However, as it turned out, I wasn’t even able to get to the whole conference — I had to go back in to the office at the last minute (priorities, priorities). But by tuning in to the social backchannel on Twitter, which David Kelly so masterfully curates, and by watching some of the recorded #ASTD2012 sessions, I figured I could at least tap into some of the discussion that was coming out of the big conference.

So, although I didn’t get to every session I would’ve liked to, I still came away from #ASTD2012 with three distinct experiences I’d like to share. They came from a conference session, a happy hour event, and something I saw the day after the conference ended.

Ideas for certification programs

On Sunday, I attended a session about certification programs. My boss has a vision of creating an industry certification program in her continued mission to bring credibility back to the mortgage industry.

I’ll admit I went into the session not expecting much, except for some re-hashing about the difference between certificate programs and certification programs. But actually I came away with some really relevant information, especially about ways to get our certification program accredited by an outside body — which would be a huge step in bringing back credibility to the mortgage industry — and gave me confidence that our organization could play a major role in that process.

It just goes to show you, sometimes, expectations can be exceeded.

Insights from Yammer

The next day, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a happy hour party with the crew from Yammer. Although I’d missed the conference that day, I had time that evening to come back downtown to join up. Although I passed on the Yamjuice, I met an old friend, Allison Michels, and two new friends, Misha McPherson (who recently wrote a guest post here for the Daily Mindflash) and Natalie Baryla, from whom I learned a ton about how Yammer uses their own technology to on-board new salespeople. I also learned some interesting ideas about how Yammer helps clients adopt the new technology. I had so many ideas flowing through my head that I had to pull myself away from some of my conversations just for a brief moment to jot down these ideas into Evernote on my iPhone. I hope no one thought I was being rude.

I’ve actually used Yammer at a previous job, and even gave a talk at a conference about it, but in just one night, I learned even more great ideas about how to take it to the next level. That gathering gave me new ideas about ways to use Yammer in new and productive ways. Sometimes the best learning comes after hours.

Energy to practice what was preached

As soon as we all got back to the office after the conference, I could sense a rise in our energy level and a flurry of new activity. Two of my L&D colleagues, Tammy Sherman and James Deitz, came back from the conference jazzed and ready to re-do just about everything we’ve been doing (I love this attitude, by the way).

From how we create slides to how we measure the success of our training to how to get people more involved in their own learning, Tammy and James are beginning to test new ideas in class within a week of attending the conference. In fact, I’m pretty sure James will have redesigned our new-hire orientation office tour into a scavenger hunt rather than the plain, old, boring tour we typically do. I’m definitely looking forward to that.

In the past, I’d thought that getting bombarded with too many ideas at once was overwhelming and could even cause some disillusionment. But now it seems like the lessons our team learned at #ASTD2012 is energizing us to take our work to the next level — In fact, I’m already seeing it.

More: How to Learn From a Conference You Aren’t Attending.

Bill Cushard, author and Director of Training and Development at Allonhill, is a learning leader with more than 12 years of experience in training and performance improvement at companies such as E*TRADE Financial, Accenture, and Time Warner Cable.

Image via ASTD’s Facebook photo album.

Imagine a trainer at the front of the room responding to a participant’s comment by saying nothing more than “You’re right!” or “Incorrect.” Imagine this happening over and over again.

Even though it seems futile, this is one of the most common types of feedback we use in e-learning courses to respond to user actions and answers. In fact, many authoring tools come with these vacuous statements as their default response.

If we’re going after higher-order thinking and maximum learning transfer, then we’re giving up a golden opportunity when we forgo real feedback and instead resort to “correct” and “incorrect.” We need to find ways to close the feedback loop.

You Have Lots of Options

There are many strategies for providing feedback, depending on the context and type of instruction, the objectives of the learning activity, and the audience’s level of expertise. Let’s look at some of your options for providing feedback that is sufficiently informative and moves the learner forward.

1. Real World Consequences

Analog World: Some of the most ideal feedback replicates what happens in the analog world. In simulations and virtual worlds, learners are given a chance to explore, manipulate and practice so they can learn in a safe environment.

In a reasonably accurate simulation, feedback occurs naturally as the result of an action. For example, in a driving simulation, turning a simulated steering wheel to the right appears to turn the car to the right. That’s feedback.

Digital World: Then again, sometimes our simulations replicate the digital world, as in a software simulation. Too often, software simulations are completely canned, so that users can only take one action. If possible, allow for more interactivity so learners can try out the simulated software a bit to better understand how to perform a task. With more flexibility, the feedback simulates the real (digital) world. For example, when the learner clicks a menu item, the menu displays. That’s real world feedback.

We often don’t have the budget for highly robust or complex simulations, so let’s look at some other options.

2. Hints and Cues

During interactions, learners might require several tries in order to clarify a learning point or fine-tune their discriminatory skills. If this is the type of interaction you’re designing, then valuable hints and cues are a good way to assist learners without completely taking away the benefit of making errors.

