides the opportunity to clarify difficult concepts and answer individual questions. In such an environment, dialogue can occur in which concepts, ideas, and information can be exchanged. Another benefit of live instruction is that it allows for the use of credible company and industry experts, who can pass on knowledge gained from years of experience and reflection. Last, but certainly not least, is that live instruction holds the potential to teach problem solving more effectively than other methods of instruction.
Unfortunately, the potential of instructor-led training is seldom realized. The good news is that the wise application of new approaches to training can actually augment the more traditional methods, giving instructors time to impart knowledge rather than just presenting rudimentary information.
Next, let’s look at the promise and the reality of new learning technologies and the part they can play in a blended learning environment. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater quite yet!
The Benefits of Online Training
We may all agree that classroom training has challenges, but is online training any better? Consider some of the advantages to online training:
- Unbounded by Time or Place. In today’s networked society, where access to the Internet is quickly moving from privilege to entitlement, online delivery means that training can be accessed from just about anywhere on the globe, at any time.
- Consistent. Because digital courses are created once and then made accessible through the same channels and delivered in the same way to every learner, they have a consistency that can’t be achieved by traditional classroom learning. One big benefit of such consistency is the ability to make “apples to apples” comparisons between learners; another benefit is the assurance that multiple versions are not being employed.
- Individual Pacing. E-training removes the constraint of simultaneity from the learning process, allowing students to progress at their own pace, at their peak alertness times. This is especially important in a 24/7 environment, one in which educational levels and language abilities can vary greatly.
- Centralized Database. A key benefit of e-training systems is the ability to organize data from disbursed employees or business units into a central database. This data can then be mined using various reporting and exporting features. In the best systems, an executive in Ohio is only a few mouse clicks away from checking the progress of a community in New Mexico—in real time.
- Low IT Support. Online learning is a subset of e-learning, which also includes a variety of computer-based methods involving complex software installation and maintenance. The advantage of online learning is that, in most cases, there is no need to install and maintain software. The application is housed on the vendor’s servers.
- Dynamic. Digital content holds the potential for instantaneous additions and revisions to course content. This can be especially helpful for large corporations for whom rolling out new manuals, workbooks, and tests could take months and cost tens of thousands of dollars.
- Multimedia and Interactive. As with many e-learning applications, online learning holds the potential for multimedia, interactive experiences. Learning is enhanced when students are engaged in the learning activity; engagement is enhanced when students must be active in the process.
The Promise and Reality
Unfortunately, e-training often doesn’t live up the hype. Much of this is due to a phenomenon known as transference. Early TV shows were more like stage productions than the shows we watch today; many websites are still formatted more like newspapers than the interactive, multimedia conduit of information they can potentially be.
Technology tends to race ahead of man’s ability to mine its full potential.
E-training, in many cases, is still struggling to catch up to the technology. PowerPoints and streaming videos can benefit from many of the features of online delivery, but in their most basic form they fail to rise above their one-way, two-dimensional roots. They neither leverage the potential of the digital age nor incorporate cutting edge learning theory.
Next Level Fix
Enter blended learning.
Blended learning takes the best in both areas – classroom and online – and blends them to create training programs that rise to the next level of effectiveness.
Online training, provided an engaging, interactive format, sets the foundation for learning new knowledge and skills. Emotional connections that affect values and beliefs can also be shaped with quality online training.
Practice, however, happens in the field.
Online training will never take the place of real, hands’ on work experience. It will also never take the place of guided mentoring, modeling and immediate behavioral feedback.
Together, however, classroom or in-person training can join with an online learning program to take the entire training program to the next level.
|
