The Philosophy of Hands‐on Learning

No matter where you are on the globe, adults learn to be proficient by doing. That approach to teaching shouldn’t change just because your training location changes. In fact, you will often find it better to reduce lecture even more and increase hands‐on learning when you travel, especially if you don’t speak their language. Language is only an issue when you are speaking. It is not an issue when they are doing.

Do not confuse expectations with culture, and do not confuse education systems or even education norms with effectiveness. Adults in different cultures may be used to learning in different ways. For example, some cultures are extremely competitive and their teaching techniques rely heavily on memorization. Most business cultures are familiar with presentations as the primary method of transferring knowledge—even though presentations are an ineffective way to teach a skill. What adults are used to in a formal education setting and what works may be two different things. That adults are used to technical training being a boring PowerPoint presentation doesn’t render it effective, no matter what culture you live in.

The principles of learner‐readiness are also cross‐cultural, though they may show themselves differently. Students must still recognize their need for learning, they must take responsibility for their learning, they must be able to relate their learning to similar experiences, and they must be ready to apply it.

Taking responsibility for learning can change its focus in different cultures. While individual personalities are still relevant, regional culture may enhance certain personality traits. In some cultures, a successful student will sense a strong responsibility to learn what the instructor is teaching, while other cultures may emphasize a stronger responsibility to make sure the instructor is correct. Students from certain cultures may display a strong sense of responsibility to protect the instructor’s honor and will rarely challenge him or her. Students from other cultures may openly disagree, or even appear to argue with the instructor, out of a sense of responsibility to get all the facts, even if the facts are unfavorable. When you understand that your students are exercising their responsibility to learn, albeit in different ways, it makes the training event more enjoyable and more effective.

One of the benefits to learning while doing, as opposed to learning while listening, is that active learning tends to neutralize cultural communication differences. When a student is completing an exercise or lab, the communication between them and the instructor is minimized, reducing opportunities for miscommunication.

The Strategy of Hands‐on Learning

The strategy of product proficiency training is also consistent across cultures. Selling more of your product is your ultimate goal, no matter what hemisphere you live in. The expectations of what great training versus adequate training is may change, but the effort to make it great is still required.

Assessing the effectiveness of the training is also still important. Taking a more objective approach to collecting feedback will increase the value of the information you get regardless of the culture in which you are assessing. Objective feedback is even more valuable in cultures where the default is to give high marks regardless of the quality of training.

The Structural Design of Hands‐on Learning

For the most part, the structure of your training should remain the same cross‐culturally. You should continue to make content more important by getting away from the content‐first approach and using the 4 × 8 Proficiency Design Model. Since the model builds on adult learning principles, it should not change. You may need to alter certain parts of it, however, such as the exercises you use to teach certain objectives. Feel free to regionalize the exercises, as long as they continue to demonstrate proficiency of the objective.

If the objectives themselves need to change, you may need to create a regionally specific training class or regional product certification program. Use an 80/20 rule. Allow for 20% variation of the class and regional customization before creating an entirely new class.

The Delivery of Hands‐on Learning

Because the visual aids and student guides are an essential part of the communication process, they may need to change as you deliver the training in different cultures. Here are few things to consider in regard to your PowerPoint presentation and student guide:

• Include regionally understood graphics and pictures. Take the time to demonstrate a desire to regionalize the learning by using graphics that are meaningful to your audience. No audience should feel like they are a secondary audience from a cultural or geographical perspective. You carefully targeted a particular audience based on your business needs. It is likely that there will already be some from outside of that scope in your class. Don’t unnecessarily create even more secondary audiences based on culture alone.
• Use regional case studies and examples. The purpose of regionally specific examples and art has an adult learning foundation in the four learner‐readiness principles. Bring the illustrations and examples closer to the student so as to help them answer the questions “Why do I need to learn it?” and “Can I relate it to what I already know?” Regionalizing your examples demonstrates a desire on your part to deliver learning that matters to the local student, not just a desire to deliver content.
• Use even more pictures. There is a tendency to use more text when facilitating an international audience. There is a place for more text. It is not on your PowerPoint slides. Include the text in your notes, but remember that your students may understand pictures much more easily than they understand text.
• Create a more detailed student guide. Do not expect students to be able to take as many notes if you are not speaking their first language. Put more information in the student guide. Most students will read a second language better than they can speak or audibly understand it.
• Whenever possible, solicit local help to review content. It is always a good idea to ask someone locally to review your content. Students from large, international corporations may be more comfortable with global content or examples, case studies, and graphics from faraway places. The best way to know how to be effective with your particular audience is to ask a representative prior to the class.

The Facilitation of Hands‐on Learning

Facilitating, or making learning easier, must happen in any culture. The way you make the learning easier may change, however. You must be flexible in how you interact with your students while making sure that you meet the objectives for the training. Here are a few tips for training students who do not speak English as their first language:

• Slow down. Yes, you should speak slower, but you should also slow down in general. Take more breaks. Plan for more time to get through the material. This is especially important, of course, if you are working through an interpreter. Even if you are not, you should plan for more interaction, more explanation, and more time to absorb the content.
• Avoid idioms or trendy phrases. I still have to work on this. Recently, I was teaching overseas when I asked students to write down one takeaway from the class. After several incredulous stares, one brave student finally asked for an example. I gave an example of what I meant by “takeaway”—something the students wanted to learn or do better as a result of coming to the class. After I gave the example, she smiled and said, “Takeaway means to take away. We thought you were asking us what we wanted to remove from the objectives.” Lesson learned.
• Engage, engage, engage. I hope that by now you understand the importance of engaging your students. If your students are learning in a second language, however, engagement is even more important, because it also improves comprehension, not just learning.
  • Make the directions for your exercises clear and easy to understand.
  • If needed, teach the exercises to one of the students beforehand and let them help explain them to other students.
  • Have a backup exercise in the event that one doesn’t work well with your audience.
• If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Just because you told them doesn’t mean you have trained them. This is true in any language or culture, but especially important to remember when you are training students who are learning in a second language. Do not move on until they have learned what you are teaching them. This will require asking many questions and letting them practice even more. Don’t look at it as their only opportunity to hear what you have to say about your product. In reality, this may be your only opportunity to make certain they know how to do something with your product.