Assessing Real Learning Needs: Process Design at Work!

Call it Process Design or Experience Design, I love to explore the processes of my workshop that can help the participants not only psychologically feel safe, but also help me and themselves learn about their ‘learning needs’. You might ask why do I not explore their needs by doing a survey and if it is really possible to understand the needs while the workshop is already running! Very valid questions.

While yesterday morning my precious vault presented me with the poster of a session that I was conducting a few years ago on Presentation Skills, I was feeling nostalgic while recalling the processes that we designed and followed which made the session fun, empowering for the learners, and created sustainable learning outcomes.

Let me tell you first why I usually keep my survey short.

It’s true that we (my team and I) used to assess the learning needs from the initial survey which were embedded in the registration forms of the training projects or programs. However, sometimes they did not serve the purpose of understanding the learning needs for the following reasons. (After these I am going to discuss about what you can do to understand the “unarticulated” needs of the participants while the workshop has already started through effective process design.)

1.     Sometimes the participants are not really sure what their learning needs are. For instance, if I ask you what are the 2 things that you need to learn about product X. You might recall the 3 things that you heard regarding this product from your friends and then choose 2 of them and tell me. But did you really know that there were 3 more things which were essential for you in particular to learn about regarding this product (which you had no idea about)? It would only be possible for you to realize that if I could design a process to let you experience the product firsthand. 

2.     The responses to the questions in the survey forms could not be addressed 100% even if we wanted to. The learners might expect that all of their learning needs would be addressed. Say, for example, there were 5 questions, and if 10 people responded with different answers corresponding to their needs. Now say you could summarize their (10 X 5 =) 50 responses into 10 particular needs. Very often it would happen that the participants saw their learning expectations were not met. While according to each of these participants there were only 5 areas that they mentioned about, it could happen that while summarizing 4 of them were discarded from a particular respondent. They would feel that their needs were not really taken into account, unknowingly ignoring the fact that the cumulative response was much higher than “five”.

3.     Answering the questions in the survey prior to the workshop does not provide the individual’s learning needs. This is because when the learners are participating in the survey online, many of their responses reflected the organizational needs for that particular topic, their individual roles in the organization, the organizational culture, etc. For example, in a centralized organization where there was access to the premium version of Prezi only for the top executives, when the top executives would fill out the survey form for a presentation skills workshop they would mention their learning need to be about using Prezi, while their subordinates (who did not have access to the premium account) would mention about Powerpoint. It would not be possible however for us to understand whether either or both of these groups would need to learn the technical skills regarding the software, be it Prezi or Powerpoint, or was it that they needed to learn how to plan and apply “visual aid” for effective presentations. Hence, organizational culture and the personnel’s role can affect the understanding of the learning need or at least the proper articulation of it. 

4.     The survey questions give a less than an accurate description of the experience and the impact of learning. This is because the individual who responded to the survey found that the survey had a structure similar to a previous one that he responded to for another training or it looked like the common survey form used within his organization. This can lead him to assume that the process of learning in this workshop would be the same as the previous one he attended or that it would be similar to his organization’s process, hence concluding his experience to be the same and losing interest to sign up for this new one. However, once he would start “experiencing” the process of the workshop and discovering his learning needs, it would have helped him to understand his personal strengths and needs of improvement for this new topic.

Process Design at Work!

So how do you facilitate a process that can help you learn about their “real” needs? The basis is to remain flexible with the process, whether the workshop is about collaboration, communication, personal growth, facilitating change, or cultivating leadership. Although I take a planned agenda with me and my co-facilitators carry them around too, you should be open to changing things instantly. Of course, this would come to you with experience as you would be able to develop your leadership skills to become a great facilitator over time. I use various methods and styles to design the processes keeping in mind that they should help the participants increase engagement, build rapport with each other, and keep their energy level high, while giving us the cues about their learning needs and adding to the learning outcomes at an individual level as we go along. This also helps to differentiate the learning of the participants and provide learning outcomes based on individual needs.

I am sharing some examples (with some of the assessment outcomes) below to give you an idea of how to go about designing the processes and executing them with simple resources that we followed in my Presentation Skills workshop. The subsequent examples are built upon the previous ones. For example, if you want to fully understand what is going on in example 2 you have to read example 1 first, and so on. I recommend you to take the time to go through all the examples to go through the complete picture of the setup and the activities the participants and facilitator(s) were going through.

Picture Credit: U.S. Embassy-Dhaka ( taken during on of the workshops on Soft Skills)

Example 1:

Assessing Learning Needs:

• Finding the various types of communication skills the participants already had and the strengths in their communication practices. These would help us understand what aspects of it can already be related to the learning experiences about presentation skills.
• Their listening skills. This would determine how group discussions would affect learning as it consists of active listening.

