Activity-based Training Design: Transforming the Learning of Knowledge

Citation

(2008), "Activity-based Training Design: Transforming the Learning of Knowledge", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 16 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2008.04416gae.002

Activity-based Training Design: Transforming the Learning of Knowledge

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 16, Issue 7

John Rodwell,Gower, 2007

Keywords: Training methods, Games, Learning styles

Twenty years ago, most classroom training was through presentations or lectures – known as “chalk and talk” in the jargon of the day or, more disparagingly, “pour and snore”.

In the 1990s, Rodwell wrote a book named Participative Training Skills, which described techniques that could be used in addition to, or instead of, the traditional teaching methods. Among the suggestions he made for “pepping up” teaching sessions were the use of buzz groups, syndicates, case studies, role-plays and fishbowl exercises.

In the intervening years, he identified two main problems with participative training. First, the content of many of the exercises was dull. Secondly, the exercises did not always help trainees to learn the things the instructor wanted them to learn and understand.

Rodwell points out that traditional participative training required the trainer to ask the “right” questions, but this was not always easy and, when it went wrong, confusion reigned.

Rodwell’s latest book, Activity-based Training Design: Transforming the Learning of Knowledge, attempts to overcome these problems. By concentrating on the content of participative training rather than the process itself, he seeks to help trainers to design activity-based training that is exciting, and achieves the desired learning outcomes. The text works on the principle that rather than getting trainees to find the answers, trainers should give them the answers and get them to find their meaning.

The author presents three main types of activity-based training – active reading, card-sort, and games and activity boards. For each activity, he describes how it works, why it works and the purpose and principles behind it. The book also describes how to prepare and run the activity and then provides examples of how the methods have been used on actual training events.

Although all the activity-based methods he describes – from “Info-Hunt” to “Washing Line” to “The Evaluation Game” – started out as individual solutions to individual problems, Rodwell believes that the principles behind the individual solutions for particular sessions can be applied to other sessions as well. Indeed, he goes so far as to claim that, “there is not one straight ‘input’ session on any topic that cannot be transformed into a more interesting activity”.

Among the “on-the-job” problems the book claims to solve are delivering interesting knowledge through training, and putting learning more in the hands of the learners than the trainer.

Rodwell, a learning and management consultant at HM Revenue and Customs, believes that activity-based training can help to: reduce the amount of classroom time needed to achieve a given outcome; increase the amount of knowledge gained; be more memorable as a positive learning experience; and be more enjoyable for both the trainer and trainees.

As the author concludes: “What more could you ask for?”

Reviewed by David Pollitt, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK.

A version of this review was originally published in Training and Management Development Methods, Vol. 22 No. 4, 2008.