3. Branching in Stories and Scenarios

When using stories and scenarios in e-learning, it’s natural to take learners down a different path depending on their response. That’s a type of feedback. For example, in an emergency medical training course, the choice of one drug results in stabilizing a patient whereas the choice of another drug results in dangerously high blood-pressure levels.

The difficult part from a design and development perspective is to determine how many paths to design and implement. A simpler approach is to design short forks in the road and then merge the two or three paths back together. It’s one way to avoid a huge design and development effort.

4. Context-Sensitive Feedback

If you don’t want to build many paths in a story or scenario, simply provide unique feedback specific to each response. In the medical scenario above, an incorrect choice would produce feedback about the danger of the selected drug and request that the learner select another one. Even though context-sensitive feedback is not as compelling as branching, it is more engaging than a facts-only exercise and probably more beneficial to learning.

I think that context-sensitive feedback should be the minimal type of feedback we provide as learning experience designers. This means that we should always provide unique feedback that is specific to each response or action the learner takes. It works in multiple-choice tests as well as games, stories and virtual environments.

5. Incentivized Feedback

Although there is no one type of feedback in learning games, gaining points or completing a challenge is motivating. This type of feedback acts as an incentive to continue playing the game and learning.

As Karl Kapp writes in The Gamification of Learning and Instruction, “A player gets caught up in playing a game because the instant feedback and constant interaction are related to the challenge of the game, which is defined by the rules, which all work within the system to provoke an emotional reaction and, finally, result in a quantifiable outcome within an abstract version of a larger system.”

6. Peer or Social Feedback

In a training context, you can use collaborative and social media tools to give and receive peer feedback from colleagues. For example, if you were designing a course for new coaches, you could set up a Facebook Group page for discussion. Then request that participants write about how they would handle a specific coaching situation.

The participants would comment on how each coach managed the fictitious problem and everyone would learn in the process. The added bonus here is that the act of critiquing and commenting can help reviewers themselves, according to one study where undergraduate students critiqued each others writing. (Cho and Cho, 2011)

See Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth for more ways to use social media for learning.

7. Explanatory Feedback

You can apply explanatory feedback to any learning experience in which errors are caused by misconceptions or a lack of knowledge. If your design has frequent opportunities for learners to respond, then you can catch and remediate misconceptions as the learner is constructing meaning.

In particular, explanatory feedback, rather than corrective feedback, is a good choice for discovery learning as it helps learners build accurate mental models. In addition, there is evidence that explanatory feedback reduces cognitive load. (Moreno, 2004)

8. Self-Directed Feedback

Motivated or mature learners can benefit from self-directed feedback. As the learning designer, you can present thoughtful questions that encourage learner reflection, self-evaluation and self-assessment.

For example, after requesting that learners write a short essay response to a question, provide an ideal response or specific criteria as feedback. Then let learners evaluate their own essay and compare it to the ideal. There are many types of self-evaluation questions that can encourage higher-order thinking and reflection.

9. Worked Examples as Feedback

Worked-out examples are step-by-step demonstrations of how to solve a problem. They are thought to be effective with learners who have limited prerequisite knowledge because these examples reduce cognitive load. (Sweller, et al, 1998)

If the focus of your instruction is problem solving, then you can provide worked-out examples for learners to study and then again as feedback after they solve a problem. Note that worked examples are not effective for learners who are skilled at a task as it interferes with their ability to solve problems like an expert.

Connie Malamed is an expert on e-learning, information and visual design, and author of Visual Language for Designers. This post first appeared on her blog, The E-Learning Coach. Re-posted with permission.

Related: What Angry Birds Can Teach Us About Instructional Design.

Image used under Creative Commons by Flickr user jepoirrier.

Lots of employees dread company education. They dread it because often we, as educators, don’t create compelling or engaging programs. Nor do we explain the reasoning behind the materials we use in those programs. Sometimes employees feel they’re being force-fed management’s agenda without any apparent connection or value to their day. But in talking with employees, I find they don’t actually dread learning, per se. They just dread what they’re presented with, and how.

There is some company-specific education employees must have: training on computer systems, operational or service processes, compliance issues, etc. But what if instead of providing company-wide skill training, you empowered (or required) each employee to identify two skills they need to master over time — say, several months — then give them the responsibility to find their own materials to learn it. Trainers could help by giving employees a list of suggested resources and places to look, but ultimately the employee would have to come up with their own research.

