Training Tips #4 - Creating Exercises

This Article is part of a series of Training Tips, intended to help experts without an education background design and teach courses.

#1 Where to Start

#2 Formal Assessment

#3 Finding the Right Level

#4 Creating Exercises

#5 Content Delivery

This is by far the most difficult part of creating a course I hope you appreciate that I feel I’m giving away perhaps my most valuable secrets in this article!

If you have read Tips #1, #2 and #3, you know how to get started on your course design, you know the overall process, you have planned your formal assessment, and you know the target level for your course. Now, finally, you can begin designing the substance of the course: the exercises and the content delivery sessions. In this tip, I will focus on the exercises.

The purpose of exercises in a course are to:

• Allow practice of useful skills and sub-skills in a safe, coached environment.
• Provide active sessions that raise the energy and engagement level of students.  

Maximize the percentage of class time with exercises that meet the criteria above. It is even possible to construct a short class that is entirely exercises. However, content delivery sessions will allow you to provide background and context for the exercises, establish a framework of knowledge, and teach exercise prerequisites.

Start your exercise creation process by visualizing the skills that you will teach. These should have been included in your learning objectives, defining what students will be able to do after the course. For example, students will be able to:

• Create a complete graphical gas lift design for a well, given a set of data about the well and the gas lift system.
• Calculate the correct set pressures of gas lift valves for a graphical design.
• Determine the appropriate amount of lift gas for a well.
• Troubleshoot gas lift behavior.

If you are an expert in gas lift, you can easily visualize how you would be able to perform the skills above. Break the design into steps. For each step, create an exercise. Create a final exercise. Put the exercises into a logical order.  

Consider whether you can create each exercise such that it includes the prerequisite material, or are you going to deliver the necessary content before the exercise. It is useful in creating realistic exercises that you have the students struggle a bit, for example in gathering and synthesizing information, just as they will have to do on the job. It is a tricky balance in preparing students for an exercise and just letting leaving them to struggle without success.

Every exercise should have a debrief session to allow the students to reflect on what they are learning and for you to correct any misunderstandings and reinforce the key points. 

The most difficult part of course creation is developing a variety of exercises. Too many of one type can be boring. Choose exercises types that are closer to realistic work situations where the skills will be applied. Here is a list of exercise types that I have used, separated into Individual Exercises and Group Exercises.

Individual Exercises

I tend to start with individual exercises to teach small skills, small parts of the objective skill-set. I really dislike the “follow the instructor” style of exercise where the instructor does one small part on a screen and then every student then copies those steps for 2 minutes, then the instructor does the next part, and everyone copies that, etc. When I’m learning, I find that very boring, plus looking up at the instructor and then down at my work repeatedly is distracting. I want to be able to think about what I’m doing. I might want to do several steps, then pause and think. I might be faster. I might be slower. I might want to try some things the instructor did not suggest. I am frustrated to have to follow along.

Scripted Exercises: My solution to “follow the instructor” has been to create a very detailed step-by-step instruction exercise, or script, that students can follow at their own pace. This gives me the chance to move about the room checking for understanding and coaching. Occasionally, one student will ask me something that isn’t covered in the directions or is confusing, and I can get everyone’s attention and explain that point (and then fixing the exercise for next time). I use the script to provide context, indicate alternative options, create clarifications, and anything else that seems appropriate. I leave blanks and questions that the student needs to discover. I almost always include the relevant formulae. If I want to make the task easier, I might show part of the answer or the answer to the first question, with my work shown. These script exercises work especially well with software, and can include screenshots to help with navigation. I set a time limit on the exercise. If a student cannot complete the exercise, they still have the script to continue with later.

I compensate for differences in speed of students by providing some more difficult, but optional, exercises for the faster students. Exercises can be increased in difficulty by providing less scripting, including advanced skills, and combining skills. I rarely have any students falling behind because I notice someone lagging when I walk around and I can coach them back on pace.

I very often will encourage students to work together with their neighbors in a classroom to complete these sorts of exercises. Explaining and showing skills to your neighbor helps cement in place your own new skills. Also, by listening into these conversations, I can either give them positive feedback, or I can interrupt with corrections. To raise the seriousness of the individual exercise a bit, feedback to the rest of the class can be mandated.

Simulations: Computer simulations make excellent instructional tools. I created several of these, and have written articles on LinkedIn about GLtoy, ESPtoy, and PSOtoy. They require considerable investment in time to create, but are excellent at teaching dynamic behavior and realistic skills. I created my latest simulations in Pygame, but have also used Excel, and Flash. Simulations allow students to quickly try various tactics, fail often, and instantly see the outcome, things that they cannot do in the real world. It is quite easy to create short or long individual exercises around simulations. Results can be shared with the instructor, or with the class.

