Provide instruction

Instructor roles

What makes a good instructor?

A common scenario

Types of instruction or training

Instructor or trainer

Training situations

One-to-one instruction

Circumstances requiring one-to-one instruction

Advantages of one-to-one training

Planning the training process

Determining the type of training needed

Determining client’s training needs

Strategies to find out about client needs

Meeting client’s training needs

How can I plan effective instruction?

Developing an overall presentation approach

Setting learning objectives

Developing a training session plan

Planning the teaching of each skill

Delivering the training

Motivate the learners

Encourage your learners

Monitor a learner’s progress and provide feedback

Demonstrate practical skills

Select appropriate instruction activities

Reviewing a training session

Evaluation strategies

Follow up

Summary

Check your progress

Instructor roles

Your role as an instructor may vary from organisation to organisation or within the section where you are employed. Some general areas you may be involved in are:

  • identifying the individual and organisational needs of the client
  • providing advice on the instruction (training) available
  • planning the instruction
  • researching available training materials and accessing these resources
  • developing instructional or training resources
  • providing appropriate instruction
  • modelling appropriate behaviours, attitudes, skills and ethics
  • obtaining client feedback
  • providing informative feedback to clients, both individuals and the organisation
  • reviewing training outcomes.

Sometimes clients request instruction on a technical matter. On other occasions, client support staff will be able to determine the client’s need for instruction, based on the types of client requests logged. At least some of the instruction you give is likely to be on a one-to-one basis.

What makes a good instructor?

A common scenario

Jay, a clerical officer, has this to say about the help desk at his organisation:

Some people at our ‘help’ desk are not at all helpful. They assume they know what my needs are. They use IT jargon. Or they might just quickly go into a monologue. I feel like saying, ‘Can you just come and show me on my computer?’ Worse, there are some of them who are quite impatient and I feel as if I’m wasting their time. At the end of a negative experience like that, I just feel like giving up.

I have to say, however, that there are some at the help desk who do help. They take time to listen carefully as you state your problem. They also take you through the process step-by-step and they make sure they’ve fully resolved your problem before they leave you to it.

Reflect

Think of some of your experiences that have involved instruction. You may have received instructions from a teacher, an instructor, a co-worker or a supervisor. You may have had to provide instruction to classmates, friends, co-workers and clients. If you are working, think of some instruction or training situations in your own workplace or any other place where knowledge transfer has occurred. It could have been a construction site, a hairdressing salon, a childcare centre or a ferry.

What do you think makes a good instructor?

Feedback

Generally a good instructor is someone who:

  • adopts an enthusiastic attitude in every lesson
  • has a good grounding of the subject matter
  • is able to simplify difficult tasks and concepts for the learners
  • is confident in presenting the information
  • has a friendly manner that puts the learners at ease.

Types of instruction or training

Instructor or trainer

Sometime during the course of your career, you may be called on to either work with clients or to provide instruction to clients or co-workers. The terms ‘instructor’ and ‘trainer’ can be interchanged in this topic. Note that in this topic, we interchange terms such as instructor and trainer; and client, user, trainee and learner.

Figure 1: The terms ‘instructor’ and ‘trainer’ can be interchanged

Training situations

Your organisation may be large with its own training department and with systems specific to the organisation, and your role may be that of mentor or trainer. On the other hand, your organisation may be small with someone, perhaps you, mentoring some staff.

You may be asked by your organisation to prepare formal training sessions either to a group or to individuals. Sometimes the training you provide will be less formal. For example, someone may log a call to the help desk and you may go over to their desk to demonstrate on their computer, or someone next to you may ask you for on-the-spot help.

No doubt you would have the technical skills and knowledge. However, as an instructor, you need more than just technical expertise. You need to develop strategies that will help your learners (clients) gain the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for achieving a task. You need to be a good teacher.

The instruction you provide will only be meaningful if it relates to the needs of the client. One of the keys to playing the instructor role is the ability to identify what instruction the client actually needs. Training needs analysis is an important part of the process. If you neglect to identify what the client actually needs then the instruction you provide may be useless.

One-to-one instruction

One-to-one instruction is personalised training. It’s when you instruct or train someone individually to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes to be able to competently undertake a task. You may, as trainer, for example, sit next to the learner (client) at their workstation and go through the features of an updated version of a software package; or you may give step-by-step instructions to someone over the phone.

