This is a nice little chart/table I came across that allows reproduction. It presents some presumed strengths and weaknesses of various instructional methods available to trainers and teachers, along with a short comment. Might be helpful to print out.
Most trainers and educators are somewhat limited in terms of the training and instructional approaches or methods they use. That’s understandable given the huge realm of possibilities for helping others learn. Here’s a list of instructional strategies that can be used in your instructional design and training delivery. Above all a great list for helping you develop creative instructional approaches for all ages, Kindergarten to adult.
How should trainers learn to be trainers. How should teachers be trained. Here’s a little snip of a conversation about the topic.
Someone wrote:
Task Analysis Strategies and Practices, Practice Application Brief, by Bettina Lankard Brown 1998
This project has been funded at least in part with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract No. ED-99-CO-0013. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. ERIC/ACVE publications may be freely reproduced.
Worker-oriented, job-oriented, and cognitive task analyses have all been used as tools for closing the gap between what curriculum teaches and what workers do. Although they share a commonality of purpose, the focus, cost, and practicality of task analysis techniques vary. This Practice Application Brief presents information on current practices and examples of the various types of task analyses, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses and detailing how they can be used in diverse settings to promote knowledge and skill development.
Task Analysis Models
Teaching Style vs. Learning Style Myths and Realities 26, by Bettina Lankard Brown, 2003 PDF Available
This project has been funded at least in part with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract No. ED-99-CO-0013. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. ERIC/ACVE publications may be freely reproduced.
If you believe learning by doing is a superior method of learning, and training, certainly better than old boring lectures, reading, etc, you’re in good (well, maybe not good) company. Many educators and trainers believe the same — that “real” learning can only occur if learners are demonstrably active. That is, you can see them doing something. Then again most trainers lack a sound education in learning and learning theories, at least to the breadth and depth needed to be competent in helping other people learn.
Here’s the thing. Despite the fact that most trainers come at learning from a humanistic perspective that emerged from the 60′s, they tend to ignore some human capabilities that distinguish us from animals. Animals tend to learn by doing because they lack abilities that we have. Hamsters learn by trial and error, primarily, and by the effects of reinforcement, but that mode of learning by doing is one of the least effective methods. Then again, hamsters don’t have many other options. And yet again, again, a wrong move in the learning by doing might result in the hamster’s demise.
Earlier today I announced the creation of a twitter hashtag, #trdev so people wanting to create a training and development community of practice on twitter could find each other, and interact. We have additional plans to make this work. However it will NOT work if the tag is used for NON-RELATED tweets.
Within 3 hrs. of announcing the tag, providing instructions for use, etc, Doug Constant @onpointcoaching started spamming the tag with messages of various types NONE of which pertain at all to the topic. You can see for yourself what he is doing by doing a search within twitter for #trdev, and you can see what appears to be a deliberate attempt to prevent you and I from creating this community.
This is a free manual designed to cover off coaching skills for trainers and managers who do on the job training. It’s produced by the CDS, Workplace Safety and Health Division.
You can get it in pdf format free of charge by clicking here.