All of these individual exercises should result in the creation of realistic work products or parts of work products.  

Workplace Assignments: In Tip #2, I mentioned Workplace Assignments as a mechanism for formal assessment. They work equally well as a pre-classroom assignment (e.g. gather the following data from your workplace), as a post-classroom assignment in building skills, or just another individual assignment in a virtual class.

Group Exercises

Teamwork is the primary mechanism on the job, and so it should be in the classroom, and should result in something very close to real work products. Here are several types of group exercise that I have used:

Quizbowl: This is for sub-skills that are primarily about retaining general knowledge. You can also use this, as I did, to provide students a check on what they think they know. Prepare a good number of facts, perhaps 30. Change the facts into questions and short answers. Divide the class into two groups. Create a mechanism to keep score, for example a flipchart and markers. I used some game-show music to raise the energy in the room. Ask a question of one person on the first team. I prepared a set of game-show buzzer sounds on my laptop and used this to announce either a correct or incorrect answer. Correct answers from that person are worth two points. If wrong, ask the rest of the team, with a correct answer being worth one point. Failing that, ask the other team where a correct answer is worth one point. Rotate to the first person on the next team, then the second person on the first team, etc. Feel free to explain and expound on the answers or to clear up any difficult points. You should have enough questions for at least one question per person. Celebrate the winning of *both* teams at the end, as they have both gained knowledge. This exercise can be stressful, so I wouldn’t have this go on more than an hour.

A different version of Quiz Bowl could use the same questions and answers, and have the other team help judge the answers, making it more of an open discussion and debate.

Simulation Game: The whole set of skills for a work product can be combined into a realistic process and run as a simulation game. My most popular exercise is a simulation game that runs over 3 days at 2-4 hours each day. Each part of the exercise is built around a portion of the steps of a process (Production System Optimization). I provide the data, the students provide their output in the form of recommendations, I simulate the outcome from their recommendations, and we carry those results into the next step of the process. The key here is that the simulation outcomes must be seen as completely fair, realistic, and transparent. For this long exercise, I use a numerical simulator to produce realistic data for them to analyze and then produce recommendations, and I use the same simulator to produce outcomes from their recommendations. I explain to them that the simulator is very realistic, but in my case, not accurate (it was not built for use as a design tool). Commercial design and analysis software can also be used in such an exercise. The game tension will come from the hidden inconsistencies between the 'true' simulation held by the instructor and the students' simulation based on different data. This is great for teaching analysis and troubleshooting that is required for working with real data. For example, for an exercise about pipe flow, pipe model calibration, and pipe scaling, I may tell the students that a pipe is 4 inches diameter, but all the data I give them is produced in a software with a pipe of 3 inches diameter because in the 'real world' that pipe is partially filled with debris. In a data set of 100 values I may carefully select 5-10 of them to secretly change, constructing a story for each change that the students are charged to uncover.

Simulations do not need to have any computer content. They are just a method to take in input and create fair, transparent output. Simulation games can be built like board games or card games. One game I know that taught the importance of information sharing was based on a trading game with some written rules, and various phases in which students mingled and networked in a large room. I have seen other games that taught optimization skills where students used cards and a board to represent a factory.

The combination of Simulation Game and Role Play, next, is excellent.

Role Play: Role play is where you, as a teacher, and/or the students, pretend to have other roles. As an introvert, I really didn’t want to try to use role play. I’m an engineer and focus on hard, technical skills. However, some learning objectives require soft skills. Role play is perhaps the only way to teach soft skills. For example, role play can be used to teach how to deal with difficult team members, how to give performance reviews, how to manage a difficult boss, how to motivate a team, etc. Role play as a teaching tool is the most basic of acting, just acting like you might if put into a different job.

In one case, I knew that one of the major deficits in our students was around negotiation skills, so I included role play in my simulation game. In the game, the students need to provide their recommendations for me to include in the simulator. They could have just written them down on paper or emailed them to me. Instead, I had them present their recommendations to me at a conference table. This increased the realism of the exercise and gave them a chance to practice negotiation. I only needed to respond to their recommendations in a realistic manner according to the part I was playing, in this case a manager they didn’t know. If ‘the manager’ was not convinced, they were sent away to regroup and try again.  It is not a difficult role to play, as I had a sense of a good deal and a bad deal, and I had to just make it consistent across the competing teams.

