Who does not like some entertainment or a good laugh? Everyone likes to have fun. So, what could be wrong with a statement that “all learning should be fun”? Well… more than you think.
My mission is to transform my company‘s approach towards compliance training. It’s the type of training that you hate, but you know it has to be done. That’s why you want to get over with it as fast as possible.
Make no mistake: in a pharmaceutical company compliance training is much more than the annual safety or privacy training in other industries. I am talking here about online recurring training for dozens of standard operating procedures that ensure the company complies with international regulations.
Given this volume of mandatory training, our training professionals need to design materials that are effective and efficient. Is that enough? Or, should learning also be fun?
Last week, this question was asked at OEB18, a conference for 2000 learning professionals in Berlin. I followed the heated debate via Twitter. I need a little bit more than 280 characters to explain my perspective.
Should learning be fun?
First, we need to know what is actually meant with ‘fun’. According to Oxford Dictionary, fun means amusing, entertaining, or enjoyable. So what could be wrong when you feel entertained while learning? It’s not wrong, but it does not imply that fun is a prerequisite for learning. On the contrary.
If I think about the cases where I learned the most during my professional career, those experiences were quite painful. I remember for instance my first big assignment as a project manager. I failed there to live up to the expectations of my team, my client and my management. It was hard to fail harder. You can bet that I learned a lot from that situation. But, there was no fun at that moment.
Here starts the confusion: are we talking about learning or training? Training professionals can develop training materials and instruct other people, but it’s not a given that people will also learn from that. In other words, trainers train and learners learn, but not necessarily at the same time or from each other. When people say that learning should be fun, maybe they mean training should be fun?
Should training be fun?
In my department, we train people on the standard operating procedures for clinical trials. This is not the type of literature that you like to read before going to bed. It’s extremely dry subject matter. It’s meant to keep our company in compliance with regulations; not to write a novel that could win the Man Booker International Prize.
You can argue that fun is essential to bring these dry procedures to life. I have seen cases where humor was used effectively. For instance, one of our partner companies developed a great video series of everything that can go wrong during a regulatory inspection. Humor was the key element to create awareness about what to do and what not do when a health authority inspector visited the company.
Still, I don’t think that fun is the right word. It’s too close to funny which is causing laughter or amusement according to Oxford Dictionary. Believe me, there is nothing funny about serious adverse events or protocol deviations during a clinical trial. In those cases, fun is inappropriate. Training may use a dash of fun, but – please – not all the time.
Here is another confusion: are we really talking about fun? When people say that training should be fun, maybe they mean that it should not be boring. If you need click through an endless online course with some meaningless clickable hotspots, it’s probably boring. I am in all favor of avoiding boring training.
Should training be engaging?
I rarely use the word fun in the context of learning or training for the above reasons. A word that describes better the optimal learning experience is engaging (next to effective and efficient). Oxford Dictionary defines engage with as establishing meaningful contact or connection with.
Think about it. How can someone learn when there is no meaningful contact with the subject matter? Establishing new and meaningful connections should be the goal of every training intervention. Note that humor and fun can be one way, but a tough challenge or a constructive dialogue among peers as well.
Here comes a difficult message for the non-training folks: there is no silver bullet to create these meaningful connections. It highly depends on the context, the subject matter, the audience, the timing etc. Even if you are applying the latest trends like micro-learning, gamification of mobile learning, training can still have zero impact on the long-term.
Yes, I have been exploring all these trends to see what they mean for my company and our challenge with compliance training. Micro-learning for instance could be a way for people to refresh their memory after the initial training, but the cases for AR/VR are very limited. You see, it depends. What works today, may not tomorrow.
(As a side note, the solution to the compliance training challenge lies half in training design, but for the other half in the right performance support structure. Supporting people in the flow of work decreases the chance of compliance issues. Maybe I’ll explain that in a subsequent blog post.)
Should training be more evidence-based?
The question about fun leads us away from a more important question: have people learned something through training? This is the million dollar question for all training professionals. I would ideally run A/B tests and see what the most impactful training intervention is, just like my colleagues in clinical trials. I would write a separate blog posts on all the practical and methodological issues with that.
That does not mean that we are clueless. Application of evidence-based training principles boost the probability of impact. There are well-researched principles like retrieval practice, spaced repetition or multimedia learning that guide us. In addition, the books about learning myths are often thicker than what is known for sure (1, 2) If you are in the learning field and still believe that learning styles exist or people having shorter attention spans than a goldfish, you have not been paying attention to the latest science.
The 4 E’s of training evaluation
I can live with fun as a way to avoid boring training, but learning should not necessarily be fun. Fun may be inappropriate or inadequate to enable learning. It leads us away for the most important question to evaluate the success of training:
- E1: Is training effective? Does it create the desired impact on the long term?
Since training effectiveness is sometimes hard to demonstrate, you can ask yourself the following other key questions?
- E2: Is training efficient? Is the required effort from people acceptable compared to the desired impact?
- E3: Is training engaging? Is training designed in a way it will establish new and meaningful connections with the subject matter?
- E4: Is training evidence-based? Are well-researched scientific principles applied during the training design?
Together the 4 E’s form a four-leaf clover. Oh yes, it would be a lot of fun if I ever find a four-leaf clover in real life.
