How to Decide Which Learning Activity to Use

(NOTE: THE CONTEXT FOR THIS ARTICLE IS INSTRUCTION AND TRAINING/TEACHING. IT IS NOT GENERAL PROCESS FACILITATION.)

Thiagi and I get asked this question nearly every day. Given the hundreds, if not thousands of activities, to choose from, how do we decide which activity to use? If you are Thiagi, you can modify and adjust any activity to reach any goal. But, for us mere mortals, there are some helpful factors that can help you decide which activity is most appropriate given your specific context.

Of course before you even get to a stage in your design process where you are picking activities, you will likely have gone through several phases in advance. You likely will have done some form of analysis where you defined properly the issues and context that imply you have a learning need. You likely will have set a vision for the desired end result... in other words, what is the learning intervention objective. You probably analyzed the influencing factors that support or impede learning and learning transfer back to the job. And you most likely would have begin to conceptualize and even built tests that would validate learners have learned and even transferred those lessons to practice.

Why do these phases have to happen first? We do them first, to (1) determine whether we actually have a learning problem in the first and not some other issue impeding performance. And (2) that we have a very tactical set of tests we can teach to in order to efficiently ensure learners can do what we taught them.

Now, and only now, do we focus on the content and activities required for the intervention.

Here are the four factors we need to consider when choosing an activity to facilitate:

Start with the objective in mind.

Based on where you are in the design process, your module will have specific goals. At this point in the module, there are only a few high-level goals one can have. You may want:

1. To assess or evaluate how much or how little the learner knows. This goal may happen early on and act as a needs analysis for the specific cohort of students you have. Or it may happen toward the end when you want to determine if the learners comprehend and can do what was intended. But you can use activities, such as role plays, simulations, quiz activities, etc. to evaluate knowledge and application. You do need to ensure the simulation or role play aligns to the types of performances you want on the job and that there is some type of rubric that indicates what good looks like.
2. Teach something new to the learners. In order to develop skills, participants must have the requisite content—the concepts, models, procedures, principles, process steps, rules, and other information they then apply. Skills are, by definition, applied knowledge. Skill mastery is applied knowledge done fluently. When students don’t have this knowledge, they must be taught the information directly. We have to give it to them. Contrary to popular opinion, teaching content need not be boring and can certainly be interactive!
3. Facilitate practice and provide opportunities for feedback. Once learners have that requisite knowledge, to develop associated skills, they must practice applying the knowledge over and over again-- preferably at spaced our intervals. This process is called spaced repetition. It means participants practice applying what they have learned. Get feedback. Take some time to let it soak in, and then practice again. They space out the practice sessions so (1) they don’t get overwhelmed, and (2) ensure the knowledge they are applying moves into their long-term memory for eventual fluent recall.
4. Facilitate participants to explore and discover what they are learning. There are several contexts for which we may choose this objective. With novice learners, we use this format to explore their perceptions of the topic that might support or impede learning. We identify misconceptions they may have that we can later correct. With more expert learners, we empower them to learn from each other, problem solve, and evolve their technical prowess through social learning and the shared wisdom in the room.

All the our interactive strategies designed by Thiagi meet at least one of those four goals. They might even have multiple purposes with some modifications. And of course, many, many activities NOT designed by Thiagi can meet those goals. The point is an activity MUST meet and ALIGN to the goal you have set.

Activities are templates. These templates can be used in many different way. For example, you may want to assess how much knowledge an incoming participant has on a subject. We have an activity frame called, The Hello Game, which can be used in many ways. One way we like to use it is as an OPENING activity to assess how participants feel about a topic, what they know about a topic, and the types of problems they face with regard to that topic. Or, we can use the same template with a group of experts working to solve a complex problem. The key is with just some minor tweaking, you can adjust most any of the activities to achieve most goals. We say most… not all… but please… do not challenge Thiagi to this point, or he will make it a life mission.

In other words, as you become more experienced using these frames and simulations, you will also become quite capable of modifying all of them to meet different goals. But, start with the obvious intent first, and expand your horizons with them later.

Another point to consider… For practice and feedback objectives, simulation activities are superb. Especially, high-fidelity simulations. For example, if you want a prospective pilot to get good enough to go fly a real airplane, start her using a flight simulator. Those types of high-fidelity simulations are pretty obvious and you don’t need a book for those. Essentially, you take the real-life activity and fake it… or, simulate it. If you want learners to practice overcoming objections in a sales context… use an activity like our World’s Worst (link in the references if you want to use it), which is a playful way of realistically getting sales professionals to practice overcoming them. Or, you can use the same activity using the context of customer service responses to angry complaints. Or, doctors delivering bad news. And so forth.

CONTENT FORMAT

Next, consider the format of the content you have. Obviously, if you have a lecture, use interactive lecture activities. These types of activities take content delivered via a lecture and get participants to engage with it so they can memorize the key points, discuss, and better understand, validate they did understand, and create memorable moments from the original lecture itself. These activities wrap activities around lecture sources. Or, if the content is in a text format, use textra activities. Same deal, but the focus is on text-based sources. If you are trying to leverage the wisdom of the crowd, use structured sharing. But do keep in mind, that all these activities are frames. Meaning you can use any of the interactive lecture activities with minor modifications with text. And vice versa. You have quite a bit of flexibility. As you just start out using them, we recommend that you go obvious. If you have a lecture… use an interactive lecture activity until you have mastered the format. Then play and make them your own.