In another role play, I needed to teach students a process to use in a group to extract and share information. I then played someone who did not know this process, but possessed the information that needed to be shared. The students then took turns coaching me through the sharing process. This only required me to pretend to not know the process and to respond realistically to their coaching. I often stepped outside of the role to coach them, for example explaining how I felt as the coached person, and suggesting different approaches for them to try out on me. I often wore a hat as part of my role-play costume. It helped me and the class keep track of which ‘me’ was there at any point in time.  

Role play can be used in different way, too. In one series of exercises, I was teaching students how to find problems or opportunites for improvement. I pretended to be their eyes, ears, and hands in the field. For example, the students would ask what I could see when I looked at certain equipment, and I would tell the students what I saw and answer any questions they asked. I was teaching them to investigate real situations by having them ask questions about a site, e.g. “Are there any pressure gauges?”, “What is the pressure of the gauge?”, “Is the pipe cold or warm?”, “Where does the pipework lead downstream?” 

In another form of role play, Shell was very much focused on having young staff be able to make technical and business presentations. Almost every introductory course had the students presenting to a panel of ‘experts’. The students knew this was mostly just role play, but the panel were able to provide feedback both on the content of the presentation and on the delivery. The students were usually told to prepare the materials as a group, then were told to present their parts individually. They often found that this odd split didn’t work well, just as it doesn’t work well in real life!

I know that role play will put many instructors out of their comfort zone. However, if you are teaching any subject that has an element of soft skills (most complex areas will), role play is a tool you really need. This often only requires you to behave for a short period as if you had a different job in the company. I bet you can do that.

Software Games: To build on the individual exercises when teaching software, and for reinforcing skills through practice, make a game of it. For example, in classes where everyone (or every two people) have a computer, divide the class into two teams. Have them compete to solve a problem with their software given a set of data. The first team to have every computer displaying the same, correct answer wins. This builds an interesting dynamic as, inevitably, different answers will be found on the first pass. Then, realistically, every one in the team will need to be troubleshooting and checking their own data and choices as well as their teammates. The time pressure of the second team doing the same dramatically raises the class energy level.

Games can focus on speed, accuracy, or both. They can be highly guided, for example by only requiring given data to be entered into software (amazing and scary when this produces significant number of wrong answers). Games can be task oriented, for example asking for a certain analysis in a model with a complete set of data. Games can focus on troubleshooting, for example giving a complete data file with the wrong answer and have the students find the wrong menu choice or piece of data. In one exercise, I used a real world case where someone had entered the correct numbers, but one number had the wrong units. An evil, but realistic exercise.

Debrief: This is not a separate exercise but a reminder that at the end of every exercise comes the most important part for learning, the debriefing. Set aside plenty of time for this. Especially if the exercise was stressful, take a break, and come back for the debrief. Asking, “What were the most difficult things about that exercise?” and “If you had it to do over again, what would you change?” will help the students get extract the most learning and pull the students back from competitive mode into the learning mode. Once you have set the proper tone, open the discussion, and let students give feedback to other students too.

If you have done your job well by making the group exercise realistic, you will absolutely need to help them return to reality. For the ‘losing’ team, this is the time to be reminded it was just a game and that they both learned and taught others with through their different approach. They will be sure to remember their mistakes back in the real world. You can award prizes for long games, and if so, every team should get customized recognition.

Those are the types of exercises I use. If you have other exercises you like as a teacher or student, please, please let us know in the comments!

Course Design

When you have various exercises created, you are well on the way to creating the course. Each exercise you have will (probably) require some content beforehand. That content can be limited to only what is required to successfully complete the exercises if, as I keep repeating, the exercises are realistic demonstrations of workplace skills.

At this point you will have the foundation of your course outline. For example:

• Background content delivery about the course
• Prerequisite content delivery for the first exercise
• Short, individual exercise
• Short debrief
• Prerequisite content delivery
• Short, individual exercise
• Short debrief
• Pre-requisite content delivery
• Part of longer group exercise demonstrating partial skill
• Debrief
• Prerequisite content delivery
• Short, individual exercise
• Short debrief
• Long, final group exercise demonstrating whole skill
• Course debrief

Course Delivery

Most of the exercises described can be delivered (in some form) in the classroom or virtually. This will be the next topic, which has to come before the discussion about content delivery.

Speaking of which, if you have suggestions for any future topics, I would love you get them. Thanks!

I will try to use these hashtags for this series of articles: #trainingtips #training #learning #engineers

Burney is an almost-completely retired global consultant engineer, and Director of Retirement Testing at the Waring Retirement Laboratory