Advanced Learning Design (seminar).

Advanced Learning Design (seminar), Live Event, 2006, Global Learning Partners, $800.

Support: participant manuals.

  The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read
  and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
  --Alvin Toffler

Global Learning Partners, founded by Jane Vella, offers courses for both individuals and organizations that are looking to improve their curriculum design and facilitation skills. The curriculum is based on Vella's concept of dialogue education.

The basic premise of dialogue education is that adults have enough life experience to carry on a meaningful dialogue with any teacher or facilitator about any subject and learn new knowledge, attitudes, or skills best in relation to that life experience. Vella maintains that when adults are given the central role in their own learning, they are more open to new content.

I previously reviewed Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach, the first course of a three-part Teacher Certification program offered by GLP. The first course provides the building blocks of the dialogue education approach to curriculum design and facilitation skills. The goal of the second four-day course is to put that learning into action.

In her book Taking Learning to Task: Creative Strategies for Teaching Adults, Vella suggests that learning tasks are an excellent way to present new content to adult learners. "The learning task is part of an integrated design, presenting new content in a variety of ways, with engaging work for the learner built in." In the Advanced Learning Design course, participants take a training course they have developed in the past and redesign it around learning tasks. Each participant works in pairs and small groups and receives constant feedback from the instructor.

Five key principles

The seminar both teaches and employs five learning principles that are key to dialogue learning.

1. Positive learning environment: learners need a safe, secure environment in which to test and experiment with their ideas.

2. Engaged and involved learners: because adults learn best when they discover their own answers, dialogue learning connects theory to practice through summaries, stories, examples, games, activities, and thought-provoking questions. The activities are low risk and involve individuals, pairs, and groups. A course is designed to build individual success incrementally.

3. Variety of multi-sensory options: learning doesn't only take place in our head. It requires our whole body. To learn anything fast and effectively, you have to see it, hear it, and feel it. Activities are therefore structured to draw out learner experience and knowledge as well as encompass left and right brain thinking. Each learning task is structured to complete a four-part learning cycle, through the integration of Bloom's Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligence Options. The tasks use a variety of techniques that support different learning styles like graphic organizers and music and word games.

4. Collaboration through dialogue among participants: in dialogue education, the focus is on the learners, not the facilitator. Dave Meier, in his book, The Accelerated Learning Handbook: A Creative Guide to Designing and Delivering Faster, More Effective Training Programs, suggests a 30/70 guideline: 30% for facilitator presentations and 70% for learner practice and integration. Learning tasks make it easy for learners to ask questions, discuss possibilities and options, and choose learning that will benefit their unique situation. Courses also need flexibility to adjust activities and processes to fit learners' experience and challenge their assumptions.

5. Learning just in time: we learn best when we immediately have to put into action what we have learned. The Advanced Learning Design course observed this principle by having participants modify their course in response to their learning.

Missing support

It would have been extremely helpful to have a booklet of exercises and activities that supported the variety of tools that make up this course. The booklet would contain a matrix or grid of activities. The grid would present vital information about the activities such as whether they are for an individual, pairs, or groups; whether they are active or passive; what type of learning style they accommodate; and so on. A booklet like this would have greatly reduced the time I spent on my training design.

Global Learning Partners

Global Learning Partners offers courses for both individuals and organizations looking to improve curriculum design and facilitation skills. They also offer a wide range of consulting services such as reviewing and strengthening existing curriculum and training materials and facilitating workshops on any topic using dialogue education techniques.

Recommendation

Dialogue education is not a formula or a fill-in-the-blanks approach to learning design; it's an interactive strategy of engagement, reflection, and action. The Advanced Learning Design course not only teaches the strategy but embodies it as well. It offers a structure to connect the old with the new and the ability to communicate new insights in a way that gets people to work together.

Review by Mireille Massue

Product Ratings

Advanced Learning Design (seminar)

Production quality   *** 1/2
Value of Content     *** 1/2
Instructional Value  *** 1/2
Value for the money  *** 1/2
Overall rating       *** 1/2