EXPERIENCE LEVEL OF THE LEARNER

Novice or expert, or in between. The first response we often from others is who cares? Well, your learners will. Most of the content we learn and the skills we develop in the workplace are not natural to humans. Meaning, unlike walking, breathing, or coordinating how we use our hands to grab and place things, most skills are not activities we would develop through sheer discovery. For example, if you want to learn how to master negotiation skills, while over time, you might get lucky and learn how to master the process, but you unlikely won’t without lots of frustration and failure. It is not something we humans have evolved to master innately. To learn how to negotiate effectively, we have to learn a process for doing so. We also need to internalize principles that help us make decisions when we negotiate. There are also values and guidelines that set a specific ruleset for how we engage with others when negotiating. And likely, there is a domain-set of knowledge required for us to negotiate effectively. The Thiagi team is more than capable of negotiating the fees for a training workshop, but unlikely to know how to negotiate a loan restructuring consultation fee. We don’t know that field.

So, novices in negotiation, or in any subject, need a basic set of information… of content… first before they can apply that information properly as a skill. Remember, a skill is simply the application of knowledge in a specific context. Why aren’t most skills transferrable? Because that domain expertise is essential to applying the knowledge learned appropriately. A highly skilled blues pianist would struggle to become quickly a highly skilled Mozartian pianist. She might achieve mastery faster than a complete novice, but not as fast as one might think since the context and the knowledge is indeed different. It is also a question of mastery. A professional blues player likely can make the leap to an intermediate level concert, and amateur, pianist. But won't likely hit Carnegie Hall soon.

We must teach novices the content needed to be able to apply it in their relevant situations. It’s that simple. Therefore, we use activities that facilitate instruction. Typically, interactive lectures, textra games, and others drive engaging ways for that direct instruction to happen.

REPEAT IDEA: instruction need not be boring or tedious. Instruction can easily be made engaging, interesting, and immersive.

With experts, they already have some level of mastery. So why are they taking a class with you? Perhaps to learn how to solve a specific type of problem. Or, to increase the breadth of their knowledge in the domain they have already mastered. Or, they have quite a bit of expertise, but can learn from the other experts—their peers—in the room. Now, we can facilitate experiences, guide them through activities that do indeed leverage the wisdom they all have in the room. For these experiences, structured sharing activities are great. Structured sharing activities leverage the thoughts, ideas, questions, interpretations, mindset, concerns, and even expertise from the participants themselves. When one thinks “collective intelligence,” these are the activities that focus on that frame of mind.

Also good activity categories for experts include role playing and interactive storytelling. The key is to enable peer-to-peer and self-directed learning. This is when discovery-based learning actually has a good shot at working in the context of skill development.

NOTE: I am NOT implying role playing and interactive storytelling telling CANNOT be used with beginners. I am stating they are good template frames for experts. But, not exclusively so.

With those who have moderate skills, we want to assess where they are at and identify a combination of different activities that close any knowledge gaps and give lots of chances to practice. The biggest challenge here is learners are the worst at judging their levels of competence (Kirschner, 2013). So many with moderate levels of skill often misjudge their expertise, usually overestimating it. So, using assessment/ evaluation activities go a long way to managing expectations as long as the assessment is objective and feels fair to the learner. That’s one reason we like to use assessment-based activities at the front of a learning experience. You can also use role play activities this way, as well.

LOGISTICS

Finally, logistics, unfortunately, all too often play a much larger role in our decisions for using an activity than we would like. That’s just the reality of things. The good news is most of the activities can be adjusted to time, numbers of participants, and even the medium. But you must take logistics into consideration. For example, even though we certainly can play World's Worst with four people, it ideally works with 16-30. And while we have played The Hello Game with 600 people, we would prefer 20-24. Another activity may be doable in 10 minutes, but ideally 30-45 minutes would be nice. Or one of our board games can take at least an hour to play. Yes, we can modify it to last must less time, but why? Why when we can choose a different activity more readily designed for a shorter amount of time?

We should also point out that more and more stakeholders call us up and ask us to teach a complex skill in… say… two hours. We will qualify what they mean by “teach x complex skill.” And they mean mastery!!!! Sorry… this is impossible. Meaning there is a difference between modifying an activity (which we can do all day and all night, all year round) and modifying the duration we spend with a cohort to get them to master a new complex skill. Developing skills takes time. It takes practice. It takes feedback. Modify activities… please! But, don’t skimp on what is needed to foster the development of skills needed to solve the issues that brought us to this point in the first place.

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REFERENCES

Kirschner, P.A. and Merri?nboer, J.J.G. (2013). Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education. Educational Psychologist, 48:3, pp. 169-183.

The following video is a wonder explanation of Cognitive Load Theory by its originator, John Sweller. In it, he also talks extensively about the types of knowledge and different types of instruction related. https://youtu.be/gOLPfi9Ls-w?si=undOdSjY63rjkqz4

I interview the great educationalist, Paul Kirschner in our podcast series. It is the episode called, "WHAT THE SKILLS." It is here: https://ldaccelerator.com/podcast. In it, Paul introduces the pianist example I share above.

World's Worst Activity: https://www.thiagi.com/worlds-worst