Canadian Occupational Safety

10 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com Managing learner motivation in class A good instructor can turn prisoners into tourists, tourists into keeners A ll safety practitioners at one time or another will be required to lead a training session of some kind. Whether it is a formal course on incident investigation and causal analysis methods or an informal tailgate talk on how to wear hearing protection, all safety practitioners eventually have to take on the role of teacher. One of the most challenging aspects of being a teacher is recognizing and managing the varied learner motivations in your classroom. A learner's motivation may be better alternatively described as his "readiness to learn." A group of 20 learners will likely have a range of motivations for learning, not to mention as many as 20 different personalities and potentially be at 20 different levels technically or academically. If you are not ready for this variability or do not recognize this diversity, it sets the stage for a challenging experience for both you and the learners. A starting point in getting this right is to recognize and manage what is best described as the three levels of motivation: the "prisoner," the "tourist" and the "keener." Prisoners may have been volun-told to take the training. That is they really don't want to be there, they are not interested in the topics and are not really ready to learn at all. They are stuck in your course and are forced and unwilling participants. Tourists see the training as time off from real work and are happy to go along for the ride even if their intention is not to actually learn anything. They will no doubt enjoy the refreshments at the break but they are not likely to contribute very much. With the right interaction, however, they can become interested in the content. The keeners are ideal learners who are highly motivated and ready to learn. These learners do not need to be formally engaged or challenged to keep their interest up. However, they will be demanding and expect a quick pace to cover lots of content. Recognizing these three different levels is the fi rst step in the process of having success in the classroom. It is the teacher's job to, at the very least, make tourists out of prisoners, make keeners out of tourists and keep the keeners keen. It is not enough for the teacher to exhibit an enthusiastic interest in the topic and demonstrate strong motivation for the process and learning opportunity. In fact, an overly keen instructor may drive more tourists to become prisoners and turn off some of the keeners. A more calculated approach is required. The best way to deal with prisoners is to fi nd them right away; maybe even by making small talk with course participants before the class starts to try and seek them out. Get to the venue early and manage an informal meet and greet. Read tonality and body language — sitting stoically with crossed arms is a tell- tale sign of a prisoner. Engaging prisoners early and asking them to share ideas or experiences in a one- to-one discussion may be all that is needed to convert them to tourists. Prisoners do not like to be publicly singled out. By talking to them one- to-one and showing them you value their experience, they are more likely candidates for conversion. It is important to focus on prisoners early because if left to their devices and not managed, they can become disruptive and really drag down the experience of the whole group. If you are successful during the pre-course activities, all prisoners will have at least been converted to tourists by the time the course starts. It is hard to sort the tourists from the keeners before the course starts. Tourists often can feign interest and be mistaken for keeners; after all, everybody is a little happier on their days off. For the tourists, your course is just another day off. The best way to fi nd the tourists is to try and engage the entire group early on in the course. The super enthusiastic participants, the keeners, will be easily identifi able. If you do formal introductions at the beginning of your course, the keeners will stand out from the rest. If you have been successful at determining who the prisoners are before class starts and the keeners present themselves during the course introductions, the tourists can be identifi ed by a simple process of elimination. Tourists can be engaged and then converted by helping them fi gure out the WIFM: "What's in it for me?" For the tourist, there needs to be some materiality of the course. Explain to them