There’s a lot to like about giving employees a more active role in their own learning. By leaving this process up to the worker, three things happen:

1. The employee becomes more vested in learning the skill. They intentionally identify programs that present meaningful job information and in a method that they prefer. Employees find greater (practical) meaning in what they learn.
2. The employee has the ability to customize their learning — to assess specifically what they need to improve their performance — rather than be forced to participate in education that is defined by the organization. One-size-fits-all education programs rarely influence sustainable results. Playing a part in identifying and selecting education holds the employee accountable for assessing his performance challenges and owning the process to address and solve them.
3. The employee has the flexibility to complete the education on their schedule, rather than being interrupted at what may be a busy time. A recurring complaint about education programs is that they interrupt daily work. Allowing learning flexibility enables employees to fit their learning at meaningful and effective points in their day or week; work performance does not suffer.

I find more and more employees want this freedom, and I’m inclined to allow them to have it — so long as they are held accountable for completing and using the education they select. I also find that when many employees search for meaningful education topics and programs, they introduce the company to resources that were not previously considered or known.

With the magnitude and flexibility of existing online resources, employees have learning options — and training professionals have teaching options — they never had before. Involving the employee in defining their own learning plan and choosing their resources allows training professionals the ability to focus on higher-impact education and organization-specific procedures. In short, this allows the education team to focus, get more done with less, and influence employees to be more personally connected to their education and success.

More: Why Learning Is the Most Valuable Element of Workplace Culture.

Jay Forte is a nationally ranked thought leader and President of Humanetrics. Jay guides organizations — their leaders and managers — in how to attract, hire and retain today’s best talent. He is the author of Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition and The Greatness Zone – Know Yourself, Find Your Fit, Transform The World. Jay is a member of SHRM, ASTD, the National Speakers Association and the Florida Speakers Association. Follow him on Twitter.

Image by Casie Yoder used under Creative Commons via Flickr user aflcio.

The difference between a great customer interaction and a bad one was, in many cases, as simple as a smile.

That’s what Sears Home Services, the $2.7 billion arm of the nationwide retail chain responsible for customers’ in-home installations and repairs, found after a full performance analysis of its field service technicians. In fact, the things customers truly cared about when someone came to fix their dishwasher weren’t necessarily their repairman’s technical abilities, or how fast he could fix something. It was whether he made eye contact with them. It was whether he called them to say he was en route. It was whether he explained what the repair entailed. Simple stuff.

So that was the good news. But with so many service techs in the field, spread all around the country, a new dilemma appeared: How do you train 8,000 workers to smile? The answer, quite simply, is that training alone wasn’t going to be enough:

“In any initiative, when you’ve got changing behaviors, the training is just one piece of a very complex puzzle,” says Stella Cannon, the director of learning and development for Sears’ Home Services. “You’ve got to put performance levers in place on the job to support that behavior — from the manager to the tools to the resources to the incentives and recognition — all those performance levels you need to pull. If we’d gone with just training, this wouldn’t be a sustainable initiative.”

So Sears set out to do just that. Cannon’s department first identified the vital behaviors and crucial moments during a customer interaction that either make or break a visit. Those included some tactile steps, like calling the customer to tell them when a tech would arrive, or wearing plastic boot covers indoors. But it also included more intangible, soft skills like showing courteousness, respect, and patience with customers.

From there, the training department came up with six sources of influence that could change that behavior — the performance levers — and set about delivering this initiative, called the “Pro-Advocacy Model,” to the technician staff.

First, the training people identified managers and other internal employees who could serve as experts to deliver training, and got them up to speed through train-the-trainer sessions. Then, a wider rollout to management associates on ways to handle and promote this “change management.”

“Management needed to not only understand [the new model], but also their role in providing rewards, reinforcement, coaching, and on-the-job support to hold everyone accountable,” Cannon said. Once the higher-ups were on board with the plan coached up on the new behavior model, trainers hit the road for a nearly year-long training road show, where they traveled to different regional Sears centers to do classroom-style training with the on-the-ground service techs.

“It was very interactive,” says Cannon. “[The training] included materials we handed out, as well as role plays and case studies. People were very excited about understanding what the customers want. Everyone wants to do the right thing for the customer; everyone wants to delight the customer, so having the data to support that this really is what our customers want, everyone was engaged in figuring out what their role is in executing that.”

Again, though, Cannon cautioned that simply delivering training was never going to be enough — the behavior had to be supported throughout the entire organization. “As in all training, the most difficult thing is reinforcing these behaviors on the job,” Cannon said. “When the tech goes back to work, what are we doing to provide them the resources and the tools, the coaching?”

So managers went out on service calls with technicians to observe their behavior in the field — watching and coaching in real time. Technicians offered customers a satisfaction survey at the end of each visit, and carried a literal checklist of the core behavioral keys.

Thus far, the results have been encouraging — one indication is the so-called “Blue Ribbon” program. In “blue ribbon” cases, a customer interaction has been horribly botched. In that case, a special team of techs is assigned to do anything in their power to right the situation, without interference from management. So far, 96 percent of these customers are retained.

Talk about service with a smile.

More: Why People Hate Training, and How to Overcome It.

Image via Futurity.org.