Although you may not be considered a ‘trainer’ in the official sense of the word, you still might be asked to show others how to carry out certain jobs. For example, a new member of staff starts in your office. They will be performing the same role as you and your boss asks you to offer them a helping hand by training them on how to use your company’s database. Would you know how to go about it in the most effective way?
Luckily, there are lots of ways you can teach people effectively and one of those methods is Gagne’s Nine Levels of Learning. As you can imagine, this method involves moving through nine distinct steps to achieve the desired outcome. The method below is for teaching a group of people, so you should adapt the methods slightly for teaching one person, but the essentials of learning are the same.
First a little on the background of Mr Gagne – the inventor of the system. He was an educational psychologist who identified the mental conditions that are needed for effective learning. He says that the nine steps model can be used for all kinds for learning, but for the purpose of this article I’ve tailored it to learning in a work environment.
The Levels
We’ll go through the first four levels this week and finish off with levels five to ten next week.
Level 1 – Reception
This simply means you gain the attention of the people or person you are teaching. You can do this by saying ‘Right, let’s get started.’
Level 2 – Expectancy
Now you can let the people you are teaching know what they are learning and why they are learning it. This can act as a huge motivational factor for getting people to pay attention. If you explain that it’s important for them to know how to use the in-house data base quickly and efficiently in order to be successful at the role, they might be more willing to spend time learning how to use it. If you can list some reasons why it helps you work more quickly and efficiently, that would help too. You could, for example, point out that working quickly means you keep the customer on the phone for the minimum amount of time. This allows you to deal with more people in the time you have available. If you work in sales and earn commission for each sale you make, you can see how this could be useful.
Level 3 – Retrieval
Once you’ve taught the new information, try to relate it back to something the person may already know. This could be difficult if the person you are teaching is new to the company; so in this case, try to relate it to something that happens outside of the work place, but might be experienced by lots of people. Use examples to explain your ideas, ask the trainee if they have any experience of the topic being covered from previous jobs or schooling. For example, you could ask the learner to think of a time when they became frustrated with the amount of time they were on the phone to carry out a simple task, such as changing an address, to highlight why being able to use the database quickly and efficiently is so important.
Level 4 – Selective Perception
This refers to the way in which you present the information to the trainee. You should make sure it is presented in a clear, logical and concise way. If you have lots of information to give, you might want to think about using different ways of teaching it. So, you could write up some notes on how to use the database, but you could also build in time for practical use of the database and, depending on how savvy you are with computer programs, provide a slideshow of the steps you need to take when using the database.
Okay, as I said, that’s it for this week. Next Week we’ll cover the final five levels.
Written by Shelley Bowers
