The unit of competency 'Facilitate Learning Sessions' contains knowledge, skills and attitudes required for TRAINERS METHODOLOGY LEVEL I. You are required to go through a series of learning activities in order to complete each learning outcome of the module. Information Sheets consists of learning contents that you need to learn. Instructors give students more learning tasks to perform. “Learning tasks” include selecting.
Facilitating Team Learning
Building resilient teams sets the conditions for team learning. Leaders facilitate team learning by orienting on team goals, encouraging constructive dialogue, and building new mental models. Facilitating team learning is essential for solving problems and overcoming adversity.
Leader Task 3: Encourage constructive dialogue.
Discussion Topics:
Leaders can facilitate team learning by getting beyond conversation to constructive dialogue. Constructive dialogue is essential for collaboration. Through dialogue, teams confront problems and challenges from multiple viewpoints. Dialogue enables shared decision-making and follow-on action. Collaboration between diverse perspectives fuels creativity.
Active listening is when a person listens attentively to somebody without preemptively judging, and then asks smart questions to gain the best understanding possible. Active listening is important. However, for dialogue to be constructive, there must also be advocacy. Advocacy is about promoting or defending an idea. Arriving at the most informed and best decisions means that team members must be willing to take a stand and advocate for their ideas.
Psychological safety makes constructive dialogue possible. When team members do not feel psychologically safe, the exchange of ideas is impeded. A psychologically safe environment is one that allows team members to be creative, take risks, and propose new ideas without fear. Psychological safety allows team members to seek information and ask questions, to admit their mistakes and call attention to the mistakes of others, and to reflect critically on current and past performance.
Dialogue is essential for uncovering tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is based on highly contextualized, personal experience. As opposed to explicit knowledge, which is tangible and well-known, tacit knowledge is intangible and not well-known because it is stored in people’s heads. Tacit knowledge is quite difficult to convey verbally and almost impossible to capture in writing. Constructive dialogue is the best way to surface tacit knowledge and then transfer it from one person to another.
Reflection:
Review the topics above with your instructor. Ensure that you understand the meaning of any underlined terms.
How would you describe your team’s ability to engage in constructive dialogue?
Do the people on your team need to improve their active listening skills or willingness to advocate?
What are some obstacles to constructive dialogue?
If you have front-line supervisors working for you, are their teams able to engage in constructive dialogue? Are their teams psychologically safe?
Leader Task 4: Build new mental models.
Discussion Topics:
Mental models are conceptual frameworks that we use to relate knowledge, attribute meaning, and shape our understanding and expectations of the work environment. Mental models are built on observation, experience, and training. As teams work together over time, they build shared mental models.
Well-developed models enable better coordination, cooperation, and communication. Teams that share mental models are more adaptive and able to make better collective decisions. Shared mental models enhance the team’s ability to solve problems and overcome challenges.
Shared mental models are not identical. Instead, they are compatible and complementary. Teams that share mental models are “on the same page”. When a team shares mental models, team members can accurately describe, predict, and explain the expected behaviors and actions of the team. Shared mental models allow for the efficient and effective use of team member inputs.
Transformation, or change, is how organizations innovate and sustain superior performance. To survive and thrive, an organization must be willing and able to change. In a dynamic environment where change is constant, people must adapt to new ways of doing things. Change requires the building of new mental models.
In order to build a world-class organization, leaders must be willing to embrace change. Change is not always about fixing something that is broken. Often, change is about taking something that is good and making it even better. The old saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is not valid in a learning organization.
Change is difficult and almost always resisted. Most people do not embrace change. Mental models that are “entrenched” are always resistant to change. This is because change challenges the status quo and forces people to discard old mental models and build new ones.
Double-loop learning is about building new mental models. Single-loop learning does not require that mental models change. If you have ever heard someone say “that’s not the way we do it around here”, then you have likely encountered an entrenched mental model that will require double-loop learning.
Reflection:
Facilitating Learning Activities
Review the topics above with your instructor. Ensure that you understand the meaning of any underlined terms.
Has your team built new mental models over time?
If you have front-line supervisors working for you, have their teams built new mental models?
What significant change has your team experienced at work lately?
Did that change require the challenging of existing mental models? If so, were those mental models difficult to change?
What are some obstacles to building new mental models?
What is facilitated learning?
Facilitated learning is where the students are encouraged to take more control of their learning process. The trainer's role becomes that of a facilitator and organiser providing resources and support to learners. In turn the participants learn with and from each other as they identify and implement solutions to challenges, problems or other developmental issues. They might also set their own objectives and be responsible for learning assessment.
Facilitating Learning Reflection
The technique is used most frequently in university education and more formal study. It is probably not a methodology that trainers in the archive field will be able to use exclusively, but it offers some techniques and approaches that can be incorporated into training courses that run over several days. For example having participants work independently to develop an action plan, related to the course content but tailored to their needs.
In contrast to individual learning where the trainer becomes very involved and responsive to each participant's individual needs, with facilitated learning the trainer supports and facilitates the participants who develop and shape their own learning goals and achievements.
Advantages and disadvantages of facilitated learning
Facilitated learning is based on the premise that the more responsibility a student takes for his/her own learning, the more effective the training or education will be. The advantages are:
- Learners use skills like synthesis and analysis
- The learner is actively involved
- Learners interact with and learn from each other
- There is no need for large amounts of learning materials
- Learners can work in an environment similar to that of the real world
- A variety of learning methods are used
There are some disadvantages:
- Facilitated learning can be — or be seen to be — more expensive
- The pace of instruction is based on the group rather than the individual learner
- The teacher’s role is not clearly defined
- There is a need for extra facilities to allow for group work etc
- The learning is relatively time consuming in proportion to the amount of material covered
- Facilitated learning is not appropriate in some cultural contexts
Delivery of facilitated learning
As already noted, the teacher’s role in facilitated learning is to create and manage collaborative learning experiences, or group learning in which exchanges between instructors and learners and among learners occur over a period of time.
Facilitated courses and learning experiences usually take place over a series of weeks and may include:
- On-demand tutorials, presentations, and keynote addresses
- Online or face-to-face group discussions and exchanges
- Handouts, readings, and links to relevant Websites
- File and link sharing
- Surveys and polls
- Virtual real-time or physical classroom sessions, lectures, seminars
- Brainstorming sessions (virtual or face-to-face)
- Group activities such as role play and games
- Field trips
- Projects and case studies
Facilitating Learning Articles
Facilitated learning in its purist form is likely to occur in a well-resourced environment with participants who are highly motivated and pro-active. Most training environments are unlikely to be able to offer the necessary conditions. However, elements of facilitated learning can be combined effectively with other styles of training to provide many of the benefits inherent in the methodology.
Last updated: 20 December 2005