Planning Considerations for Learning Activities | Facilitation Basics (ASTD Training Basics)

What must you keep in mind as you plan the activities that will engage your learners in an active way? First, you have to choose an appropriate learning activity and then you have to be sure that the selected learning activity will meet the needs of all three types of learning preferences (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic).

Confirming Learning Activity Choice

Your choice of learning activity is a design decision based on the course’s learning objectives. What do the learners need to be able to do (terminal learning objective) when they leave the class? Structured exercises and skill practice activities will support the learners’ abilities to actually perform skills. What do they need to know (enabling learning objective) to be able to do it? Content/knowledge/comprehension activities provide the understanding and information that they will need before they can actually perform.

You must confirm the designer’s learning activity choices by revisiting the learning objectives and ensuring that there is an appropriately chosen learning activity that corresponds to each learning objective.

For example: You’re preparing to facilitate a driving class for novice drivers. One of the terminal learning objectives is: Decide on the appropriate action when faced with a traffic sign or signal (something the learners must be able to do). You must check to see that there is a learning activity that involves practicing the mental skill of deciding what action to take at a traffic sign/signal. You also must check that there is an enabling learning objective and corresponding content and learning activity that will provide knowledge of traffic signs and signals (what they need to know before they can do). In this case, an enabling learning objective might be: Explain the meaning of the eight most commonly used traffic signs and signals, which could be supported by a content/knowledge/comprehension activity.

Basic Rule 21

All learning activities must support appropriate learning objectives.

Think About This

In some courses, a knowledge set might be a prerequisite for attendance in the course; for example, learners attending the driving course must already know the meanings of traffic signs. That would make a content/knowledge/comprehension activity unnecessary in the class because they come to the class with the knowledge already mastered, assuming they really have mastered the prerequisites. In any event—whether they come with the knowledge or they learn it in the class—they must still know before they do.

Meeting the Needs of Different Learning Preferences

Chapter 3 discussed the characteristics of the three main learning preferences: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. That chapter also covered the types of learning activities and media that work well with different learning styles. It is important to acknowledge that people with different learning preferences and styles are engaged differently, depending on their preference/style and the activity you’ve chosen.

You must think ahead about the types of activities and materials that will be used and make sure to accommodate all learning preferences/styles. Three guidelines help you in addressing learning preferences and styles:

Two out of three, every time: Use techniques that appeal to at least two of the three learning preferences in every activity. For example, if you present instructions for an activity verbally and put the instructions on a flipchart or handout, you have hit the auditory and visual preferences at the same time. In many cases, you can hit all three preferences.
Change up often: By transitioning to a new topic or activity (or both) often and by changing the type of activity, you’ll hit different combinations of preferences and styles throughout the course. In this way, people are in and out of their comfort zones throughout the course. This effort leads to participants’ willingness to participate and be outside of their comfort zones for a while because the expectation has been established that they will soon be back in it. Other considerations regarding changing up are discussed in chapter 6 in the sections on pace and sequence.
Watch out for your own style: The activities you are most comfortable facilitating are most likely the ones that match your own learning style. If you’re not careful, you’ll tend to use those activities too much. Effective facilitators take themselves out of their own comfort zones and choose to facilitate all kinds of learning activities so that all kinds of learning styles are accommodated.

The example in figure 5–1 illustrates a simple outline for a lesson in the driving class example. The outline demonstrates alignment of learning activities with learning objectives and selection of activities to accommodate varied learning styles. The assumption, which drives the order of activities in this example, is that the learners have very little background and knowledge in driving. This outline is not something that you would show your learners; rather, it is a planning tool for you to illustrate the thought process that supports the choice of activities. For your learners, you might take the column labeled “Learning Activities” and produce it as an agenda.

Figure 5.1: Example outline for a driving class.
Lesson 3: Driving for Novices: Traffic Signs and Signals
Learning Objective	Learning Activities	Type of Activity	Learning Styles Addressed
Explain the meaning of the eight most-used traffic signs and signals	Lecture on traffic signs and signals with handouts and slides	Content/knowledge/ comprehension	Visual Auditory
Identify the eight most-used traffic signs and signals by shape and color	Self-quiz: handout in which learners fill in the blanks on a diagram of traffic signs	Content/knowledge/ comprehension	Visual Kinesthetic
Apply knowledge of traffic signs and signals to various situations	Structured exercise: “What would you do if…?” Traffic scenarios that they work together in small groups to solve; computer simulation	Structured exercise	Auditory (Kinesthetic as well if they make flipcharts during the activity or engage the simulation)
Take appropriate action when faced with a traffic sign or signal	Practice: Drive in a car or simulator to a variety of signs and act on them with instructor in passenger seat	Skill practice	Visual Auditory Kinesthetic
Apply traffic signs and signals skills to future driving activities	Debrief: Large group discussion with planned questions on how the practice went; challenges and things they will do differently in the future	Guided discussion	Auditory