Learning That Lasts – Episode 60

In this solo episode, host Beth Cougler Blom reflects on how to create learning that truly lasts. Beth shares thoughts about how we can shift from simply delivering content to designing experiences that drive behaviour change and embed meaningful memories for learners. She also shares:

  • Why behaviour change is the heart of lasting learning
  • How relevance and meaning move ideas into long-term memory
  • The importance of learner analysis in your design process
  • Ways to reinforce learning beyond the session

Links From the Episode

Connect with the Facilitating on Purpose Podcast

Connect with Beth Cougler Blom

Podcast production services by Mary Chan of Organized Sound Productions.

Show Transcript

[Upbeat music playing]

Beth Cougler Blom
00:01
Hello, welcome to Facilitating on Purpose, I’m your host Beth Cougler Blom. Thanks for choosing to spend some time with me today. This is a solo episode with just me and I’m happy to say it is the last one of Season Three.

00:20
Not that I ever really say much about seasons, but in my own mind, yes, this has been going on for three seasons now and if you’ve been listening for a while or even if you’ve just joined me for this episode today for the first time, thanks again for listening and choosing to spend your podcast listening time with me.

00:42
I listen to a bunch of other podcasts as well. I’m a fan, maybe you are too. There are a lot of opportunities for us to listen to things and if you’ve chosen me today, I’m very grateful, love it. Before I dive into this episode and share some thoughts on learning that lasts, I would like to announce that I’ve started a LinkedIn community, I guess it’s called a LinkedIn group, and it’s for Facilitating on Purpose,

01:12
so it’s called Facilitating on Purpose Community. And I don’t know why, sometimes I get these sort of nutty ideas and I just act on them, but I was thinking about how it would be nice to extend our learning beyond the length of any individual episode and maybe just bring in the community a little closer together of who’s out there listening and who’s out there facilitating and trying to get better in our practice all along the way.

01:42
If you would like to join me and other wonderful people in the Facilitating on Purpose community on LinkedIn, go search for that on that platform and I will let you into the group and I would love to have some conversations with you, and our guests who are joining as well about the episodes—or actually more broadly all sorts of things about facilitating learning would be fantastic. I just I guess I’m this kind of person that always starts communities of practice. [laughs] This is not the only one I’m leading right now and it’s not the only one I’ve led in the past but I just love bringing people together and maybe you can be part of that.

02:24
That would be super. Okay so let’s get into the episode and talk about learning that lasts. I decided to address this issue or this topic in this episode because I asked on LinkedIn—sometimes I ask questions about what I should address next in the podcast. And somebody in my network said, Hey, why don’t you address this topic, learning that lasts? Or how do we create learning that has lasting impact? And I actually liked the alliteration of the title of learning that lasts.

02:56
And I thought, Yeah, that actually is a really good idea because it is maybe the crux of the issue or the challenge that so many of us have when we are trying to not just create a workshop or a course, but we’re trying to make a difference for the learners who are in the experience.

03:16
It’s not just that we want them to attend the experience itself, is it? We actually want to change something for them for their work, for their life, whatever the reason is that they’re in the learning experience.

03:29
And we want to make that change for a long time. We don’t want the change to happen just for a few days after the session or a few weeks after the session. We really are in the business of creating learning that lasts, learning that is memorable and has some sort of impact for that person or perhaps an organization that they’re a part of or a group that they’re a part of.

03:54
It is the lasting impact piece that is actually our ultimate goal for why we even design and facilitate learning experiences. So yeah, great topic and want to dive into what that really means. So what does lasting impact actually look like?

04:12
Well, I know so many of us know this already, but I think we just have to keep saying it again and again. We are in the business of behaviour change. It’s one of the things I think people struggle with.

04:27
I certainly see it in my work with clients when people come to me and they want my company to develop a course for them. And oftentimes it is about knowledge that they want to base the course experience around, or the learning experience around. And I really have to work with them as a learning designer to get to the behaviour change pieces. Yes, we want people to learn knowledge. There is information there probably that people need, but it’s really the behaviour change piece that we’re looking for.

