No Sesame Street for Grown-Ups

November 9, 2017 Garett Howardson 3 min read

Fuzzy wooly mammoths explaining federal regulatory compliance paperwork, six-foot-tall talking birds expositorily coding in Python and R, cantankerous dumpster divers learning to communicate more respectfully with colleagues…

Potential amusement ROI notwithstanding, few organizations likely incorporate such scenarios into training and development curricula. Although it’s effective for teaching future generations of employees, Sesame Street’s instructional design strategy leaves much to be desired in the way of training and developing employees to meet modern work demands. Learning one’s work, in other words, is seldom so pleasant.

Consider, for instance, warehouse safety training in which participants learn standardized procedures for operating an industrial trash compactor. Such machinery offers only a limited range of safe operating behaviors, deviations from which could result in severe bodily harm. Allowing individuals to discover a more enjoyable operating procedure, in other words, would in no way compensate for the increased safety threat. To be sure, while employees may enjoy such training far less than, say, a simulation wherein trainees blast their way out of a Death Star trash compactor fighting an evil trash monster, such simulated scenarios clearly do not represent the actual work environment. (We have no C-3PO and R2-D2 backups to stop the trash compactor should we fail.) Ultimately, the goal of such training is employee safety, not entertainment or positive attitudes.

Other types of training strive to foster positive attitudes, even if learners depart with little to no new concrete knowledge or skills. Consider, for instance, onboarding or socialization training, where new employees are often presented with specific information about the company’s founders and meaningful dates (e.g., the date of incorporation). The objective of such training is likely not for learners to retain those declarative facts and figures but, rather, to convey the more abstract and symbolic nature of the organization’s mission, values and culture. The specific dates on which International Business Machines became IBM or began shifting from machine production to business services are, in other words, less important than conveying IBM’s history of innovation and adapting to market changes. The objective of such training is to ensure that employees’ attitudes align better with the organization’s mission, values and general culture.

Lest the lack of Sesame Street learning strategies seem a limitation of an organization’s training practice, rest assured that such decisions are grounded in a relatively large body of empirical research. In fact, hundreds of studies have demonstrated a tradeoff between positive learner attitudes and the actual knowledge and skills acquired from learning experiences. More satisfied learners, in other words, do not equal more knowledgeable, skilled learners.

Hundreds of studies demonstrate a tradeoff between positive learner attitudes and the actual knowledge and skills acquired.

What, then, are training designers to do? Maximize learning? Make more positive trainee attitudes? Find a balance between learning and attitudes? Unless the strategic objectives of the training emphasize only instilling or improving learner attitudes (e.g., onboarding), the recommended strategy is to design training in such a way that learning is maximized – but not at the expense of learner attitudes.

To this end, here are some examples of messages training might offer participants to maximize both learning and positive attitudes. For some overall guidance, prompts should convey that the goal of training is not to perform flawlessly but rather to make mistakes in a safe learning environment so that such mistakes are less likely in future work situations.

Convey that the goal of training is not to perform flawlessly but rather to make mistakes in a safe learning environment.

For instance:

• Research shows that people who make more mistakes during training actually perform better on similar tasks in the future.
• It’s okay to make errors. Performing flawlessly means you have nothing left to learn!
• Making mistakes is a natural part of learning. It’s better to do it here in a safe place than in the “real world,” where mistakes have real consequences.
• There are no consequences for making mistakes in this training, but mistakes have very real consequences in the “real world.”

Worth considering, however, is that the training environments fostering these prompts also offer trainees more discretion over learning behaviors. In many instances, learners do not take advantage of this discretion in a productive way, such as interacting with the training to receive feedback on learning progress. Here are some additional examples of prompts that encourage learners to use training discretion effectively:

• Don’t wait to get in some practice. The training will be over before you know it!
• The time to use this training will be here before you know it. Make sure you’ve made the most out of your practice time!
• You never know when you may need to use this training. It even could be tomorrow!
• You probably won’t have designated time to practice when you go back into the “real world.” Take advantage of that opportunity while you still can!
• This training is a limited-time-only free pass to make mistakes. You won’t get this luxury in the “real world.”
• The sooner you start making mistakes, the sooner you begin to learn. Better get started!
• Remember, today’s struggles help us overcome tomorrow’s problems.

About the Author

Garett Howardson is the founder and principal work scientist at Tuple Work Science, Limited and an adjunct psychology professor at both Hofstra University and at The George Washington University. He is particularly interested in the role of computing to improve motivation and decision-making when learning to perform one’s work.