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Job aids and performance support: Moving from knowledge in the classroom to knowledge everywhere

Improving your performance may be as simple as having a job aid on hand. Take a recipe for example. Recipes are a job aid used to help you bake a cake or make a casserole. When you are just learning to make this particular dish, you might have to refer to it often to get the dish right; if you make the dish often, you might have to refer to the recipe occasionally.  Nonetheless, it certainly is convenient to have these job aids handy when you need them.

We use job aids more than we realize, and yet, not enough. Appliance vendors give you job aids when you purchase a new refrigerator. The documents show you how to use all the appliance features. You probably use a number of job aids to help you travel; these vary from printing out maps from the Internet to using a normal road map to your GPS device.  But how many job aids to you have at work? Do you support your learners with a job aid, one they can use while training as well as support their performance after the class.

While at the ASTD conference, I picked up a book called Job aids and performance support: Moving from knowledge in the classroom to knowledge everywhere by Allison Rossett and Lisa Schafer. The authors point out that it is impossible to remember everything; job aids are there to help support your memory. We do a disservice to learners when we do not support their performance after a learning session.

In a training environment, job aids can reduce or even eliminate needed training (Rossett & Schafer, 2007). In a classroom environment, job aids should support the teaching of new tasks and should be available to trainees during and after the learning session.

Performance support or job aids should also be used when:

• The task is infrequent
• The task is complex or has many steps
• When there can not be errors.
• When there is a lot of information
• When procedures change frequently
• When performance can be improved with self-assessment
• When there is high turnover in a job
• When there is not time or resources to conduct training (Rossett & Schafer, 2007).

Rossett and Schafer (2007) note that their are two major categories of performance support: planners and sidekicks. Planners are used before and after a task whereas sidekicks are used during the task. These two categories are improved by the degree of integration and tailoring as related to the task. One example the authors used focused on traveling on a trip. There is a difference in level of integration and tailoring as well as whether the job aid is a planner or sidekick when comparing a road map to a Google map with directions to asking a friend for directions to a GPS with the address entered.

Do we enough to support those to who we provide training opportunities. Personally, I need to do a better job putting together job aids together; this book helped me realize that. In order to plan performance support and develop job aids, you need to know about the audience, the task, and the organization (Rossett & Schafer, 2007). The more you know about each, the better you can support performance with the right job aid.

Rossett and Schafer provided countless examples and case studies of how job aids are used to support organizations. I personally would have liked to see more visual examples.

They did stress that simply creating a job aid was not enough. There has to be a supported integrated approach to incorporating them into the organizational culture (Rossett & Schafer, 2007). Support has to start at the top and must permeate through all managers and supervisors. When a new aid is introduced, it requires instruction on its use, supervision, and metrics to see that it is making a difference on performance.

When creating a job aid, the appropriate technology must be chosen. The job aid may be a simple flyer or a complex computerized coaching aid. Technology allows for immediate access, it’s scalable, can be updated at one time, and it’s accessible from everywhere.

If you want to know more about job aids, I would certainly recommend this book to gather ideas.  I have an upcoming class on clickers, I will be implementing ideas from this book into that course.

Reference

Rossett, A., & Schafer, L. (2007). Job aids and performance support: Moving from knowledge in the classroom to knowledge everywhere. San Francisco  CA: Pfeiffer.

Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto

A home checklist

Every once in a while you run across a book that makes you think, “Why aren’t we doing this? Or why aren’t we doing this more?” The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande is such a book. Gawande is a doctor on a mission, he wants to save lives. Gawande is looking for a solution to prevent simple mistakes as well as handle complexity. He advocates for the use of checklists as an organization and pre-planning tool. It is better to work out the issues before they are needed in an emergency. However, as Gawande points out, checklists are not only for medical emergency situations but also for routine tasks. Systems and processes have become complex enough that it is difficult for one person to keep track of all the steps in memory.

In 1935, Boeing was building a bomber aircraft that had crashed upon take-off. The crew failed to release the elevator lock. As a result, a checklist was developed for this new B-17 aircraft, and pilots were able to fly the B-17 Flying Fortress 1.8 million miles without an accident. Gawande recognized that checklists are used by pilots throughout the world, and helped Captain Sullenberger land an airliner in the Hudson River. The pilots used checklists to fly the aircraft to safety. Gawande implemented checklists in hospitals for routine tasks and operating rooms.  Gawande noted that consistent use of checklists in one ICU improved care and reduce the average hospital stay by 50%. ”In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated $175 million in costs and more than fifteen hundred lives” (Gawande, location 614-627).

Gawande offers suggestions for developing checklists. First of all, checklists should be efficient, precise, and easy to use. Checklists should be concise, e.g., 5-9 items. These 5-9 items fit in working memory and should be the most essential items.  Checklists should be one page and easy to read, thus no distractions. A checklist should be forged through the flames of the real world. Checklists should not be comprehensive instruction manuals, rather, they should be memory ticklers so steps are not missed.