05:01
And that’s why we write learning outcomes and so on. So if we can keep that at the core of our work, that we are in the business of behaviour change, then we can do something with that. If we really stay only at the knowledge change level, sometimes it can force us into making presentations or giving lectures because we think, oh, there’s a lot of knowledge here that these people need.

05:28
And here’s how I’m going to dump it over at them. [chuckles] Of course, those aren’t the terms you might be saying to yourself, but that’s kind of what we do when we make long presentations and when we do long lectures.

05:41
Can we learn from listening? Yes, we’ve already probably talked about this in the podcast. We do learn from listening to others. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into behaviour change. What translates into behaviour change is getting people to do something in sessions, and even beyond sessions, actually doing the thing that we want them to do on the job or in their real life, back outside of the learning experience.

06:08
That’s the behaviour change we’re looking for. So yes, knowledge is involved in that. But our true goal is behaviour change. That’s why we are in this business. It’s the whole reason why we do our work designing and facilitating learning.

06:24
If you’re realizing now or you have recently realized that you’re really doing a lot of knowledge transfer-type teaching or training or facilitating of learning, it’s okay. I mean, that’s a realization maybe a lot of us come to at some point, but then let’s do something about that.

06:43
So you’ll make the changes to really think more intentionally about your learners and getting them to do something in the session and use their own knowledge and apply their own experience to the things that you’re asking them to do, along with the new information that you might be giving them along the way or that they’re learning from other people in the session because you’ve made it participatory.

07:07
So if your default has been, I want the learners to understand this, or I want them to learn that, yeah, I mean, that’s part of what we have to think about. But we really have to get ourselves situated in their experience and keep that behaviour change front of mind and at the core and forefront of our design process.

07:30
One episode that I’ve done already for you that is really related to the question of how do we design learning that lands and lasts beyond the session is episode 47. It’s called The Pivotal Role of Learning Outcomes.

07:47
So I won’t mention learning outcomes too, too much in this episode, but just know that I’ve done a whole other episode on learning outcomes. And you can really geek out on that [chuckles] over in that episode. And it explains a lot about how to do that and why we would write learning outcomes and how powerful they are.

08:06
But I’ll just say again that when we get really effective at writing measurable, observable learning outcomes, that really does help us create learning experiences that do land and last beyond the session.

08:21
Because it forces us to put activities into our session that are directly aligned with learning outcomes. And when people are doing activities and when they’re actively learning, that increases the chance that they will have learning that persists and retains for them beyond the length of the session.

08:40
So learning outcomes, just so, so pivotal in our design process, and it actually helps us be a better facilitator as well. The reason why I called my book Design to Engage is that if we can solve some of these problems or challenges in the design stage, it makes our session so much easier to facilitate and actually so much more fun to facilitate as well.

09:03
It’s really a lot more fun to facilitate activities with groups and then have debriefs and discussions afterward and kind of encapsulate all of that learning in those debriefs after the activities than it is to just spend long periods of time dumping content at people in more of the presentation/lecture mode.

09:24
This means that we always have to keep remembering to design so that learners do something. We don’t just want them to listen, to read, or to watch something. That’s okay here and there, but they actually have to do something active in the sessions. And that’s what’s going to contribute to learning that lasts. So this is the hardest change that people have to make. I hope you’re getting that. You’re not alone if this has been a struggle for you.

09:56
I think because so many of us grew up being on the receiving end of presentations and lectures, we really think sometimes that’s the only way to teach or to learn. And that’s not true. We actually learn so much better in active learning, participatory experiences, but we just haven’t seen sometimes a lot of good examples of that.

10:18
And hey, learning designers or instructional designers such as myself, we can help you with that. This is our business. We’ve been trained in how to create great learning experiences. And if you’re a subject matter expert and you’ve been trained in your field, maybe it would be a great idea to seek out someone such as myself or other learning designers out there who have been trained in education and trained in effective learning principles and practices and develop a partnership together.

