Lectures are a barrier to the listener’s thinking.

The constant one-way transfer of information is like a dripping faucet. The information keeps coming and coming and coming.

And that constant drip of new data, facts, figures and info keeps the brain overwhelmed with new information. The listener is faced with a choice: listen to the new information or think about what they just heard. You can’t listen to the lecture and think about that information at the same time. You either do one or the other.

Small group and peer discussions foster learning and retention in ways the lecture never could. Adding peer discussion to a lecture is the winning formula that increases learning and thinking.

Creating Horseshoe Groups For Discussion

Professor Donald Bligh talks about using horseshoe groups in his book What’s The Use Of Lectures, first published in 1971. The horseshoe group is a useful method to alternate formal instruction with audience discussion.

A horseshoe group is a merging of two buzz groups. It usually has between four and twelve participants. The optimum size for a horseshoe group is six people. Groups larger than six should divide into two smaller groups for discussions.

Remember, the larger the group, the shorter the time each person will have to talk or discuss. You want to give each person adequate time to contribute to the group as well as articulate their thoughts.

According to education researcher Jane Abercrombie, discussion groups are arranged so that each member may interact face-to-face with every other member. With horseshoe groups, people sit in a horseshoe arrangement around a table. Chairs are arranged in a C or U shape with the opening facing either the center or the front of the room.

Adapted from Donald A. Bligh image of Buzz Groups in What's The Use Of Lectures.

The opening at each table allows for focus to move from small group discussion back to the presenter and vice versa. The opening also allows the presenter to easily join each group to listen and provide feedback as needed. If the presenter does join a group, he or she should crouch or sit in a chair at the opening. The presenter should always try to be at eye level with the group’s members. Standing above them can kill discussion and represents authority or exclusivity. Subconsciously, the group may think, “Oh, the presenter is here now. He/She will have the answers. Time to be quiet. We don’t have to think or discuss anymore.”

Why Use Horseshoe Groups?

Alternating a formal lecture or presentation with horseshoe groups gives the audience time to digest, think, reflect and process the information they just heard. It also gives individuals an opportunity for feedback from their peers regarding their thinking.

Horseshoe groups promote analytical thinking, creativity, evaluation, assessment and application of the information to specific challenges or situations. Presenters should intentionally and carefully consider what questions to ask to cultivate thinking in a specific direction. The more the participants can talk about the practical application of the information, the more likely they are to consider using it in their work.

How can you use horseshoe groups for your next conference? What are some ways to encourage people to participate in small group discussions?

Networking: there’s more to it than business professionals speed handshaking while exchanging business cards.

It’s an opportunity to connect and link with others as you share information, services and ideas with each other.

Attendee Networking Expectations Increase

There is no doubt about it. Conference attendee networking expectations are on the rise!

Your conference is often your stakeholders’ best opportunity to connect in person with thought leaders and colleagues.

While we intuitively know this, networking at most conferences continues to be a random, luck-of-the-draw encounter.

There’s a better way.

Facilitating Planned Networking Serendipity

By definition, serendipity is a happy accident or surprising discovery that comes when we least expect it.

Planned serendipity, on the other hand, is an effort to increase the likelihood and frequency of these discoveries. And it’s happening all around us.

Retail stores collect volumes of your product-purchase data. Suddenly, you’re getting discount offers that mirror the products and services you purchase most.

Have you noticed any changes in your Google-search results? Data from social-media profiles now factor into search results.

When planned serendipity is executed well, customers notice and appreciate far better experiences. When planned serendipity efforts are more obvious or cross privacy lines, customers feel manipulated, even deceived, and relationships deteriorate.

For years, your customers (attendees) have been sharing valuable data with you that can help create the kind of planned-serendipity moments they will prize at your conferences. Have you been paying attention?

Using Data To Foster Planned Serendipity

If you’ve been capturing and analyzing attendee data, you already know what drives people to register for your conference, which sessions they enjoy most, what products and services interest them, and what critical issues are top of mind at any given point. This is precisely the information you need to help identify others they should meet at your conference.

