TITLE : TEACHING HARD TEACHING SOFT: A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO PLANNING AND RUNNING EFFECTIVE TRAINING COURSES

Preface

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach . . .

George Bernard Shaw's aphorism was once applied to me by a manager who was less than enthralled with my performance as a systems analyst. I had completed a year's posting overseas and the company was contractually bound to find a job for me on completion of the tour. My manager had to make a recommendation as to where I could usefully be employed. Bereft of inspiration as to where to locate such a deadbeat he recommended that I join the training division.

Shaw's dictum is widely quoted and generally regarded as embodying at least a part truth. In reality the implication contained in it is wholly and disastrously wrong. A good systems analyst can affect the design of one system every three years; a good manager's influence is extended through his subordinates. But as a teacher, if I can teach good systems analysis or effective management, then I influence countless systems and many management situations. The logical conclusion of this is that the training department should not be a penal colony for failed practitioners but the place where the organization's brightest talents are deployed.

The inspiration for this book came when I was reading through the evaluations of a series of two-day communication courses I had given in Australia. A delegate had written the following comment: 'I thought the first day was almost totally useless. In fact I nearly did not come back for the second. I'm only glad that I did. It was exactly what I came to learn.'

The evaluation form specifically invites participants to say what they liked best and least about the course. The above remark was the most extreme statement of a pattern of clear preferences for the second of the two days. What then was different about the second day? The participants were the same, the lecturer was the same. Both days had an equal amount of participation. There had been no other relevant changes. The only variable was the material; people preferred the content of the second day to that of the first.

So what was the difference? To me the first day had the more important teaching points-targeting your audience, knowing your material and being clear about the objectives of a communication Getting the structure right. These are the main issues that people get wrong in any form of communication. The second day was more detailed. It contained specific rules for writing, tips for drawing visuals, checklists for presentations. Most of this could equally well have been found in the right books. But this was what my audience had come for. It was their reaction that alerted me to the Distinction between teaching 'soft' concepts and 'hard' facts. Ultimately it gave rise to this book.

A book, like a course, needs a specification. This book is aimed primarily at people involved in business training (although I believe strongly that the theory propounded has relevance to all teaching situations). It is about the specification, design, writing and presentation of a training programme or course. It has objectives at various levels. The title is derived from my division of subjects-and approaches to teaching- into 'hard' and 'soft'. This is the theory which I have attempted to apply to all aspects of the trainer's job. My experience, from training trainers, is that experienced trainers will find that this clarifies many common decisions and problems and provides a view and notation that is particularly relevant to specifying and designing courses. In following this theme through, I have attempted to devise rules, where applicable, guidelines where not, to help course designers, writers and presenters. Finally, there are sundry tricks of the trade which may throw light on specific areas and help put together a more effective learning activity.

The switch in terminology from 'training' to 'learning' gives me the opportunity to clarify some usages in the book. The word 'teaching' has connotations of the school classroom. It runs counter to modern theory, which emphasizes 'learning'. In many ways this is a healthy swing of the pendulum away from the Victorian style of cramming facts into reluctant pupils. But pendulums have a habit of swinging too far before a sensible equilibrium is reached. Discovery and experiential learning are fashionable concepts. As if all we need to do is to create a learning situation and let the students take it from there. But we are still teaching. Even if we are teaching people to question things rather than to learn by rote, we still need to be clear about the type of questions we think they should ask. This book is therefore directed at teachers, whether they call themselves trainers, instructors, lecturers or presenters. I use all these terms, purely for variation; as far as this book goes, they are synonymous. The same applies to those at the receiving end, who are variously referred to as students, participants, trainees and delegates.

The use of the words 'training' and 'education' is another fertile source of confusion. In some usages (as in 'I work for a training company') education is a subset of training; in others ('the Department of Education and Science') training is a subset of education. The usage of these words will be more closely examined in Chapter 4.

The same problem arises with the desire to use non-sexist language. 'Men'-and its pronoun derivatives-is in common use to denote at once a set distinct from women and a superset containing both itself and women. Any author who has struggled to use 'he/she', or even 'their', is trading off felicity of style against accusations of sexism. I shall follow the Interpretation Act 1978 whereby the masculine gender is used in its 'superset' meaning as referring to persons of either sex.

My acknowledgements for this book should embrace the many trainers who in attending my courses have criticized many joints, argued others, corroborated yet more. In reading the book, they will see the contribution they have made. If I single out some of my former colleagues in Keith London Associates-Grahame Stehle, Geoff Quentin, Roger Smith, Jim Borritt, Dave Beaumont, Daniel Freedman, Marion Wells- it is because they have specifically contributed either in the development of the course on which this book is based, or in reading and constructively criticizing this text.

Colin Corder