If modern opinion is to be believed, people nowadays have shorter concentration spans and a greater dependency on technology for learning. How can classroom-based learning be adapted to maximise engagement?
With businesses trying to keep employee commute emissions to a minimum and the Covid-19 Pandemic paving the way, remote working and learning have become far more commonplace. When it came to delivering my first ISEP training course – Pathways to Net Zero, there was an opportunity to explore the benefits of person to person learning and how best to employ it. Here are the five things I learned:
When offering a training course, try to encourage organisations to book employees from a diverse range of different departments. Getting these individuals who may not otherwise work together in a room tackling challenges as part of a team leads to a dynamic learning environment.
For example, when looking at the credibility of a Net Zero pledge, a marketing employee will have a skillset that leans towards evaluating communications and visual impact, while an accountant is more likely to see weaknesses in target setting and planning. Inter-departmental group activities like these often contribute towards greater cooperation and collaboration. Your ultimate aim here is to create a culture in your organisation where sustainability has been embedded, and is considered in every decision made
Typically, remote learning classes employ a strict schedule to keep their larger class sizes progressing at the same pace. The downside of this is that students are not given the opportunity to further explore topics that they find challenging to understand or enjoyable. Furthermore, too much time may be given to topics that they may find simple or boring. Having the flexibility to let trainees explore the topics they want results in increased engagement and enthusiasm.
In the Pathways to Net Zero course, which included carbon neutral case studies, students were given time to look at the pledges made by self-professed carbon neutral companies to use their newfound knowledge to evaluate them. This activity was so well received that extra time was allocated to it. On the flip side, the class understood the differences between carbon offsets and removals far quicker than expected, so time was taken away from those sessions.
Even with engaging content, there are limits to the amount of concentration an individual can expend over the course of 12 hours’ training across 2 days. Even with regular breaks, attention can wander to laptops and phones. Instead of trying to prevent it, why not work it into the course?
Could you invite your students to look up their own case studies and using their new knowledge, assess if they think they are successful? Allowing students to draw their eyes away from a whiteboard or slide deck can prevent monotony in training, leading to a more engaged cohort and a better understanding of topics thanks to some independent study.
Making learning into a competition can be particularly effective for students. Some employees (usually those from target motivated roles e.g. sales) will be particularly driven by winning.
Taking the time to include a ‘beat the buzzer’ round in between chapters of the content is a fantastic way to add energy to a room and keep engagement up, all while achieving the learning objectives of a course. Preparation for this does not need to be time consuming – you can even divide your group into teams and have them write questions relevant to the material to quiz each other.
If you are delivering training to a specific organisation, or staff from the same sector, work out ways to keep the training specific to their area of interest. Perhaps they can suggest ideas for their organisation to improve their operational efficiency or reduce their emissions?
Giving people the opportunity to feed back on something they know well makes them feel valued and capable rather than potentially alienated by new subject matter. Giving people the opportunity to apply learnings to their own contexts leads to better learning outcomes - they have the opportunity to apply their knowledge straight away, cementing it in their minds.. An added bonus is that some of the suggestions that come from looking at their own organisation may later come to fruition. At Techbuyer, projects that have resulted in significant energy and carbon savings were born in a brainstorming session at the end of a training course.
Keeping a room of trainees (who may not initially see the relevance of undertaking a sustainability course) engaged can be challenging, but using some of the ideas in this article can help. Although everyone learns differently, there are objectively better ways to engage your audience and promote productive learning.
Lastly: make sure to collect learner feedback and encourage constructive criticism – we created a form that allows students to give both score and commentary based feedback anonymously after every session. Evaluation takes the form of a series of questions aimed at gauging everything from level of interest to how well the course met its objectives and relevance to the learner’s job role.
The findings of this feedback revealed the content that learners found more difficult to understand and which activities kept their interest. For example: over 75% of students said they found quizzes and interactive sessions helpful, but 50% identified the sections on legislation as being “dry” and “hard to keep focus on”. Using this information, I’ll aim to introduce more interactive sessions to those sections to keep engagement levels up.
I am the Sustainability Coordinator at Techbuyer – a sustainable IT solutions provider in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Techbuyer focus primarily on the circular IT market, with an emphasis on the quality, reliability and performance capability of refurbished hardware. My specific areas of interest in sustainability include – nature-based carbon sequestration, sustainable resource reclamation and educating future generations in the circular economy.
