3 steps to achieve effective learning

As an IT Professional you'll often be called upon to help teach others with the desired outcome of the rapid acquisition of new knowledge, skills, ability and in some cases new habits. Classic educational methods often tend to be 'one way' (Teacher > Student) and include basic class room teaching, online training, studying and 'passing a test' (hopefully). We are experimenting with and finding a new approach (Teacher launches > Students that eventually 'teach themselves') that is also starting to work out really well.

Let me describe the three phases of the newer approach:

1. Initial instruction by a Master. It's really key to have a Master Instructor (SME) present a topic if the desired outcome is to rapidly advance the skills, ability and experience level of a group of Students. Also, the Master should present the topic in a way such that the Students themselves are then able to leverage both each other and the wisdom of the crowd to accelerate the entire group learning (including the Masters and all Students)
2. Next, as quickly as possible, have the students "do" what they just learned - for example, immediately after the students receive expert instruction they should perform a short exercise or problem solve around that specific topic (for example, in an online Lab/Demo setting). After the short lab is completed, have the students present the results to the Teacher and more importantly each other. This step allows the Teacher to assess instruction effectiveness and also enables the Students to create and pass on Best Practices at scale.
3. Get the entire team (class) back together (Students and Teachers) and discuss - What's working, What's not working, and identify some specific actions to take for further improvements. This final step is a launching point to enable the Students to start teaching themselves (and many others).

The IT landscape is constantly changing, so you should expect that you will always have to be teaching and learning new things. Instruction by a Master combined with Students that can quickly start to teach themselves (and the Teacher) with an eye toward collectively always getting better appears to be a very efficient approach to quickly achieving higher levels of skills, ability and experience.

All opinions are my own.