Plain Talk About Gagne for SMEs

I have the very good fortune of working with some of the very best social service professionals in Oregon. These are folks who have 20-30 years of highly refined expertise, have become respected names in their field, and are often highly sought out as trainers for the up and coming workers in their profession.
It seems to make sense…hire the best practitioners so that they can train the next generation of professionals. The challenge comes in that these well-seasoned experts live and breathe their expertise and while they can offer excellent mentoring and advice, they aren’t always well-practiced in deconstructing their knowledge and then putting it back together from simple to complex for transfer to the new learner in their field. Out of a desire to convey their skills and knowledge, and with a true passion for their subject matter, many of them fall into the trap of trying to off load 30 years of expertise in a half or full day training. That never works and they know it and their trainees know it. A few rounds of these frustrating experiences usually results in their seeking me out to help them with the design and delivery of their training.

I met with just such a SME-turned-trainer today, a woman who is highly skilled and widely respected for her social work skills. She is intelligent, articulate, seasoned, caring and her expertise is so integrated with who she is that she lives and breathes it. We’ve talked Gagne’s curriculum design model before, both during group training with other SMEs-turned-trainers, but in one-on-one coaching sessions as well. It still wasn't working for her though and she opened today's coaching session with her frustration around this challenge.

Listening to her share her frustration with how she was putting together her trainings, I realized I needed to take my own advice. Instead of talking to her one more time about Gagne’s Gaining Attention, Stimulating Recall, Providing New Content and Guided Practice (all that instructional design lingo that comes from many years in the field,) I said it differently. Instead of using Gagne’s names for each step of his model, I broke down the expertise that I have integrated into my professional life like breathing, and met her where she was, in need of lingo absent straight talk, 1 chunk at a time. Here is how I shared Gagne’s Curriculum Design Model this time.

1. Create an activity that makes your audience want to be there for your training because it scratches an itch they have in their work. You can use a hair-raising story, a surprising statistic, or a provocative question about the topic, or poll the group on some challenging aspect around the topic.
2. Now that you have their attention, tell them what they will be able to DO (not know) by the end of the training that is related to scratching that itch and doing better at work.
3. Seal their buy in by asking them what part of that result they’d like to focus on during training.
4. Find out what they already know about that topic or skill set. Get them to tell you about their experiences with the topic. This way you find out what they know and can work from there AND they know they aren't starting from scratch...they know more than they think they do, they just need to make some adjustments in what they are doing.
5. Give them 1 chunk of content, the first step of a process or new skill, starting where they told you they were (in #4 above).
6. Have them mess around with that chunk-talk, practice, role-play, study an example, reflect, and report out about their reflections.
7. Give them the next chunk of content, the second step of a process or skill, or a second idea about the topic.
8. Have them mess around with that chunk of content….(see ideas above in #6)
9. Repeat #5 and #6 two or three more times (less is more!)
10. Create a final activity that requires trainees to use what they learned in a real work scenario of their choosing and give them feedback on how they did. Tell them several things they did well (from the training content) and give them 1 thing to work on.

My client looked at me with a grin from ear-to-ear and said, “Oh I like the way you said that this time! I know we’ve been over this before, but this time, you said it in a way that really makes sense to me!”
Epiphany! Apparently, it is good for the instructional designer and trainer to take her own advice…forget the discipline-specific lingo that demonstrates my deep understanding of my field and instead speak in a way that is accessible to the SME-turned-trainer in front of me. I think when working with these accomplished folks new to instructional design I’ll trade in “Stimulate Recall” for “Find out what your learners already know or have experienced with your content.” I can also bag “Provide Guided Practice w/ Feedback” in favor of “Have them mess around with that chunk of content with conversation, role