Here are three ways to make those connections more likely:

1. House conference guests on the same floors.

When like-minded attendees are in closer proximity, the chances for them to meet and engage in meaningful conversations increase. Because they’re enrolled in the same learning track, they’ll recognize each other when waiting for the elevator. In social psychology circles, there’s a phenomenon known as the “mere-exposure effect” — people develop preferences for things (or people) simply because they are more familiar with them. The more a person is seen by someone, the more likeable that person becomes.

2. Create small-group seating clusters to spark impromptu conversations.

In meeting rooms, create pod-seating clusters where four to six people can easily gather and chat. Create similar cluster-seating arrangements at restaurants, in lobbies and surrounding all networking receptions. You’ll be amazed at how connections and conversations accelerate.

3. Train staff and volunteers to be connectors.

As participants arrive at sessions and receptions, staff and volunteers need to be on their toes, circulating and engaging in conversations. Show staff and volunteers how to ask participants the kinds of questions (e.g., What session did you enjoy most today?) that can guide them in making valuable introductions to others. This is particularly important for new and introverted members who may not know many people and who would appreciate the extra-mile effort from your team. Create an army of connectors and networking conversations multiply.

Want more information? Download a sample chapter of the new book Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business.

What are some sample questions your army of connectors can ask attendees to connect them with others? What are some other ways you can create planned serendipity at your conference?

Adapted from Dave’s Forward Thinking column in PCMA’s Convene. Reprinted with permission of Convene, the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association. ©2012.

Joe Pulizzi shares how he uses content marketing to grow attendance at the Content Marketing World Conference.

Here’s a rundown of his video if you want to fast forward to a specific area.

00:10 – Who Is Joe Pulizzi & What Is The Content Marketing World Conference
01:00 – What Is Content Marketing?
02:07 – How To Use Content Marketing To Grow Conference Attendance
03:39 – Tips For Creating Content For Your Conference Marketing
06:59 – For More Information On Content Marketing

Video edited from PCMA’s Convening Leaders 2012 Learning Lounge Live Chat Room video clip.

How does your organization use content marketing to grow conference attendance? What’s the most challenging part of content marketing for your conferences?

According to PC Housing stats, smartphones and tablets are slowly placing themselves in between water and food as top necessities for business travelers.

It makes sense.

Being on the road is simply made easier and more manageable by these tools that allow us to stay connected. Yet are these mobile devices taking up too much of our time?

Check out PC Housing’s infographic below to see how dependent you are in comparison to other road warriors!

Business Traveler’s Mobile Dependence Infographic created by PC Housing

What’s the most unusual place you use your mobile device? How frequently do you use your mobile device?

Lectures are good for sharing information.

They are not good for learning and getting listeners to think!

Nor are the good for getting listeners to remember and apply the information they hear. Audience discussion methods are more effective for learning than the lecture.

Lectures are the equivalent of distributing a report and asking people to read it. The scientific research about the ineffectiveness of lectures for education and learning abounds. Yet it is still the primary method used in most education programs.

If the goal of a lecture is audience learning and retention, then the lecture needs to be modified. A simple way to modify the lecture is to add time for hearers to discuss the information with each other one on one or in small groups. It’s best to break the lecture up into several segments and allow for

Buzz Groups

Here is one method to infuse lectures with life-saving, thought-provoking discussion that increases learning and retention.

Buzz Groups are small groups of two to six people that discuss a specific topic, especially that of a lecture. They can be used several times for short periods within a specific education program.

When used within the typical classroom seating, participants in alternating rows turn around to face those in a row behind them. If the room is a terraced theater, have groups of two or three members in the same row discuss the issues or problems. If someone or a pair is left alone at a table, have them join another group.

Adapted from Donald A. Bligh image of Buzz Groups in What's The Use Of Lectures.

The term “buzz” refers to the noise or buzz of the room as people discuss a topic during a program. If the topic is controversial or people have lots of emotion and energy around the topic, smaller groups work better. This allows each individual to develop their own thinking. It also allows for the listener to consider it and provide feedback.