10:47
That’s the thing that I love almost most about my work is partnering with subject matter experts. Because they know their subject, but they aren’t really sure how to create a session that does contribute to that behaviour change in their learners. I know how to do that, but I don’t know their subject. So we do form a partnership and that makes so much more effective of an experience for the learners in the end. So seek out support and help if you want to make a better experience like that, that would be such a great idea.

11:23
When you’re in that design process, I think one of the most powerful questions you could probably ask yourself is that question about what behaviour change am I looking for in my learners? Often people start with a question such as, how do I engage people in my sessions?

11:41
And I recently sent a pre-survey out to a group I was going to be facilitating a workshop with, and many of them were talking about tools. Especially online, right? We’ve got our Mentimeters and our Mural boards and all sorts of things like that.

11:58
Yes, there are great tools out there that support learning, but that is not the first thing I want you to go towards when you’re wondering how to engage people in your sessions. If you ask yourself, what behaviour change am I looking for in my learners, first and foremost, and work backwards from that, that will be the most powerful thing for you to design around for your learners.

12:22
And that is going to contribute to learning that lasts. The engagement piece or the tools and the technologies and those facilitation methods, they come from that, okay? So once we have our outcome set and we know what behaviour change we’re looking for, then we figure out all those tools and technologies to help us get the learners there.

12:41
But don’t start with the tools. That’s not the true definition of engagement, okay? Learning outcomes and behaviour change, that’s the engagement that we’re looking for. We’re really in the business of trying to drive learning into people’s long-term memories, aren’t we? I mean, we know the opposite of that. Working memory stuff only, and working memory is our short-term memory, and that’s where you kind of cram something in there for a short period of time, and then it falls away [laughs] after a short period of time.

13:13
I always think of the movie Inside Out, that great Pixar movie, because they visually represent what is going on in our brain. And we want to create some of those core memories for our learners, that they do remember the pieces because they’ve had more of a robust experience in the workshop and it will drive more effectively into their long-term memory if we do the work that is necessary to get it there, okay? So, you know, all that memorization stuff, yeah, I mean, maybe for short-term stuff, that’s okay, but we really aren’t looking for that for long-term learning that lasts or learning that lands beyond the length of the session.

13:56
We are looking for long-term memories and not short-term working memories that we’re just going to lose in a few days or a few weeks. Here’s an example of long-term memory. I was at a dinner recently where someone was asking me if I knew someone at the national human rights museum here in Canada, which is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

14:20
And I thought, yeah, I think I do know someone that used to work there. And I kind of searched my memory banks and I thought, yeah, I have this connection. I’m pretty sure he told me many, many years ago, that he worked at this human rights museum.

14:36
And sure enough, I pulled out my phone, I looked up LinkedIn, I remembered the person’s first name, I couldn’t quite get the last name in my mind. But as soon as I saw their LinkedIn profile, and looked at where they had worked, sure enough, they had worked and been the COO, actually, of the human rights museum.

14:55
And so this person and I, who was looking for the recommendation, we kind of marveled at how the brain works. Because I think I probably had that conversation with this person who worked at the museum 15 years ago.

15:09
And I’m sure they only told me once that they had that experience. But for some reason, I remembered that little tidbit of information. Why do you think I would have remembered that? Well, in reflecting on it now, just preparing to do this episode for you, I’ve been thinking, well, at the time, I must have thought, oh, the human rights museum, that sounds like a place I really want to go.

15:37
That sounds really meaningful and worthwhile. And I love going to museums and art galleries and other things like that, arts and culture-type things. And so what does that say to us? There was meaning there for me, there was relevance there for me.

15:54
And because of that, that little tidbit of information just woo!, it drove right into my long-term memory that this person had had that experience working at the museum. And here we are 15 years later and I’ve remembered this little tidbit because unfortunately, I still haven’t gone to the human rights museum and someday hope to get there, but was able to share this information with this person so that they can go and try to make connections and so on.

