Many of today’s organisations are no longer just focusing on what training is about and how much it costs, they also want to know the type of methods being used to successfully engage their people.

Businesses find it frustrating when they send employees on expensive courses only to discover that a week later most of what they have learned is forgotten. Our research illustrates that 34 per cent of HR professionals feel the biggest driver for measuring and evaluating training is to demonstrate the positive impact of training on the business.¹ No wonder organisations are frustrated when training is ineffective. Few business leaders may have heard of the term AL, but once explained, they understand its principles and how it can work in their favour. In short,  AL can save both time and money and companies are starting to wake up to this fact.

Theories relating to AL have been around since the seventies when the father of AL, Losanov, first brought Suggestopedia into the classroom. This takes into account the power of subliminal messaging and relies on the creation of vivid associations between words and images, thereby stimulating as many of the learner’s senses as possible. Advancements in neuroscience and psychology aided the learning revolution. Experts such as Gardner identified that we are made up of many intelligences and that much education and learning fails because it appeals to traditional IQ measures only. This was a truly exciting time. It challenged the traditional world of learning and development by suggesting that new methods may be more effective.

Despite this, the world has been amazingly slow to take up the theories of AL. Although many schools now actively use some form of AL to teach children, the business world has only just started to buy into it and sceptics are certainly not thin on the ground. Integrating AL into adult training is a hard nut to crack. Its association with having ‘fun’ while we learn has fuelled the scepticism surrounding AL. Traditional purchasers of training sometimes wrongly make a link that ‘fun’ and ‘business focused’ are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, AL is about creating a positive learning environment where people are encouraged to focus on what they can do rather than what they can’t. It’s not about a trainer standing in front of a whiteboard and droning on, it’s about allowing people to interact with each other, using tools like music, visuals, quizzes and games to aid the process. Even something as simple as messages on the wall or Baroque music played quietly in the background have been proved to have an impact on our mood and concentration and therefore, aid memory.

In my experience some people mistake AL with ‘fast training’. Busy clients increasingly request that more material is crammed into less time. We have all seen the trend towards bite-sized sessions and there are some great providers of these in the market. However, a badly designed bite-sized session is likely to promote little or no learning and will leave the client feeling disillusioned and short-changed. Great bite-size sessions embrace the principles of AL. Delegates will walk away from these inspired, enriched and motivated to change. Furthermore, the vivid nature of the session will ensure that the learning continues long after the event.

We all have individual learning styles, so anyone devising training needs to focus on people as individuals. AL encourages us to safely take delegates out of their comfort zone and to heighten the learning experience a fun and relaxed way. The result is that more messages are remembered for longer.  Gardner’s theory of eight intelligences is a useful way of doing this. When designing a training session, whether over several days or bite-sized, all the intelligences should be represented throughout the training to maximise the learning of each member of the group. Trainers themselves must not get drawn into applying their own values or learning preferences to their training. They must concentrate on the trainees’ needs.

AL should be seen as a toolkit that can be used as a source of ideas for best learning/teaching practice. The theories of AL should be adapted and applied in a way that ensures that the outcome that the company is looking for is achieved in the most efficient manner.

When used well, AL not only ensures all learning styles are covered, but also provides a useful framework for checking the quality of training course design. Most importantly however, AL at its best means effective and enjoyable training enabling delegates to remember more of what they have learned on a long-term basis. For organisations it therefore represents a greater return on their investment.

Reference
1. To find out more about this report visit www.mast.co.uk

Richard Phillips is a learning methodology expert at MaST International with 11 years of training experience. He is committed to making the learning experience a pragmatic one, through delivering training courses that incorporate Accelerated Learning (AL), experiential learning and one-to-one coaching. Richard is an accredited user of the Strengths Deployment Inventory and he is currently undertaking a Masters Degree in Learning & Development. Richard can be contacted on +44 (0) 1628 784062 or by visit www.mast.co.uk

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