I call it the Great Mistake.
And I’ve made it. A lot.
Here it it:
As a teacher trainer and educator, it’s natural to want to give your students a lot of information. After all, we are content experts and we have a lot of great stuff to share. So when we’re creating trainings, we usually start by making a list of all the content we want to cover. What do we know, and how can we talk about it. As if the point of the training is to transfer what is in our heads into our students’.
This is the great mistake.
The great mistake is thinking that training is about what we teach.
It’s not.
Training is about what the student can do.
The great mistake is thinking that training is about what we teach.
It’s not.
Training is about what the student can do.
When you are creating your training, start with the end in mind. Rather than think about what you want to teach, sit back, have a latte, and really think about what you want the student to be able to do as a result of your time with them.
- What new tasks can they perform, or perform better?
- How will you know if they “get it?”
Even in a knowledge-centred training (where you want them to “know” or “understand” stuff), there is a way to evaluate your student’s performance by seeing something that they do.
When you switch your teaching focus from what you know to what your student can do, you may suddenly find that your in-class time needs to look radically different. You may not need to teach everything that’s in your head. In fact, you may teach a lot less content in some ways. And perhaps all of sudden you realize that, wow, you actually need to teach something entirely different than you originally thought to get the performance result from the student that you really want.
Ask: what do you want your student to be able to do as a result of the training?
By asking yourself this simple question, you are setting yourself miles ahead.
Put the student’s performance first, and create your training from there.