Buzz Groups can be used for audience sizes of 30 to 3,000. When the audience is sitting in theater seating, have them turn to their right or their left and talk to their neighbor.

Encouraging The Introverts

One way to encourage introverts is to have individuals write down their thoughts or responses to a specific question. As individuals finish, have them share their thoughts with their neighbor.

Then Buzz Groups are introduced without official fanfare and a possible negative emotional response of fear of the unknown. This negates the possibility of resistance to interactivity without announcing that you are using a new instructional method.

Evidence: Buzz Group Discussions Work

Buzz Groups have been around for a long time. Professor Donald A. Bligh first wrote about Buzz Groups in What’s The Use Of Lectures in 1971.

Researchers Di Vesta and Smith (1979) showed that a typical 20-30 minute lecture that included three two-minute Buzz Group discussions interspersed throughout the lecture increased learning and recall. Students were tested two weeks later and recalled the main points of the lecture that were discussed.

When discussion was limited to before and after the lecture, researchers Di Vesta and Smith (1979) as well as Ruhl and Suritsky (1995) showed that it actually interfered with learning and recall was limited. The students could not recall the main points of the lecture.

The best method for learning and retention is to break up a 20 minute lecture with a minimum of three times to allow peer discussion.

Why are so many speakers afraid of adding audience discussion to their presentations? What are some other audience discussion techniques that you’ve experienced that increase learning and retention?

I’m feelin’ good from my head to my shoes
Know where I’m goin’ and I know what to do
I tidied up my point of view
I got a new attitude!

Patti LaBelle, New Attitude

As a conference organizer, when was the last time that you had a new attitude about your participants’ conference experience?

Or are you, “Running hot, running cold…running into overload” as you plan your next event.

Shaping Attitudes

Our attitudes steer our decisions. They build momentum in everything we do. Or they can become the barriers that keep us from achieving our best.

A conference experience is at its peak when it encourages participants to behave and act in certain ways that lead to progress. It is inspirational when it promotes and advances specific positive attitudes.

Fostering new participant attitudes is one of the trickiest parts of designing conference experiences. Attitudes are hard to predict. They are even harder to force. And harder still to measure.

Yet a conference experience that shapes and fosters new participant attitudes is worth seeking.

As a conference organizer, it first must start with you changing your attitude. Once you’ve decided to take this new journey, the next step is to define your conference participants’ attitudes. They will become the foundation for your conference culture.

Five Conference Participant Attitudes To Foster

Here are five mindsets or attitudes that strike a balance between being comprehensive and actionable for your conference participants. They are adapted from the d.school‘s cultural mindsets.

Consider them. Alter them. Make them your own. By all means, leave room for them to evolve as you learn along with your participants.

1. Collaborate Across Boundaries

When individuals from different disciplines and varied backgrounds collaborate together the results can be astounding. Often it’s the difference between innovative and conventional solutions. Innovation can frequently be found in the cracks between domain definitions. Bringing people together with wildly different backgrounds increases the likelihood of stumbling on these useful intersections.

2. Show, Don’t Tell

A “show, don’t tell” attitude means creating compelling experiences that enable participants to comprehend the context of the situation. Instead of discussing the idea, demonstrate it and let participants experience it. Creating that experience will reveal details that may not be obvious in the traditional lecture or discussion.

3. Have A Bias Toward Action

Have participants do something first. Then talk and think about it. Don’t let intent and outcome get in the way of exploring the unknown. People will always find a reason not to do something. Biasing toward action depends on being willing to try something to precisely determine what works and what doesn’t.

Action does not overshadow thinking. Participants still have to pay attention and observe. Reflection on what they did is the key to a deeper understanding of the situation.

4. Focus On Human Values

Let your conference participants inspire your work. Design conference experiences that engage others. This means you’ll have to step out of your comfort zone and challenge your own beliefs about how people interact and respond. Close your mouth, listen and observe. Take planning cues from users rather than deferring to last year’s schedule.

