Don't Play Hide and Seek With Your Learners

Do you remember the childhood game of Hide and Seek? I remember the rush of hurrying to find the perfect hiding spot. That seemed to be the goal if you were not “It.” After finding the perfect hiding spot (after running as fast as I could), I would try to slow my breathing and be as still as possible. The thing is, all that time spent finding the perfect place to hide was not as rewarding as I thought it would be. More often than not, I would get bored and end up having to reveal myself to keep the other participants from giving up. What does this trip down memory lane have to do with healthcare training? Currently, I work for an education department of a large hospital system where I manage the education needs for a few of the hospital service lines. I find myself trying to create the perfect training solution and training materials. I meet with subject matter experts, identify the desired result, and coordinate the needed resources to deliver training. We can spend months fine-tuning curriculum and practicing our delivery.   Of course, the training happens, and we set the participants loose into the “real world” to practice what we taught them. Unfortunately, many forgot most of what we taught in the classroom, and they resort to asking peers for assistance or trying to look for another resource to help them accomplish the task. What happened to all of those hours we spent on creating the perfect classroom materials? How can we meet that immediate training need without giving away our perfect hiding place… um, I mean our classroom training? I have a saying: “We can create the best learning content, but if no one can find it, it is useless.” One can also say that if the learner does not have time to look for or complete the training, it also has no use. Just like that hiding spot, however perfect it may be, it gets pretty lonely if no one can find you! I believe that the world is spoiled by what I call, “ learning.” Not that this is a bad thing. In recent weeks, I have successfully learned how to change a headlight, reset a motherboard on a washing machine, create a conditional formula in Excel, and how to use the infamous “iCloud” all by searching for a video. I keep asking myself: If this is how I learn, why can’t we build our learning tools the same way? I find that we build classroom training and curriculum to capture every known scenario and then teach it from beginning to end. We end up with a 400+ page book that most learners will never see. The question becomes: How can we incorporate more just-in-time -style of training? Here are a few ideas: So, the next time you play Hide and Seek—I mean, create a training solution—make sure that you don’t spend all your time finding the perfect hiding spot. Think of ways to engage your learners once the initial game—I mean, training—is over. Always be aware of the ways you access learning, whether in the garage, the kitchen, the laundry room, or the perfect “hiding spot,” and transform them into your personal training tools.

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