Think of the time when you first learned to drive. You had an instructor sitting right there beside you. Think of the advantages of having a trainer sitting right next to you. Did you grasp the basics right away? Did the trainer demonstrate one skill at a time, supervise your practice closely and give you immediate feedback? Were your exact needs being met?

You would certainly have had quite a different experience if you had learned to drive in a group. With theoretical subjects, you may probably gain from the questions and comments from others in the group, but not with practical skills like driving! It is also quite common to find yourself sitting through group instruction in areas in which you are already competent or which may not be relevant to your own needs.

Circumstances requiring one-to-one instruction

One-to-one instruction is generally more costly than group training, but under some circumstances, such as the following, it is the preferred option:

  • The organisation may believe that the training is so important or so urgent that it is willing to invest in individual training.
  • The knowledge and skill levels of individual staff vary. Users often have unique problems and therefore unique training needs. In such cases, training that is customised to the individual would be more effective than group training.

Advantages of one-to-one training

There are advantages to delivering training in a one-to-one situation that the group-training equivalent just does not share. For example, one-to-one training enables the training to be tailored to be more suitable for individual learners, thereby accelerating the learning process as well as enabling the learner to provide immediate feedback about the training. Here are some more advantages:

  • With one-to-one instruction the client will be able to ask more questions and work at their own pace. As a learner, if you’re working quickly, the trainer will be able to introduce new material. If you’re learning slowly, the trainer will be able to go over each step of the process until you’re confident you know it. When you’re with a group, you may not be able to do that as easily. You also have the exclusive attention of the trainer.
  • One-to-one instruction gives you, the trainer, an opportunity to demonstrate the steps required in learning a new skill or performing a work task and then to observe your client repeating the same steps independently. You can immediately correct any mistakes and explain any misunderstandings you notice.
  • One-to-one training is generally, but not always more costly than group training if you consider the effectiveness of the training. If the quality of the one-to-one instruction is really good, the learner (client) learns quickly and won’t need any further training sessions. If the group is too large, then the quality of instruction may not be as good and the learners (clients) may need more training sessions and thus the training will end up being more costly.
  • In a one-to-one situation, the trainer can pick up any changes in the client’s learning pace more easily than in a group situation. Subtle shifts in the client’s responses and motivations are more observable when the trainer focuses on only one person.

Planning the training process

Suppose a group of staff in your workplace need a particular set of skills in order to perform a task. You’ve been asked draw up a training program for this. Where do you begin? You’ll need to ask some questions that will help you determine the type of training needed.

Determining the type of training needed

The following questions can help you to determine a training strategy:

  • What will be the overall goal of the training — for the organisation and for the individual clients?
  • What does the client need? What are the learner’s existing knowledge and skills?
  • What is the complexity of the skills to be taught?
  • Is there a time frame to teach these skills?
  • Are there others in the organisation who need more or less the same type of training?
  • Are there resources (eg manuals and textbooks) that I can draw from?
  • When is the client available for training?
  • Would one-to-one training be more effective than group instruction?
  • Should you provide all the training or would it be more effective to enrol the client in an external course or engage a training provider?
  • Is there a need for a service level agreement?
  • What is the organisation’s budget for this training?

Determining client’s training needs

Now you need to work out the specific training needs of individuals, in order for them to achieve the training goal. This is also known as conducting a needs analysis.

Then you can compare what they already know with what they will be expected to know by the end of the training. The ‘gaps’ indicate the skills and knowledge your training should focus on. These will become the learning objectives.

To determine a client’s training needs, you will need to consider the overall gaol of the training and:

  • the specific tasks the client needs to perform
  • the skills needed in order to perform those tasks
  • the different levels of training needed for different learners — novice, advanced, power-user or technical training.

Strategies to find out about client needs

Determining the client’s training needs is similar to determining any sort of client need. You must be careful not to make assumptions!

Focus on what the learner needs to know in order for them to perform the task, and also find out what they already know. The training needs to be valuable and appropriate to this particular learner or group.

The following are some strategies to find out about client’s training needs. You may develop more strategies as you go along.