5. Invite Failure As Part Of Learning

This means don’t play it safe all the time. Leading directly and knowingly into failure is a counterintuitive attitude that needs to be fostered.

Within the context of business, budgets and timelines, failure often translates into danger. However, in the right experiences, you can achieve a balance between knowing you are going to fail and the fact that the anticipated failure will make the next step more productive. Failure within context can lead to better results. It is part of the learning process.

What new conference participant attitudes would you add to this list? How would you adapt one or more of these attitudes into your next conference planning process?

Do you design your conference meeting space with participants’ behaviors and actions in mind?

Or do you design meeting space based on what is the most efficient and not necessarily the most effective?

Regardless, you have the unique ability to motivate and stimulate your participants’ specific behaviors during your event.

Orienting The Room For Specific Purposes

Orientation is the relative positioning of people and things.

It is the principal vehicle directing human attention. It is also the primary medium used to fine tune human connections with an experience.

Orientation is also the easiest characteristic to manipulate to transform behavior and mood. Often it only requires adjusting the direction in which people are standing or sitting. The arrangement of the furniture reflects the desired engagement between the audience and presenter.

If you want participants to be passive with full attention on one person, you’ll orient the room in a singular fashion, with all the chairs facing a stage and podium.

If you want participants to be active with attention on each other, you’ll orient the room with a multifaceted fashion where everyone is treated equally. No one person is the focus.

Defining Actions

Actions are behaviors and tasks that participants are to use within a space. They are the steps of doing at any given moment.

Identifying the various activities that you want participants to engage in can help you design the space for that purpose.

Six Actions For Conference Participants

In the book Make Space, authors Scott Doorley and Scott Withoft identify six actions that the d.school : The Institute Of Design at Stanford uses to engage others in the creative process. I’ve modified these six actions to apply to conferences and events.

These six basic actions are descriptions of what a conference participant might do during a snapshot of time.

1. Focus

Focus is narrowing attention on a single topic for a sustained period of time. This requires ignoring other activities or topics. It’s working toward an insight or implementing an idea.

The traditional lecture-based theater room set encourages focus on presenters and their ideas. Shifting from receiving information to evaluating ideas would require a different room set.

2. Flare

Generating tons of new concepts and options. Flaring requires ignoring constraints and suspending disbelief in favor of creating something new. Brainstorming and ideating are common ways to flare.

Room layouts need to provide flexible, moveable seating in small groups. The focus should be on engagement with each other through discussion.

3. Realize

Turning an idea or concept into something tangible. This action requires participants to move beyond discussion to actually creating something.

Room layouts need to provide both small group interactions as will as individual, independent stations. The focus is on participants creating action plans and actually designing programs, services and products.

4. Reflect

Reflection is reconsideration of what just happened. It’s to learn, illuminate, capture and evaluate past experiences in light of the new information. It’s about connecting the new information to what is yet to come. It signals a next step, not necessarily an endpoint.

Room sets should provide opportunities for participants to share, discuss and assess past experiences as well as how to connect new information.

5. Saturate

Saturate is the unpacking of information, data and facts. It’s the sharing of information and ideas with each other. Contained within saturation is the revealing and displaying of information through allegories, graphics, illustrations, metaphors, photos and stories.

Traditional theater room sets allow for saturation of information but not necessarily the sharing of ideas with each other.

6. Synthesize

Synthesizing is clarifying complex and layered issues. It often takes combining available information with other ideas and merging unassociated thoughts from different disciplines. Sometimes it involves rearranging elements to generate new ways of looking at a challenge.

Room sets should encourage collaboration and small group processes.

Which of these actions are most appealing to you for your next conference and why? What barriers keep you from creating more room sets that encourage active participant engagement?

What do vacations and colonoscopies have in common?

More than you think!

Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal and NBC journalist, author, inventor and business consultant Kare Anderson shares her thoughts on creating a stronger conference story. She discusses the importance of creating conversation threads and a participatory purposeful narrative that invites others to join in discussions.

