Diversify Your Learning

There is a great irony to where I am employed. For over a decade, I have enjoyed working with technology and code as a developer, designer, product manager, and educator. But in all of those instances, if I needed to learn something, I would use two main ways of learning: Reading and experimentation. Video and classroom training were never very effective for me. That being said, I still believe completely in what I do at LinkedIn and Lynda.com as a video training instructor, but I also acknowledge that video training isn’t for everyone. Everyone has a preferred and effective way to learn.

Everyone has a preferred and effective way to learn.

The question then turns to the educators themselves. Why are so many of them focusing on single methodologies to learn? While video might not work best for me, it does work best for millions of others. So how can you support your employees and customers best?

I want to put some thoughts and ideas in front of you and ask that you consider them and, better yet, respond with your opinions and comments. I also want to call out that I have no data or hard facts, but only a belief and hypothesis that I hope can spark a conversation.

Learning Types

There are tons of different ways to learn. Video, books, e-books, classroom, mentorships, boot camps, experimenting, on-the-job, interactive and others. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to consolidate them into four major buckets.

The first is video. This could be video that is delivered to your TV, computer, tablet, or smartphone and involves playing back someone doing something on a computer, filming a lecture, filming an instructor on a stage, or the usage of graphics and animations to convey topics. Essentially, this is the Lynda.com in our discussion.

The second is written. Books, articles (like this one), eBooks, whitepapers, or anything that is primarily written and requires you to read it to understand and expose yourself to it.

Third is interactive. Interactive can mean many things. From having the ability to write code in a learning module, have assessment questions that require us to apply our skills or knowledge in a unique way, or use a live IT environment to solve a configuration problem.

The fourth and final is facilitated. Someone, or some people are guiding you through learning a topic or skills. This could be a classroom, a mentorship, a tutor or a one-on-one team or something similar. In essence, you are relying on someone else’s experience to guide your mastery of their already learned skills.

Each of these are categories for learning methods. Sure, there are others that could be listed, but I wanted to start with four to make my point. But when you think of each type, do you find that you gravitate towards one over the other? Do you start one method and ask yourself, “Ugh. I wish this was done another way?” That speaks to the effectiveness of each type.

Effectiveness

If we consider each type and determine a rating for the effectiveness, we can map that out. Again, this isn’t based on any data, but let’s assume that a majority find that each mode is “Good” and a minority find it “Excellent” for their needs and the rest find it “OK” or “Poor”.

For this “fake science” let’s say that for a single method of learning, 50% feel it is “Good”, 20% feel it is “Excellent” or “OK” and 10% feel it is poor.

Right off the bat, you start to see a picture emerge, where if you focus on a specific method of education and training, you aren’t offering an effective mix to keep people engaged, and most importantly, effective in the learning process. But not everyone learns different types of topics the same way. For instance, someone might learn technology best through video, but written forms work best for cooking and other lifestyle skills.

From a platform perspective, content providers look for optimization based on a few or a single delivery mechanism. For example, Lynda.com is almost entirely video, O’Reilly is mostly written, General Assembly is mostly facilitated and Codecademy is mostly interactive. Each of these have some other features, but for the most part these are their “bread and butter” so to speak. From this platform perspective, you consider how you can reuse what you have built for one topic and extend that to others.

But when you look at this from the learner’s perspective, there are multiple ways to learn different things, and there always have been, so the overall effectiveness of the platform across multiple topics is less the more you add.

Take this for example. If you create a matrix that matches topics of learning with each of the four categories of learning types, an individual would evaluate that each intersection would be along the range of “Excellent” to “Poor”. You end up with a heat map that shows the best way for that individual to learn each topic across the various methods of learning.

The final component to add to this is the element of time. The more experienced you become in a topic, your method of learning will change. Something that required facilitation style training at first might evolve to written as the preferred method as the person gains more experience. Skill levels have different and individual effectiveness levels.

Diversify

So we have three degrees to take stock of here. First, you have the method of learning, then you have the subject, and then you have experience level. Three degrees that determine effectiveness of learning something new. But remember, that is for one person, what happens when you apply that to hundreds? Thousands? Even, millions?

There is a single answer: Diversify.

As someone that wants to learn, there are tons of options you can include to fit the educational goal and topic. But don’t limit yourself to what you have. There are lots of options at your disposal. There is nothing wrong with trying something, finding that it doesn’t quite work out, and then try something else. Learning applies to learning as well. Sometimes you need to learn the best way that works for you.

For educators, it is important to acknowledge that people learn in many different ways, and those ways evolve and change over time. From a business perspective, you may be limiting the learning value of the training materials you provide by having only one format of the training. While it may be easier to provide a single format, if your usage of the material is low, it might be due to the fact that the format isn’t going to resonate with everyone. If you are looking on getting your team, employees, or customers trained as much as possible, you may need to deploy multiple formats, each with relatively low usage to cover the right formats for everyone.

Cover the right formats for everyone

Learning is a very personal activity and is ultimately the process of the learner. There is never a “one-stop shop” for learning. So as an individual, plan the right mixture that works for you, and as an education provider, know that for maximum effectiveness, a combination of formats will serve everything the best to meet your training goals.