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I spent 14 hours on the road (well, in the air and in airports and waiting in shuttle buses) the other day to come to rainy Las Vegas for a show.  It’s about Learning, that thing that I spend lots of time trying to help clients make happen.

“Putting on a big show” is a concept that has really run into some difficult times over the last few years.  Airplane bombers, tanking economies, online learning and general “I don’t want to spend a week away from my desk” sorts of attitudes are making it pretty difficult.

As someone who used to build content for great big shows, it makes me sad.  As someone who comes to speak at great big shows (to troll for unsuspecting clients) it makes me even sadder.  It’s just not much fun anymore.

There used to be free food.  At this show, I’m going to get a free ice-cream bar.  There used to be free bands at cocktail parties.  At this show, I’ll have to hum ABBA songs or listen to my i-Pod while I pay $20 for a beer.  And there used to be lavish hotels and convention centers — and at this show, I’m a mile from the strip in a hotel that looks like Bugsy Siegal might come around the corner any minute.

But I had a pretty good group for my workshop yesterday — they struggled a bit (I’m not your typical PowerPoint lecture sort of guy) and there were a few evaluations that reflected that.  And I’m enjoying my hallway conversations and the Twitter backchannel discussions during the presentations.

But it just doesn’t stand up to having Bono up on stage, with 7,000 people dancing the night away drinking from an open bar.  Oh, well.

With all this talk about fixing healthcare, I’m convinced that if we’ve got a good solution it’s a shame to waste it on just one problem.  So I propose that we take the ideas and apply them to fixing education as well.  Here’s my plan:

REQUIRE EVERYONE TO BE EDUCATED
Many people have chosen not to participate in education, or (if they participate) not to succeed.  Education is a responsibility, not a right — so I propose that we levy a fine of $2500 per year on everyone who doesn’t graduate from High School.  Doesn’t matter what their reasons are, the government knows best.  We don’t want these uneducated people turning up at the Reference Desks of our Public Libraries when they need information, do we?

GREEDY HIGHER EDUCATION COMPANIES
I propose that we immediately limit the salary of tenured faculty at Harvard, MIT and Yale to no more than $50,000 per year.  The knowledge they are imparting can be found in any textbook, and (in most cases) the students aren’t really learning it anyway.  Tests with “placebo knowledge” at the University Of Phoenix Online have shown that an advanced degree of any kind is pretty much accepted nowadays.  And don’t get me started on those greedy TextBook monopolists — just rearranging common words in the English language and then selling the results for cash!

OFFERING A PUBLIC OPTION
Yes, private education works well — the Catholics have been doing it for years, along with many others.  But I think we need to have a government-run option for education, because it would work better and cost less.  (What’s that?  We’ve tried it already?  And it sucks?)  Well, maybe we should appoint a panel of people who’ve never taught to come up with an answer, then.

LEARNING DEATH PANELS
At some point, we need to face the painful truth that there are learners who are unable to learn anything more.  We keep lecturing them over, and over, and over — but they just don’t get it.  Our PowerPoint slides get more and more detailed, our e-learning has larger and larger “next” buttons, and our ropes courses are hung from the largest trees we can find.  I propose that anyone in the “bottom 25%” of an assessment (like Einstein, Lincoln, and Edison) should be barred from any further access to learning so the resources can be better used on making more lectures.

INCREASED MONEY FOR EDUCATION
Right now, there are some states that don’t even spend 50% of their budget on education!  Hard to believe, isn’t it?  So I propose an immediate Federal Mandate that all states raise the total percentage of their budget to 200%, which would mean a big increase in money for schools.  (At least I think it would.  I didn’t do too well in math.)  If that doesn’t work, we’ll increase it to 400%.

EXCLUSIONS FOR PRE-EXISTING LEARNING
We’ve simply got to find a way to help people who’ve already learned something (like brain surgery or jet piloting) at home, and don’t want to take the time to attend school.  I propose that if you can correctly spell three of the terms used in the discipline, and can point to a picture of the uniform that you would wear — we give you a “trial” certification to go ahead and give it a shot.  Much like in our government, it isn’t really important if you’ve actually DONE something before we put you in charge of it, right?

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If you agree with my plan, just go to the site below to sign on to my petition and we’ll get started:

www.CantTellThisIsAParody.com

I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.  A losing cause.  Or a sinking ship.  And sometimes that ends up getting me in trouble.

A few months ago, you called me asking if I knew anyone who could teach some in-person classes for your Nameless State Economic Agency.  You said you were skilling people up to get good jobs in a tech support environment, something I know a little bit about.  You said you had someone who was going to develop all the curriculum, and it was nearly complete.  And all you needed was someone to stand there and talk.

“How about me?”  You laughed, nervously, and said you probably couldn’t afford me.  (You were right.  Your rate was about 1/3 of what I would have quoted.)  But things have been slow, and it was only a tw0-week commitment, and sounded easy-squeesy.  Plus, I LOVE teaching in the classroom and hadn’t had the chance to do any ILT in years.

Fast-forward to three days before the first class.  Still no learning objectives, only a few disjointed PowerPoint slides, no test questions at all.  Ooopsie!