Here’s a rundown of her video if you want to fast forward to a specific area.

00:30 – Creating A Conference Story
02:49 – The Difference Between Storyboarding And Storytelling
03:46 – Threading And Theming A Conference
04:25 – Creating A Conference Culture Of Learning
05:17 – For More Information On Storyboarding

Anderson’s just released book Moving From Me To We: Succeed And Savor Life With Others is available for your Kindle. It contains more than 300 ways to become more likable, respected and frequently quoted.

Video edited from PCMA’s Convening Leaders 2012 Learning Lounge Live Chat Room video clip.

How important is a conference theme or thread to your planning process? What are some important tips you’ve learned about creating a conference story or theme?

Is your organization offering learning opportunities that are based on an outdated model?

Or have you positioned your organization to offer learning opportunities that are proven to be successful today and align with your participants’ learning?

No, I’m not just talking about the linear advancement of technology as applied to learning. Technology is a factor but it is not the primary driving trait. I’m talking about the shift in how culture and the context of a global economy affect our learning.

The Three Stages Of Learning Through Time

As identified in the post Are You Still Providing Education Based On The Industrial Revolution Model? many organizations are still providing outdated delivery models of education based on the industrial revolution model. Then they wonder why their revenue continues to shrink. The education experience feels stale, outdated and from a command-and-control, shut-up, sit-down, listen, don’t ask questions, pay attention approach.

Successful education opportunities today are more collaborative, peer-sharing and discussion based than the old models.

TRClark, ASTD Research, Chief Learning Officer and The eLearning Guild released a report in 2008 that addressed the market upheaval, technological disruption, demographic churning and political instability that threaten learning and organizations today. They traced the history of learning from 1957-2008.

They identified three distinct learning stages during those fifty-one years. They also distinguished the trends for those periods and offered a set of recommendations for future progress.

• Learning 1.0 1957-1981
• Learning 2.0 1981-2004
• Learning 3.0 2004-2008

This post will discuss Learning 3.0 and the future of learning.

Learning 3.0 2004 To Present

During this time period, market disruption and accelerated change became the norm. The volatility and speed of change appears irreversible, which is tough news for organizations struggling to survive. Organizations are challenged to learn, change and lead learning in a way for which they have no precedent. They lack experience and knowledge on what to do next.

The learning mindset is one of continuous, rapid and collaborative learning at the moment of need. Collaboration raises the overall knowledge level of the group. Collaboration is possible but not automatic.

Collaborators can also come away with dumbed-down rather than ratcheted-up collective knowledge as well. Collaboration can be a hit or miss depending on how it’s facilitated and the experience level of the group. Provide the wrong type of collaborative experience and customers won’t return.

Today, education researchers challenge people to view organizations as a system of learning as well as a production and service-delivering resource. Yet most organizations are full of people who have outdated learning skills combined with an industrial learning mindset that doesn’t allow them to learn continuously. Some baby boomers survive on the basis of old skills from another time, immobilized, acknowledging publically the new world but privately unwilling to learn in new ways.

Similarly, some organizations perpetuate cultures of fear. In those environments, people respond by withholding information.

The key to growth is the cultivation and retention of knowledge workers. They create up to three times the profit of other employees says Lowell Bryan, a director at McKinsey and author of Race for the World: Strategies to Build a Great Global Firm.

The speed of change outside of an organization now favors leaders who explore, monitor the periphery and extend the field of vision for the entire organization. Context is ever important to learning. The shift from competence to the ability to continually acquire new knowledge and skills is imperative.

A new learning leader paradigm has emerged. Learning leaders have a unique ability to learn as well as engage others in learning.

Mobile learning, personalized learning and formal as well as informal learning opportunities are critical. Learning context is key and structured, facilitated yet organized collaborative, peer-sharing, continuous learning opportunities rise to the top. Event-based learning is seen within a larger context of ongoing learning and not just a one-time experience. The focus is on creating learning experiences that are memorable, relevant and solve customers’ problems. Learning has shifted from being speaker-centric to learner-centric.

