Loading...
When you hear the term “learning groups”, the first thing that comes to mind is probably when everyone in the classroom is divided into groups. The course leader counts off the participants and then the groups gather around different tables to discuss a dilemma that’s just been presented.
There’s nothing wrong with this kind of traditional learning group – on the contrary, it’s a great social teaching method in a classroom environment.
However, that’s just it – it’s only one method among many. In this article I hope to broaden your horizons on what learning groups are by giving you a series of questions to answer, which will hopefully help you create the perfect learning groups for your next project.
For most of these questions I list sample answers, but don’t let yourself be constrained by them – they’re there for inspiration, not as a comprehensive list. Also bear in mind that each question often has more than one answer.
Example: Managers who bring real challenges to group sessions and who uses both personal experiences and new knowledge to support each other in how the challenges can be solved.
These kinds of learning groups can be conducted at a large scale, while also ensuring that the content covered during each group session is tailored to the specific context – after all, the group members themselves decide which challenges they want to bring in. Being able to combine contextually tailored content with large-scale implementation is quite a rare feat, but that’s because it also requires rigorous preparation from you as the organizer. To avoid having the group sessions turn into informal coffee breaks, we recommend…
Example: Existing consultant team practicing a business case under time pressure.
If the same group constellation is used to collaborating on a daily basis, this could be a suitable goal. However, remember to…
Example: Three salespeople taking turns as salesperson, customer and observer
In this case, the groups will revolve around some kind of exercise where the group members take turns being the focal point. The learning group will then primarily serve two functions:
Tips: Let the group members take turns observing and giving feedback on a certain part of the task. That way, the whole group is engaged even when only one person is practicing, and the feedback ends up being more precise.
Co-workers with strong networks tend to be top performers, and as those of us in L&D always seek to enhance performance, we should also always make sure to provide networking oppoortunities for our co-workers. Putting some serious thought into which people we group together is a concrete way that we can do this.
Ask yourself: “Which participants would, in their specific roles, benefit most from knowing each other after the program is over?”
Read more: Why networking is an essential part of any training program »
How we develop existing groups is an entirely different matter that we won’t delve further into in this article, but the idea here is basically as follows:
If the goal is to foster camaraderie in existing groups, then that should likely be the main focus of the entire training program.
Just like in #1, the choice of who to include in which group is crucial here. We want to put a lot of thought into which patterns we’re looking to break or challenge, and ideally create several sets of alternate group constellations in advance. Avoid randomizing the selection entirely, because this may by chance result in groups too similar to the established ones we want to avoid.
Lär dig konkreta verktyg för att få er kompetensinsats att leda till beteendeförändring och affärsresultat för organisationen.
With this number of participants you can usually facilitate synchronous exercises and discussions and still have enough time to spend with each group.
At this point, if the groups are gathering simultaneously, like during a physical or virtual training session, providing adequate facilitation on your own is quite challenging. Assign group leaders and try to bring along one or more co-facilitators, so that many groups at a time can have a facilitator present.
Once you get to this number, it’s difficult to have synchronous group sessions. It’s better to consider formats where the groups are responsible for scheduling their own sessions. See “How do we want the group to be facilitated?” further down for more tips.
Here, you have to ask yourself even more questions:
The answers to this question usually come naturally once you answer the questions about result goals and group dynamic goals.
However, generally speaking…
This is the classic way of managing learning groups. The upside is that it’s handled professionally, but the downside is that each group is dependent on the facilitator’s availability. Therefore, it’s best suited to programs with a small number of participants.
When we let someone else within the organization facilitate the group, the session can take place in the co-workers’ natural environment (whether it’s physical or virtual), which makes it both more realistic and more relevant.
On the other hand, the manager or ambassador probably isn’t a trained facilitator, and likely has a full calendar to boot. This means they might not do a much better job than the group would have done on their own, and that their lack of availability could create a bottleneck for actually making the group sessions happen.
The most scalable solution, but it also requires rigorous preparation. You can’t rely on your own experience here – you have to make sure the group understands what to do at every step of the way. In advance, you need to prepare…
Tip! When you’re creating instructions for the group, think of the rulebook for a board game: The creator of the game isn’t there when we read it, so the instructions have to be completely self-contained and clear enough that no confusion will arise.
This is a method inspired by the framework known as Action Learning, and it works like this:
This kind of format has a number of advantages:
Although we won’t cover it in depth here in this article, role-playing is another major field. Its key ingredients are:
In order for learning group sessions to be rewarding, everyone has to come prepared. As a trainer, you have a major responsibility here. Below are some examples of preparations and when they might be appropriate.
In social learning, recounting is a strong mechanism for making knowledge take root. However, in order to recount something, one must have been introduced to it in the first place. So, before the session, make sure that the participants have already consumed the knowledge they’re expected to recount. That way, they can spend the time together working on how they will explain the material to the others.
A group session can be a great source of external motivation. Let’s say all participants are expected to have a tough conversation with a co-worker at some point during the program. If so, a group session could be an excellent checkpoint that serves as both a deadline and a carrot – you have to do this difficult thing by then, but you’re also going to get support and constructive feedback on how it went.
Many of us intuitively know that reflection is important, but still struggle to make time for it. A learning group session creates an expectation that you’ve actually taken the time to reflect, and a need to write down or recount your thoughts. After all, you won’t just be reflecting in a vacuum, because the learning group will actually have people listening to you.
Assigning a specific person to report back avoids the issue where all group members assume that someone else was going to do it. The downside is that we might miss certain group members’ perspectives.
Provided that everyone actually reports back, this gives us extremely granular data – the question is if we actually have the capacity to do anything with it?
It’s usually important to make sure that groups report back after the first session, as this allows trainers to identify issues among those who haven’t reported back. However, if the groups are expected to meet regularly, the need to report back tends to diminish over time. After all, the important thing is that the groups get together – not that the L&D department can check boxes.
—
There you have it: the eight questions you should ask yourself when planning your next learning group program. All that’s left for me is to wish you good luck!
På Knowly älskar vi att lära om lärande, och att dela med oss av våra kunskaper.
Fyll i din e-post, så hör vi av oss så snart vi publicerar nya artiklar.
.png)