Process: The participants were divided into groups of 4 and construct a 3D house with straws in a given time. The condition that they must fulfill was that the house would have to be stable on its own. Yes, you guessed it right. In the excitement of the teamwork and creativity it happened in the past that the participants did construct a beautiful one only to find later that one of them had to hold it with his hand so that it did not fall apart.

Resources: Straws, Cello Tapes

Assessment of the learning need: We tried to understand how each of them preferred to interact, who were extroverts, and what barriers they were facing to communicate and “present” their ideas.

Example 2:

Assessing Learning Need:

Understanding the challenges that they faced while communicating.

Process:

Once the houses were constructed, they were all exhibited at one place in the room. We, facilitators, were taking responses from the participants at random and the energy in the room got very high. While one of the houses was gathering votes due to its aesthetic looks, another one was getting the votes as it was the tallest house.

Resources:

The participants themselves.

Assessment of the learning need:

There were various assumptions that played a role in the activity. For instance, some participants thought the requirement for the activity was also to do it aesthetically or build the tallest structure, whereas all that was needed was to make it stable.

Examples of barriers in effective communication included age, profession, organizational culture (where you would have to make the best product), etc. It was quite expected that they faced similar barriers while doing presentations at work. One the other hand the people from particular professions (e.g. Sales) were already good at it!

Example 3:

Assessing Learning Need:

• Understanding the vocabulary they used or were familiar with to describe a finished product.
• If they could communicate with clarity using these vocabularies.

Process:

1. We assigned the participants to write down comments about 3 houses they felt were the best. They could fit the same criterion or various criteria based on what they felt about the houses and they could come up with as many adjectives (or phrases) as they wanted to. But the 3 houses must not include the one which he/she has himself/herself has taken part in constructing. As they wrote down the adjectives on post-it notes, they were all asked to put the post-it notes beside the houses that they described.
2. After everyone finished doing this, the groups that initially took part in building these houses were asked to look at the adjectives that their houses received. The sharing of the post-it notes also helped to create mutual respect which would enable better learning experiences for the participants.

Resources:

Post-it notes, Pens

Assessment of the learning need:

The participants who were not very open to sharing adjectives when they were voting orally due to the lack of criteria for assessment or any other cultural barriers were now very creative and excited to write down comments on post-its. My co-facilitators took note of the ones who would prefer not to express support orally. This was important because it helped us to create a safe learning space and differentiating the upcoming learning activities for them.

Picture Credit: U.S. Embassy-Dhaka ( taken during one of the workshops on Soft Skills)

Example 4:

Assessing Learning Need:

• Understanding how aware they were about visual aid during presentations.
• How aware they were about their feelings and emotions in general. The feelings and emotions were important to be assessed as it would tell us and the learners about their confidence level during presentations.

Process:

1. They were next asked to sit in their own teams (in which they worked together to construct the house initially). They would have to reflect at an individual level about what thoughts came to their mind when constructing the house and how they were “feeling”.
2. Then they would have to write down how they were feeling when they got the feedback (the adjectives) from the other participants. 
3. Once they were done they would have to represent their feelings and change in confidence (if any) based on how they felt before and how they felt after receiving feedback from the others, using any of the resources that were available (Graph papers, Colored papers, Sharpies, Sticky smileys).
4. Finally, they were asked to put up this work on the walls all around the room.

Resources:

Worksheet: Self-Reflection

 Assessment of the learning need:

1. They were helped to identify their feelings and emotions connected to their presentation of the product (house). Moreover, they are helped to realize that how they presented these were through visual aids.
2. The participants had various assumptions related to the quality of the outcome. For instance, they thought their house would have to be aesthetically nice or that it would have to be the tallest, although the only requirement was to make it stable!
3. The participants who used graph papers wanted to express the difference in confidence level in a more precise form and accurate measures were important to them as their educational and professional background taught them to do so.

At this stage, the participants started to experience learning outcomes!

 Learning Outcomes:

1. They would not know all the time how the final product would be assessed by the others, as it came out that they got a large variety of adjectives from the others regarding their finished product.
2. They learned that visual aid is not only about Powerpoint or Prezi but anything that would help in communicating clearly.
3. Hence, learn to be creative about process design. Do apply all your favorite tools and techniques and make the experience gleeful as well as a “learning process” for you and the participants to explore their learning needs.

Do you need more help or want to discuss further about process design? Send me a message! 

Picture Credit: U.S. Embassy-Dhaka (picture taken with the group of learners after a workshop)