Pilots use checklists because:

1. They are trained and required to do so.
2. Checklists work.

Gawande did not simply handout checklists and expect them to work. He and his team provided PowerPoint slides, Youtube videos, and checklists to teach others how to use the checklists. The results were also collected, analysis, and the successes were shared.

Throughout the book, Gawande provides countless examples of the success of checklists and the problems when they were not used. Most of these examples focus on the medical field; however, he does provide examples related to aviation, finance, and construction.

While in the Air Force, I used checklists extensively, and I understand how successfully they are. It was nice to have a reminder of their importance, and I have begun to start developing checklists to support my operations as well as checklists to support extension staff and educators.

For my extension friends, I would recommend looking at checklists to see how you can support your clients. I also recommend reading The Checklist Manifesto.

Reference

Gawande, A. (2011). The checklist manifesto: How to get things right(1st ed.) [Kindle DX version]. New York: Picador.

Does your instruction stop at the classroom door?

Mechanic using job aid

The past month has been a rich learning experience that has caused me to pause and look closer at the idea of learning transfer and performance support. This has led me to ask, where does your instruction on a topic stop, at the classroom door or weeks later when the learner has demonstrate proficiency? Do we support the learner enough once they have left the classroom? Have we done our job if we do not ensure they can demonstrate proficiency weeks after the lesson?

This line of thought originated at a recent American Society for Training and Development conference I attended. During this conference, I sat in on a number of fascinating sessions. During the sessions, folks like Tony Bingham and Bob Mosher talked about extending the classroom and providing performance support through mobile devices. Andrew Jefferson and Cal Wick talked about performance support and learning transfer using tools, job aids, and checklists.

These sessions resonated with me so much that I was compelled to pick up some books to learn more. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend that you read The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande; The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results by Calhoun W. Wick, Roy V. H. Pollock, and Andy Jefferson; Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving From Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere by Allison Rossett and Lisa Schafer; and Designing mLearning: Tapping into the Mobile Revolution for Organizational Performance by Clark N. Quinn.

Here are some of the take aways I picked up regarding learning transfer.

The discussion of learning transfer was a central topic throughout the conference. It seems we do a good job training; however, we need to improve how we ensure learning transfer has occurred. Wick and Jefferson stressed improving instruction from the very beginning with the invitation to the training session. In the invitation, you should address what is in it for the learner, what is in it for organization, what is the learner expected to transfer. They recommend providing a timeline for the complete experience. This include time when learners are at their office. Training doesn’t end with the completion of the formal session but should extend through a learning transfer period. One of the more novel thoughts was changing the course completion certificate from certificate of completion to certificate of commencement. A certificate of completion indicates that training is done. Home Depot hands out certificates and trophies only when learners report back on how they improved operations based on the training. Educators can also support learning transfer by providing support content in both push and pull formats. With pull formats, learners visit your content and download it. With push content, you send it to learners. For example, it is possible to schedule email messages to go out to trainees on regular intervals reminding them or encouraging them to work on different tasks. Finally, training and support must also be provided to managers and supervisors. Basically, everyone stressed that organization leadership had to have buy-in and be directly involved or learning was going to suffer.

I believe closely related to the idea of learning transfer is the idea of performance support; a key piece being mobile support. Performance support can take the shape of planners, job aids, checklists, or software help screens. These performance support aids can be print or digital depending on the need. Expect to see an increased emphasis on mobile learning in the coming years. Mobile learning in the United States is on the rise. There were 1.6 billion mobile devices sold in 2010. More time is spent outside of the classrooms, yet only 15% of organizations are supporting mobile learning. Mobile devices are so important that business leaders would rather lose their wallet than their phone.

“You can’t teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know.” ~ Papert

Mobile learning should support formal and informal learning before, during, and after a learning session. Mobile learning is a great tool to augment learning and tasks. Checklists are an example. In order for learners to use performance support upport aids outside of the classroom, they should be used during  the entire lesson from beginning to end.

Mosher points out that there are five moments of need when learners need job aids or performance support. The first two are used primarily in the classroom; however, most learners are using the last three items. Disney, for example, designs for three through five and back fills with one and two.

• When learning for the first time
• When wanting to learn more
• When trying to remember and or apply
• When things change
• When something goes wrong

We should be pushing out reminders, new content, and collaboration opportunities to subscribed learners. We need to be flexible because learners are gathering information through a number of different devices and programs. When people list tools, none of the tools listed were specific learning tools, e.g., Twitter, YouTube, Google, Evernote, etc.; however, they were used for the purpose of learning.

Clark Quinn, a leader in mobile learning, stresses that the key to supporting mobile learning and mobile support is to start designing and implementing now. We can build native applications, web applications, or both. Quinn recommends starting slowly with pilot projects and then design for a specific platform. He does not recommend designing courses specifically for mobile devices. Instead, he recommends crating mini lessons or modularize content.

After listening to others and reading what others had to say, I came to the conclusion that I need to do a better job providing performance support.  What are your thoughts?