Worst Classroom Nightmares: Part 1

Last week, I attended the class "Exercising Influence", delivered by Barnes and Conti.

As I attend classes, I'm always learning on two levels.
The first level is, of course, the class materials.

The second level is watching other instructors at work.
It's a kind of 'out-of-body' experience to see another person facilitate a group.

In every group, we get students who are spaced along the learning continuum.
Some like to move fast, do exercises, make mistakes, and interact.
A few others like to move slow, learn theory, avoid mistakes, and reflect.
Most are in-between.

This group, however, was the first I'd seen that contained both extreme ends of the continuum.

As the instructor introduced the agenda, he mentioned that the first morning would contain a fair amount of lecture. This would build the basic concepts for our role playing in the afternoon.
Day two would be mostly activity-based.

At this point, an engineer raised his hand, and said (in a nutshell), "I won't want to do any role-playing until you've taught us all the theory. I'll need to understand the how's and why's. I'm not convinced that this method works. You'll have to convince me."
He continued for about 10 minutes, explaining his needs.

Not less than 5 minutes later, another student raised his hand and said, "We've already spent too much time discussing this. Can we move on to the exercises?"

Wow...

The next day and a half continued like this. The theory-based student asked a lot of detailed questions, while the action-based student kept reminding us that, "We're 2 hours into this class and we're on page 5".

Now, neither style is 'correct' or 'better' (though, personally, I resonate with the fast-paced action-learning style). I was just glad I got to watch this play out in a classroom that I wasn't leading!

What did I learn?
Well, I would have pulled the theory-learner aside and explained the design of the class.
If the activity pacing was too much for him, I would have recommended he pull out of the class.
If not, I would offer to answer his more esoteric questions off-line, or at lunch.

Deferring to the agenda almost always works.

Course design can address these issues, as well.
A little data at the start (where did the model come from, what's its history) helps the theory-learning get comfortable.
It's also too much to expect that action-based learners will sit through a morning of lecture.
I would get an activity loaded into the front end of the class to satisfy them...

But we'll see when it happens to me!