Recently Linda Williams posted a discussion in the PINOT network. Linda in this discussion item talks about the importance of clarity of expectations. Let me repost the discussion here for you to quickly read it without signing into the network.
Linda Williams:
The last two years of my mother’s life she was in a nursing facility and I visited her practically every day. Each day for months I witnessed the same thing happening and I am assuming it was because directions were given, but expectations were not expressed.
Each day I visited, I noticed that volunteers and entry level staff came around to each room twice a day to put ice and fresh water in pitchers for the resident. The pitcher was always left by the sink in the room. Like clockwork, the pitchers were filled.
The problem was, however, that there was no way my mother could get to the pitcher of water because she was not ambulatory and the sink was ten feet away from the chair she always sat in and she couldn’t see well enough to know that the pitcher was on the sink. She thought they always forgot to give her water.
Since more than one person put the water across the room by the sink, I think their directions had been to “make sure the pitchers were filled twice a day” and they were following directions. My mother would have been better served if the directions had been to “ensure each resident has easy access to fresh water twice a day.”
It took months for me to get the water-providers to consistently put the pitcher by my mother.
This is indeed a wonderful example that indicates the importance of setting clear expectations. I would like to speak about the clarity of expectations in training programs here.
If you have checked my blog closely, you must be aware that I conduct training programs on Instructional Design for individuals as well as corporates. While I teach Instructional Design, it is also a great opportunity for me to learn more about Instructional Design, training effectiveness, learner motivation and learning styles. My attempt has been to offer personalized training programs and I continuously evaluate and improve my training programs. With every training program, I learn quite a few lessons. I would like to share one of the lessons I learnt: Set Clear Expectations for Your Learners.
When I say Set Clear Expectations , I really mean every word of it. What happens when you do not set clear expectations?
- Your learners are not aligned.
- They do not meet their learning objectives.
- There is no scope for meaningful dialogue or discussion.
- You cannot track progress.
- There is no learning.
Let me explain this with an example. My training programs are completely hands-on. Anyone who enrolls for my training programs has to work hard and do a lot of exercises. I design exercises to engage my learners in a meaningful activity and so that they learn along the way. When I design I have specific objectives in my mind such as with this exercise my learners must be able to design an effective content outline. With such an objective in mind, I design a focused exercise. While I am designing my exercises, I have a set of expectations for my learners and my attempt is to check how far my learners have met those expectations. I am very clear about my expectations. Now is that enough? No. I need to communicate my expectations clearly to my learners. So what to I do?
Spend 10 minutes verbally explaining my expectations to my learners before they start an exercise.
This sounds a good idea. But does it work? NO. It doesn’t. Because every learner interprets the expectations in his/her own way and executes the task in his/her own way. When you realize your learner is not on track and is not bringing out the desired results, you stop and try to clarify expectations. But then it is too late. Your learner thinks you are setting new rules and is likely to get frustrated.
How do I solve this problem?
To clearly communicate what I expect of my learners, I set design guidelines for every exercise and give a printed copy of these guidelines to my learners. I put in a lot of thought and follow an iterative process while setting these design guidelines. I also take up the same exercise and come up with a possible solution. So for every exercise I design, I have raw material, design guidelines and a possible solution ready. I set design guidelines because I think when you are learning design, you need to first learn how to design within constraints and then take off from there.
My design guidelines also act as a review checklist for my learners. With the guidelines in focus, I get my learners to do the exercise and indulge them in a meaningful discussion, get them to think, learn and perform.
For example, if I want to teach my learners how to write production notes and audio scripts. I design a storyboarding exercise that would focus a lot on these. I set expectations upfront in the form of design guidelines (Printed Hand-Outs). The design guidelines indicate the macro strategy, micro strategies, storyboarding guidelines, storyboard flow, formatting rules and so on. I support my learners to perform and make sure I score every exercise my learner takes up which helps me evaluate learning effectiveness. Finally I share my storyboard with them so that they can refer to a possible and yet another solution for the same problem.
This works really well in a group. The learners are focused on the activity, they are aligned and when discussions happen everyone is reflecting and thinking about a specific problem.
If expectations are not clear and if you do not support, you cannot expect your learner to perform! What do you say?
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