16:24
So it’s the meaningfulness, it’s the relevance is why it went into my long-term memory. And that’s, for all of us who are designing learning experiences—I mean, that was just a conversation—but for learning experience, we are looking for what’s going to be meaningful and relevant to the particular learner group.

16:46
And that gives us so much information that we can capitalize on and jump off from to be able to design sessions that are meaningful and relevant for them. So there’s a learner analysis piece in there, kind of a needs assessment/learner analysis piece.

17:04
The more you know who the learners are and the details about them, their motivation levels, their backgrounds, their experience levels or knowledge that they have or don’t have, you will get to those meaning and relevance pieces.

17:20
And when you can find those things that will help you design sessions that last beyond the length of the session in the minds of the learners and contributes towards that behaviour change that we’re really looking for.

17:33
Otherwise, if you don’t find the relevance, poof, it’s gone. It’s gone into working memory for a little bit. But then sadly, it has fallen out. [laughs] Gone to the dump. Going back to the Inside Out movie. I don’t know if you remember, there were those balls that went into the dump.

17:51
And it was a sad place when Bing Bong died, right? In the dump. We don’t want that to happen to our learners’ knowledge and the behaviour pieces that we’re working on with them in the session. We don’t want it to go to the dump.

18:08
We definitely want it to become a core memory and something that they can draw on for years to come. Now, let’s remember that the things that we design don’t just have to be in the actual session that we are designing and facilitating with the learners.

18:27
So maybe you’ve got three hours with a group. Maybe you’ve got three weeks. It doesn’t matter. There could be things that you create to reinforce the learning with the learners outside of the session.

18:41
It could be a checklist, a how-to instruction doc, a visual reminder, something coming out in a newsletter, buddy systems. There are all sorts of aids or other things that we can do to circle around the learning experience in a bit of a constellation of opportunities, if you will.

19:03
So these are ways that we can reinforce what’s happening with the learner in terms of that learning that’s hopefully lasting. All of those extra things around the bound experience in the session can reinforce and augment their learning, and hopefully that’s going to help it last and land for them for a long, long time.

19:24
In my work, I sometimes go to healthcare environments because we work a lot with large healthcare-related nonprofits in my company. A lot of the time when you go into a healthcare environment and you go into the washroom, you will see a hand washing sign there.

19:40
And I do remark on those kinds of things in my brain because I know that healthcare providers go to hand washing classes basically, or they take a course or some sort of short learning experience in hand washing techniques. But that’s not where the healthcare environment has stopped.

19:58
The signs in the washroom are a visual reinforcement of the learning that would have happened in some sort of learning experience, a session or perhaps an e-learning module or something like that. So again, it’s a job aid.

20:12
It tells you how to wash your hands for how long. Maybe you sing happy birthday while you’re doing it [chuckles] as you’re at the sink. And so that job aid is something that we can all think about. Well, is there something that is related to what you’re designing that is like that, where it’s not in the actual session, but it’s supporting the session’s learning or the outcomes of the session in some other way for the learners.

20:37
So again, just think of the constellation of opportunities that you have before, during, and after a session. And if you can coordinate all those things together for reinforcement of the learning, that’s going to contribute to learning that lasts.

20:53
There are all sorts of other things that you could draw on to create memorable sessions or memorable learning experiences for the participants that you’re designing for or working with. If I think back to some of the things that have landed for me, and I’m still impacted by, I guess, so many years later, one of them was because our group bonded so well together as participants that we bought a cookbook.

21:22
It was at the Hollyhock Retreat center here on Vancouver Island. We all went to this transformational speaking course with Gail Larsen at the time at Hollyhock. And I mean, not only is Hollyhock a wonderful, special place to spend a few days going to a workshop there, but the way that Gail facilitated the experience brought us closely together.

21:46
We spent a lot of time working with each other in small group and pairs experiences, and we had time off in the afternoon to go to the hot tub or go for walks in the forest and come back together that evening and have more class time with each other.

22:03
We went for dinner and breakfast and lunch together. So there were all sorts of things just in and around the experience that Gail herself made happen, being at Hollyhock, that brought us together and made it special.