Ask

Employees need to acquire new skills and competencies to function effectively when there are changes in their workplace, be it the introduction of new technology or new work procedures. A good understanding of the stakeholders and their current competency levels will give you an idea of their training needs.

Conduct a diagnostic activity

A good solution is to prepare in advance a diagnostic activity. This might be a specific set of questions for the client, or it might be a sort of test to see whether the client can perform a series of tasks.

Practise good communication skills

Good communication skills, such as questioning and active listening techniques, will help you get useful information about client’s training needs.

Observe the client as they attempt to complete the task

This will help you see where the client’s gaps in knowledge and skills are and find out what they don’t know.

Do some research

You may be able to find out what the client’s recurring problems are. For example, you might be able to look through the help desk request log. Frequently requested help with a particular problem may alert you to a particular training need. This strategy is particularly useful in gauging any problems arising from the introduction of new technologies.

Find out about barriers to the learner (client)

Find out whether the learner (client) has any special needs, negative attitudes or phobias about any of the tasks they need to learn to perform. Before you offer training, you may need to help the client think positively about the training. For example, your client may have a disability or cultural barriers with regard to using certain types of technology.

Meeting client’s training needs

Now you’re able to start planning the detail of your training session/s, in order to meet your client needs. You’ll need to:

1Set the training (learning) objectives, identifying the skills and knowledge the client will gain.

2Develop an overall presentation approach.

3Develop a training plan for a training session.

4Plan the demonstration and information you’ll give for each skill.

How can I plan effective instruction?

Over time, as you get more experienced as a trainer, you will develop your own effective strategies for providing instruction. As a start, you can identify:

1the client’s preferred ways of learning — such as seeing or observing; listening and note-taking; reading and research; imitating and practising; or a combination of all these.

2the client’s existing knowledge and skills level — your client is an adult and may have had prior training, studies and work experiences. You’ll be able to build on these skills and knowledge.

Developing an overall presentation approach

Below are a few examples of different presentation approaches. Some of them will be more appropriate for some situations and others less so. Adapt them as you see fit.

  • Demonstrate each skill and get the learner (client) to practise them.
  • Present a project or a case study at some stage of the training.
  • Teach the skills either one at a time or altogether.
  • If appropriate to the situation, show the client the end result and then show the steps you took to arrive at that final result.
  • Introduce a skill, followed by other related skills. Then go back to each skill time and time again during the session, to build on or elaborate on that skill.
  • Cover each skill (or group of skills) and then revise them via a project.
  • Give them a task right at the beginning. Throw them in at the deep end, so to speak. The aim is to allow them to discover for themselves and learn from their errors. Note: This approach may not be suitable for tasks that have a high risk with regards to occupational health and safety practices. Some people may also be easily discouraged if they are thrown in at the deep end.
  • Follow a chain of cause and effect, at least in some parts of your session. Show them a step, for example, and the wanted or unwanted effect of that.
  • Always devise questions that you will ask to check the client’s progress or understanding.

Setting learning objectives

This involves identifying the skills and knowledge the client will gain. Once you’ve got a list of the tasks that the learner needs to be competent in, break each one down into a list of skills involved in each task. At this stage you can also think about how you will know that your client has acquired the new skills. This might involve them producing something for you, or you may be able to observe their performance to gauge their progress.

You may wish to draw up a checklist encompassing all the skills for that task. This checklist can be customised each time you need to instruct a new client.

On the checklist, allow a space next to each skill for you to tick if your client does not need instruction in that skill, or if/when they are competent.

For example, for the task ‘access the Internet’ you might draw up the following skills checklist:

Table 1: Skills a learner needs to perform the task ‘access the Internet’

Skills / Complete
a / Demonstrate a positive attitude towards the value and purpose of the Internet by identifying some reasons why it may be useful.
Demonstrate basic computer skills by being able to perform simple computer tasks such as starting a computer, starting application programs and work in a windows-based environment
b / Start up Internet software applications.
c / Identify rules about acceptable practices when using Internet technologies.
d / Access files and documents using Internet search engines.
e / Browse the Internet to find related sites via links.
f / Send, download and respond to emails.

As you can see, you need to include both the skills and knowledge the learner needs to perform this task. Depending on the situation, you may also note the type of ongoing support or mentoring needed.