Learning 3.5 – The Near Future

In the future, learning will focus on knowledge management being fully integrated into business workflow process. Content management with today’s contextual global environments is critical. Content, context and collaborative communication are keys.

Mobile, real-time performance smart agents will be embedded within the process as well as ongoing analysis and evaluation. Learning will not be able to be separated from production. An emphasis will be given to acquiring knowledge and creating value in the production process. Learning and talent management systems will facilitate a more seamless integration of workflow and learning.

How can organizations transition from expert- and speaker-centric to being more learning-centric? What role do data, facts and information have in collaborative learning?

Is your organization still trying to make revenue from didactic forms of education and instruction?

Are you using a hierarchical, top-down, command and control delivery model? Are you providing content that seems out of context in today’s every changing global market?

If you are, you are showing your age. You are announcing to the world that you believe old methods succeed in today’s volatile, disruptive markets. And they don’t!

The Three Stages Of Learning Through Time

TRClark, ASTD Research, Chief Learning Officer and The eLearning Guild released a report in 2008 that addressed the market upheaval, technological disruption, demographic churning and political instability that threaten learning and organizations today. They traced the history of learning from 1957-2008.

They identified three distinct learning stages during those fifty-one years. They also distinguished the trends for those periods and offered a set of recommendations for future progress.

• Learning 1.0 1957-1981
• Learning 2.0 1981-2004
• Learning 3.0 2004-2008

This post will discuss Learning 1.0 and Learning 2.0. Tomorrow’s post discusses Learning 3.0 and Learning 3.5, the future.

Learning 1.0 1957-1981

This stage is defined by two enduring learning patterns.

1. Apprenticeship

At a basic level, it’s informal learning in the form of on-the-job training. Young workers in skilled trades observe and work alongside accomplished artisans. Once they have acquired the requisite skills and knowledge, they begin to work independently.

2. Formal Instruction

Teachers instruct students through formal oral instruction. This form of education traces its history to the religious orders’ learning centers centuries ago.

For years, society held these two approaches, experiential and didactic, as the primary instruction methods. While the Industrial Revolution created major shifts in agriculture, transportation and manufacturing, education remained the same.

The rules began to change as technology advanced and foreign economies rose. In 1957 the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik caused organizations to gasp in fear and recognize their own shortcomings. It caused organizations to rethink their competitive positions and ultimately the way they delivered education.

Human capital became a primary focus. Organizations began to departmentalize thinking and non-thinking positions.

Non-thinking positions focused on raw task-based productivity. They were not considered human capital.

During this period, learning was autocratic, top-down, command and control. Training was a necessary part of organizational success. Certification was a one-time learning process for permanent qualification. Education was instructor-led, face-to-face. Organizational learning was restricted to formal events.

Learning 2.0 1981-2004

During this time period, organizations suddenly understood that they must evolve, adapt and continually re-create themselves or face failure. Market disruption, instability and industry consolidation were the trends of the time. The first generation personal computer was born.

Leaders realized that competitive advantage came from people. The Industrial Revolution mindset that individuals attained mastery and permanent qualification began to breakdown. A new learning mindset developed that learning should be a continuous ongoing qualification. Learning became an ongoing process.

Education opportunities transitioned to more democratic, egalitarian and facilitative experiences. Instructor-led was both asynchronous and synchronous in eLearning environments. Formal, event-based education experiences through multiple channels were offered. Instructor-led was more facilitator-0riented with peer-sharing and discussion. (Note: yet many organizations today still hold onto teacher-led didactic formal training as the only type of education offering.)

Three siloed educational functions appeared: training, support services (help desks) and publications. Training focused on formal structured education opportunities. Support services cultivated informal learning opportunities especially when problems and needs arose. Publications developed ongoing print and electronic help.

Tomorrow’s post looks at Learning 3.0 and Learning 3.5, the future.

In what ways to your current learning opportunities align with Learning 1.0 or 2.0? What organizational barriers exist that keep your learning opportunities from transitioning to more effective models?