RE: Can you teach someone how to learn?

[Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com>]

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Karen asked:
I wish I knew how to teach this skill so if we ever bring a new writer in, I can get them moving in the right direction. But I have no idea how to do it. Do you? I think this applies to fields outside software; it's just that all of my techwriting experience has been in software, so my post is biased towards that.
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The short answer is, yes you can teach people how to learn.

The keys IMHO are:

* Motivation - without motivation, it's hard to teach anything. Of course, motivation comes in all forms but the basic premise is that if you want to ellicit a behavior, you have to reward the person for that behavior. No reward, no motivation. No motivation, no learning.
* Comfort level - The level of someone's anxiety related to learning something affects their ability to learn.
Structure - People do better in a structured setting, where they know what to expect and know what the expectations are. This helps to reduce anxiety about learning.
* Cognitive abilities of learners - Yes, some people just can't grasp certain concepts because they don't have the cognitive ability to. Extreme (and I don't mean in the marketing/pop culture sense) examples of this can be seen in teh social and language deficits of people with autism. On a more mundane level, some people are just better at learning certain kinds of information. Howard Gardener outlined the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, in which he posits that there are 7 kinds of human intelligence (linguistic, spatial, logical/mathematical, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, kinesthetic). Each person has different abilities in each of these kinds of intelligences, and so depending on the nature of the subject the learner will experience varying degrees of success. Maturity also plays into cognitive ability. People mature at different rates, so their cognitive abilities grow at different rates as well. An adolescent who didn't understand proofs in math may understand the concepts as an adult because their brains have matured.
* Presentation - There's the old adage "Tell them what you are going to teach, teach it, tell them what you've teached" Start with easy stuff so that the person feels they can learn, that builds confidence which builds motivation. Repeat material so knew knowledge stays fresh in their mind. move on to more complex ideas as simpler ideas are mastered. Build on existing knowledge.
* Individualization - Because people have different learning abilities, the best way to teach someone something is to figure out how they learn best and present information to them in that way. People also learn better in a one-on-one situation. They feel more comfortable with asking questions that they think others will think are stupid (this goes once again to anxiety about learning).
* Teacher knowledge - The teacher has to know what the heck they're talking about in order to teach it.
* Time - It takes time to learn.
* Patience - This is the hard one for the teacher. If a person senses you're getting impatient with them, they start to feel like they're stupid, increasing their anxiety level and decreasing their motivation to learn.

These are all elements that go into learning, and they're all elements you should take into account when teaching someone something (but if you're a techniacl writer, you already know most of these). If you want to help your writers build skills that will help them learn, start with examining what you do to learn. Create a curriculum for new writers that introduces some learning techniques and relates those techniques to the product. Provide tips, such as pointing out a particularly difficult concept. In short, write a user guide for learning that keeps all of the elements I mentioned in mind.

Before you begin, you should read up on how people learn. Start with educational psychology, and theories of learning. Yes, you'll run across stuff that seems "academic," but many of the "academics" have practical applications that educators use. Read about teaching techniques. Hang around with trainers.

Of course, you have to balance this with the needs of your company, that may not be too thrilled about you spending all of this time doing something that "isn't related to your job." But that's life.





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Sean Hower - tech writer
http://hokum.freehomepage.com

"Whatever you do, do NOT let your editorial decisions be made by the squiggly spell-checking lines in Word!" ~Keith Cronin, Techwr-l irritant ;-)

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