22:19
So we ended up all buying the Hollyhock cookbook and kind of like you would do with a yearbook in high school, we all signed the cookbook for each other and just passed them around the room and did it at the end of the last day.

22:33
And I still have that cookbook. And interestingly enough, that cookbook acts as not only a visual reminder that I was at Hollyhock and I had this special transformational speaking experience, but when I pull that cookbook out, there’s a memory hook that’s attached to it.

22:54
And so it’s not just about the cookbook and cooking from it, but the cookbook becomes like a gateway into my long-term memory. And I remember, yes, okay, I remember sitting on that patio and we were doing that activity and so on.

23:09
And it probably, again, maybe about 15 years ago. Gosh, it might have even been longer than that. Maybe up to 20 years ago that I had that experience. I’d probably have to go look at my resume [laughs] to see when I went to Hollyhock.

23:22
So I have the cookbook, but it also has become such a long-term memory for me because it was a special experience in a special place. For you, you’re not going to always be able to take a group to a retreat centre, are you?

23:37
But how can you make your experience special for the group? Maybe it’s just in the nice supplies that you buy them. Maybe it is something that you craft within the session that is a social aspect that really helps people get to know each other in a comfortable way for them.

23:55
So think about the things that you can do in the environment, with the tools, with the materials, with the activities, that will make a special memorable experience for the people. Something that you would really want to go to yourself and you would want to have that experience with you for the rest of your life.

24:15
I want you to do that for your learners and see what that can be for you and for them. Use your creativity. Use your imagination. Use arts. Use music. Use poetry. Whatever you have at your disposal. Use that to create a special experience for your learners and that will contribute to it being a lasting and memorable experience for them as well.

24:42
Lastly, I think there are opportunities for you, especially if you work inside an organization, to collaborate with other peers that you might have in your organization. I’m thinking specifically of people’s supervisors or HR professionals.

24:58
You might be a training lead or an education lead, but maybe you can draw other people into the design experience and really make sure that what is happening in the session is being reinforced outside of the session.

25:11
This is where it could get into performance development aspects or performance management aspects with the supervisors. The supervisors of your participants need to know what is happening in the learning experience, don’t they?

25:23
They need to know what the learners are actually doing in the experience because then you can get them on board to also be looking for that behaviour to be used in the workplace or wherever the setting is that they’re supposed to be using it.

25:39
It might not be a supervisor, it might be some other type of person, but there are people around the experience that maybe can help reinforce that learning with a participant or participants after the session.

25:52
And again, it’s all part of that constellation I was talking about earlier that if you can recruit people like that and really get aligned in what you’re all trying to do for that particular person or that group of people, then I think that all will work together in a nice hub-and-spoke sort of way to make sure that the learning continues to deepen for the person and it does impact their behaviour and you see that behaviour change that you’re looking for. One other episode that might be interesting for you to listen to that’s related to this topic is the one that I did with Romy Alexandra on Experimenting with Experiential Learning.

26:36
That was Episode 13. Romy is an experiential learning expert and when we had that conversation, of course I’m remembering it again now myself, she really—and not just her but everyone who is skilled in aspects of experiential learning know this— that when we add reflection onto the learning experience, it will contribute more to lasting knowledge and behaviour change.

27:04
So the more you can ask your learners to reflect on their experiences and consider what they’ve learned and the things they’re going to do differently in the future, all of those pieces that are wrapped up in the experiential learning cycle, I think that really will help as well.

27:20
I’ll give you an example quickly to indicate that. So a long time ago when I was writing my book, I put in the book that it’s a good idea to have a learning journal and I was doing it myself at the time but I think even just writing the book and putting that in the book, I started to do it [chuckles] even more to walk the talk so that I would be journaling and not just talking about it.