I sucked it up and made it work.  I built a wiki (paid for it myself) on my own time.  I built a “chat” function on my personal site.  I helped your SME write meaningful test questions. I found an amazing technical resource on LinkedIn and got her to do a video chat with your class.  I made up troubleshooting demos and role-play scenarios on the fly.  I pretty much taught my ass off for two weeks.

Of the 50 people in your class, 45 got hired.  (The other five I rated “Do Not Hire”.) The instructor reviews were mostly “walked on water, rarely gets feet wet”.  The representatives of the client that sat in were writing things like “incredible instructor” on their little note pads.

(I did get dinged by a couple of students for cursing.  You try moving from the West Coast to the Bible Belt and see what happens to you.)

In my postmortem review, I told you that if you could come up with a little money I’d be glad to re-design the course for you, based on what I saw.  I quoted 40 hours at your tiny rate — far less time than it would really take, but I know you are a very low-budget group.  And I wanted you to succeed in the future, with the next 600 trainees.  Whether I taught or not.

We had that “client” meeting in the big conference room, with a tiny TV screen where nobody could see my slides.  You said they loved the facilitative model I used, and didn’t want a bunch of  PPT slides with a brain dump of facts to memorize.  The students demanded more troubleshooting training, more role playing, more interaction.

I carefully outlined the course — including role-plays, scenarios, a class wiki, a “chat” discussion group, and lots of discussion and group building of knowledge.  Then I walked you through it over the phone and online, step-by-step, explaining each and every activity.  You approved it.

Off I went.  I designed a thing of beauty.  Twenty-four perfect modules, carefully connected to build technical skills rather than rote memorization.  Limited PowerPoint slides. Lots of “have the students use the scenario in their small group, and report back” type stuff.

I completed “Week One” and you loved it.  The client had some little changes they wanted on Week Two, so I slipped those in and handed it off.  That’s when our honeymoon ended.

“It seems a little light,” you said.  “Needs more meat and potatoes.”

No woman was ever more mortally wounded by hearing from her intended that he “wanted to see other people.”

I gently asked exactly what “more” you’d like.  I explained that in a “facilitative” model like this, much of the time in the second week of the class was spent in troubleshooting practice and role plays.  Students were designing their own scenarios, trading with other groups, solving them — and then reporting back to the class.  The facilitator would then help them “process” the learning.

(The snarky bastard in me wanted to offer to script out exactly what 25 students were to say out loud in each and every role play, but I pushed him firmly back down into the dungeon.)

That’s when the romance went out of our relationship.  When I realized that it had all been a sham, and we’d never grow old together like in the movies. You said those words that made me cry:

“Well, 99-95% of our instructors are not at that level of facilitating, anyway.”

Uh huh.  So how do you think that’s gonna work out for ya, then? If these guys just want to stand in front and lecture, and I give them a one-hour module that pretty much says “have the students do an hour of role-play and process the results”?

Yes, there were some harsh words said.  Some crockery broken. We eventually agreed to disagree, and I asked you for a list of what you wanted me to change.  And I did every single thing.

Now I’m sitting on the couch in the light of the television, eating Rocky Road out of the box with a spoon and watching Oprah with the sound off.  Trying to understand what happened between us.  How could the perfect client have changed so much?  Were there warning signs that I missed?  When my friends laughed about you at parties, should I have listened?

My wife, a very smart woman, listened to my story.  And she suggested that maybe I should have just given more instructions in the “Facilitator Manual”.  Instead of saying “use this scenario and do a role play to process with these points” — the kind of guidance that I’d like — I should have done more.  Given more.  Cared more.

I should have said:

• Get some #2 pencils
• Sharpen them to a point
• Get 25 3×5 cards, no lines
• Write your name at the top
• Write the scenario
• List only three answers, no more and no less
• Hand them to the left
• Rank them in order of relevance
• Post to the board with gold stars

Well, I’m paraphrasing.  My darling pretty much said I should include more “how to facilitate” instructions in the “Facilitator Guide” so that the 95% I didn’t know about would be able to do it.

(Snarky me at this point suggested if I was hiring carpenters for a remodel, I wouldn’t hire one who only knew how to use a hammer on a framing job.  If he couldn’t operate a nail gun, there wouldn’t be instructions on that in the blueprints.)

But I do have to admit that she has a point.  Facilitative Learning is a whole different box of rocks for your traditional technical trainer.  No longer the “sage on the stage”, you’re actually helping the learners build their own knowledge.  It’s messy, it takes longer, and it’s much harder work.

But we do it because it beats the PANTS off of your boring old PPT lectures!

So I guess you’re moving on, and that’s probably best.  It was fun while it lasted, we had some laughs, and I’m sure the two of you (your PowerPoints and You) will be quite happy together.

Me — I’ve got my eye on this cute little Second Life learning simulation…

Here’s a podcast that my class did at SALT Orlando!

ytaudio(1mSFVgK6z3g)

They recorded the audio on a laptop, then put the audio in a video file with Windows Movie Maker.  Added a single image created with PowerPoint.  Uploaded the whole thing to YouTube.  (Hosting it this way makes it very easy for people to find, means you don’t pay for bandwidth, etc.  It’s a great way to start out.)

*This little player is called YT Audio by Eric Rasmussen, and allows me to stream the audio directly from any YouTube file right through my blog.