Peer-To-Peer Learning for the Asset Integrity Industry

Training: how we see it at WILKINSON COUTTS

Most technical training consists of either residential classroom work or workshop training courses, and or online self-learning courses. Both options have their own benefits but can also result in an ineffective learning process (as well as being a financial drain); Information overload, lack of interaction, poor delegate (and lecturer) motivation and days of slow-death-by-PowerPoint presentations will be familiar to most of you.

Well, the Wilkinson Coutts team think we have found a more time-effective way of doing things: Peer-To-Peer Learning (or P2P if you like acronyms).

Peer-To-Peer Learning? What’s that?

Think about how you learnt to speak. You didn’t watch slides or have lessons; you picked it up from a combination of all those around you. Your parents, other adults and your toddler-friends who were struggling to learn it, just like you were. That’s Peer-To-Peer (P2P) Learning.

Fast-forward this to the task of learning a new language as an adult. Reading a book or watching a video will give you only the most basic start. To gain any competence, you need heavy-duty interaction with others who already speak the language and others who are learning it. It’s this immersion in the task that enables you to learn at the most effective rate. It is how you are designed to work.

Now let’s apply this to technical training

To be effectively applied to the world of technical learning, Peer-To-Peer (P2P) Training courses have to meet a few specific criteria:

·      The end result must be a huge increase in time-effectiveness. At least a 40-50% increase. That’s the whole object of the exercise.

·      It must work for the technical scope of the subject: NDT, inspection methods, code knowledge etc.

·      The whole training process must be specifically set-up by the facilitators (also known as your lecturers) to fit the P2P learning model. The structure and course material are completely different to traditional classroom or online methods. You can’t just change the name of your existing course material and trust luck.

 Fig 1 Peer-to-peer training course; how it works

How do we use it?

P2P works on the principle of increasing the total number of interactive links between all the people on a training course; the delegates (about 6 to 10) and two facilitators. The interactions are designed in advance and structured to meet the training objectives of the course. Figure 1 illustrates the situation.

The basic unit of the interaction is the delegate pairing. Reciprocal learning takes place between the delegates in each pair, and all the other pairs. The pairings change daily to the plan set by the facilitators. Both facilitators provide technical content expertise; one facilitator initiates and manages the interactions in real-time, whilst the second facilitator takes a more overall monitoring view. They tailor the daily plan as the strengths and weaknesses of the delegates reveal themselves. Here are the good points about this method:

·      It balances out the different learning rates of the delegates (something that is always a challenge in training courses)

·      It utilises the best advantages having of multi-generational delegates in the group

·      Delegates can get more involved and react more positively when they make mistakes.

·      It significantly increases the time-effectiveness of the whole programme. Delegates learn more at a much faster rate! This is from interacting with each other as well as the facilitators

·      The time on the course is utilised to its fullest. Wilkinson Coutts have designed the course so no one falls asleep from boredom!

Does it work for all technical courses?

To varying degrees. Its best application is in training for difficult technical examinations such API certificates, code appreciation, technical methodologies and similar subjects.

Let’s talk fact and figures

A good estimate for the time-effectiveness of courses using conventional methods would be about 35% for all-on-line training (people can lose interest and stop pushing themselves unaided). For a classroom course that is limited by the time restrictions and the tenacity of the lecturers and delegates, you can expect a time-effectiveness of about 50-60%.

Using the peer-to-peer course structure for this type of training can raise the overall effectiveness of a classroom course to 80-90%. This means that an 8-day classroom course can be reduced down to 6 days, with an equal or improved level of knowledge retention.

P2P teaching to pass an examination

Applying P2P learning to this type of objective works perhaps the best of all. The key driver to the improved effectiveness is the vastly increased incidence of delegates learning from others’ mistakes, not just their own. If you quadruple the number of delegate-to-delegate interactions (within and between the delegate pairings), then the learning rate rises proportionately. Learning from mistakes is the most effective way of learning anything. Not everybody will necessarily like it, but if you want training effectiveness, that’s where it’s at.

Now, an invitation

We can’t realistically write an article that boasts the benefits of multiple interactions between interested learners without inviting you to interact a bit. We have experience of presenting hundreds of API, ASME, code appreciation, pressure systems and other courses to the integrity industry all over the world. We’ve seen and learnt a lot of important information, but we are always eager to hear more! The Wilkinson Coutts team believe that listening to peoples’ opinions will help develop our knowledge and effectiveness of the courses.