27:46
So recently I went through and I read the two journals that I’ve completed in the last four or five years, I guess, since Design to Engage came out. And it was so wonderful to go back and read my learning journal and reflect on all of the learning experiences that I’ve had in the last four or five years. Because every time I go to a webinar, every time I go to an in-person training myself as a participant,

28:13
and there have been many in all sorts of different topics related to my field over the past four or five years, I write things in my learning journal. And so when I went back to read the journal, it was kind of interesting because things that I think I’m really knowledgeable about now, five years ago it was new to me. Especially because COVID hit that year that I was publishing Design to Engage,

28:38
right? That was 2020. My book came out the fall of 2020. And it was remarkable to kind of see, oh yeah, that thing that people were doing in Zoom, which was so revelationary to me at the time, now it’s really commonplace.

28:55
And it’s so much a part of my practice that I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s like, duh, yeah, we all do that thing. [laughs] But it wasn’t always that way for me. And it was only when I took the time to go back through my learning journals that I really realized how much I have grown in the last four or five years.

29:15
And it was direct evidence that I will continue to grow. And especially when I put it down in a learning journal, I can see the evidence of that. And boy, does it ever reinforce that learning too. Going back and looking, there were lots of things that I’d forgotten about, of course, for sure as well.

29:33
So, you know, remind myself of some of those aha moments in the journal too, but definitely the reflection of the things that I didn’t know then and I do now and I have incorporated into my work and my practice was pretty exciting to see as direct evidence that reflection and writing things down and then thinking about it and continuing to think about it, it really works to change our behaviour and change our practice.

30:02
So again, we are in the business of behaviour change. I mean, I just gave an example about my own behaviour change. As facilitators were supposed to be doing that too, right? We need to grow in our field. But when we’re designing and facilitating learning, obviously we want it for our participants.

30:20
We are looking for their behaviour change. We have to remember that and the more we can keep that top of mind, we will be able to design amazing, wonderful sessions for them where they do something relevant and meaningful and hopefully it sticks with them for many years to come.

30:40
I wish you all the best with that. Reach out if you would like to ask me more. I’m happy to answer listener questions and keep engaging or hey, join that LinkedIn community that I told you about and I would be happy to extend the conversation with you there.

30:54
The link to that will be in the show notes now from this episode on and I hope you will consider joining. It’ll be great to continue our learning together and keep going for that behaviour change in ourselves too that we’re looking for.

31:10
Coming up next on the podcast, I actually have a one month break that I’m going to be taking during the month of July. This is what I do every summer with the podcast. I do not drop episodes during this month.

31:24
This just helps me catch up a little bit, take some holiday time, not have to think about podcast stuff for a little bit. [smiles] I love it, but I also love taking a break and that helps me rejuvenate and be excited to start again when the next season starts in August.

31:44
A great thing for you to do during the month of July would be to catch up on any episodes that you may have missed. I’m sure I have loyal fans out there, [laughs] thank you very much, but you probably haven’t listened to all of the episodes, I’m guessing. So scroll back through wherever you’re engaging with the podcast from, or go to my website, https://bcblearning.com/podcast, or http://facilitatingonpurpose.ca and you can figure out which podcast episodes you might want to engage with in July and keep your learning going over that summer month.

32:18
I will be back with all new episodes for the start of Season 4 in August and I will be excited to get started again because I love doing this work and thank you so much for sticking with me. I’m really excited that Season 4 is coming. We’ve done 60 episodes so far and lots more to come.

32:38
The next episode, the first one in August, is going to be myself with my guest, Nora Lloyst from Untapped Accessibility here in British Columbia. We’re going to talk about BC’s accessibility legislation briefly, but basically just centre our conversation around disability, expecting diversity, identifying barriers, designing with inclusion at the core of everything we do. So I hope you join Nora and I for that episode. Until then.

[Show outro]
33:10
Thank you for listening to Facilitating on Purpose. If you were inspired by something in this episode, please share it with a friend or a colleague to help them expand their facilitation practice too.

33:21
To find the show notes, give me feedback or submit ideas for future episodes, visit http://facilitatingonpurpose.com. Special thanks to Mary Chan at Organized Sound Productions for producing this episode.

33:34
Happy facilitating

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