why the course content should matter to them. They need to understand how the content being presented will fi t into their work world. So, the fi rst part of the course needs to be built with the tourists in mind. If the purpose and relevance can be explained, you will convert the tourists into keeners. Inevitably, your turn will come when you will be asked to lead a training session or toolbox meeting of some kind. Your challenge as the leader and teacher will be to recognize the varied motivation for learners to learn. Although having an array of motivations in the classroom can be challenging, it is also what keeps the job of the safety practitioner exciting. If all students were keeners, it might be easier but it may quickly become a boring job. If you fi nd it diffi cult at fi rst to determine the different motivation levels, don't despair; it is extremely challenging for even the most effective teachers to read the learner cohort and fi gure out who are the prisoners, tourists and keeners. But it will be even more diffi cult to reach all learners if you cannot fi rst assess their motivation and work with each group to move them towards the motivational level of the keener. The fi nest teachers are excellent at differentiating between learners. Your success and their success depend on it. Glyn Jones is a partner at EHS Partnerships in Calgary and he provides program design and instructional support to the University of New Brunswick's OHS certifi cate and diploma programs. He is also the regional vice-president of Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut for the Canadian Society of Safety Engineering. He can be reached at gjones@ehsp.ca. PEOPLE&PLACES GLYN JONES TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT PEOPLE&PLACES GLYN JONES TRAINING PEOPLE&PLACES TRAINING PEOPLE&PLACES Congratulations to the following OHS professionals who have recently been granted the Canadian Registered Safety Professional (CRSP) ® Professionnel en sécurité agréé du Canada (PSAC) ® designation. The BCRSP is a self-regulating, self-governing organization accredited by the Standards Council of Canada to ISO 17024 (Personnel Certification Body) and by BSI Management Systems to ISO 9001(Quality Management System). Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals/Conseil canadien des professionnels en sécurité agréés 6700 Century Avenue, Suite 100, Mississauga, ON L5N 6A4 905-567-7198, 1-888-279-2777, www.bcrsp.ca Ian Abbs, CRSP Kinan Aboujamra, CRSP Jenna Adams, CRSP Wayne Andrus, CRSP Darcie Annesley, CRSP Sahar Ashtiani, CRSP Wesley Aulbrook, CRSP Edwin Rommel Austria, CRSP Kyla Bach, CRSP David Beatty, CRSP Myriam Beauchemin, CRSP Joanne Betts, CRSP Mervyn Betts, CRSP Swapan Biswas, CRSP Colin Bolton, CRSP Warren Braithwaite, CRSP Richard Brenton, CRSP Katherine Browning, CRSP Natalie Carscadden, CRSP Micheal Carter, CRSP Christopher Caruso, CRSP Paul Chamberlin, CRSP Paul Chamoun, CRSP Joyce Chen, CRSP Leora Chiprut, CRSP Hymen Chu, CRSP Jon Clippingdale, CRSP Christine Collins, CRSP Sandy Cooper, CRSP Nigel Corduff, CRSP Cody Craig, CRSP Kyle Craig, CRSP Dwayne Dalton, CRSP Christopher Davis, CRSP Natalia Day, CRSP Shauna DeBock, CRSP Jason DesJardins, CRSP Jordan Desrosiers, CRSP Sundeep Dhasi, CRSP Jennifer Dickson, CRSP Karen Donnelly, CRSP Dave Duguay, CRSP Robert Duncan, CRSP James Kieran Dunne, CRSP James Ekelund, CRSP Paula Elliott, CRSP Nasim Esfahani, CRSP Judith (Jodi) Flatt, CRSP Peter Gallagher, CRSP Marisue Gardonio, CRSP Quinn Gillard, CRSP Mark Glazier, CRSP Robert Goertz, CRSP Dee Gollnitz, CRSP Stephen J. Gordy, CRSP Nicole Goyette, CRSP Brian Guilfoyle, CRSP Juanita Hanley, CRSP Kimberley Hanson, CRSP Daryl Harvey, CRSP Travis Harvey, CRSP Kevin Hassel, CRSP Richard Heslop, CRSP Fraser Hewitt, CRSP Terri Hofinger, CRSP Doug Hollett, CRSP Raymond Hopkins, CRSP Gregory Horner, CRSP Jonathan Howard, CRSP Ayadi Ibrahim, CRSP Dale Ivie, CRSP Melissa James, CRSP Anne Johnson, CRSP Jeffrey Josey, CRSP Tamara Kapanen, CRSP Stacey Kazakoff, CRSP Chris Keeping, CRSP Randy Kelly, CRSP Manuel Kindt, CRSP Brian Kossey, CRSP Karren Kossey, CRSP Jason Kramer, CRSP Christopher Kroes, CRSP Scott Krompocker, CRSP Danka Krsmanovic, CRSP Bruno LaVigueur, CRSP Yusau Lawal, CRSP Kevin LeDrew, CRSP Steven Leer, CRSP David «Brock» Lonson, CRSP Sean MacCormack, CRSP Cary MacDonald, CRSP William Mitchell MacGregor, CRSP Eughena Cecilia MacNeil, CRSP Steven MacPhail, CRSP Jamie Magee, CRSP Drazan Mandic, CRSP Jesse Martell, CRSP Katherine Martens, CRSP Cindy Masch, CRSP Jessica McCaughey, CRSP Sarah McCurdy, CRSP Garry McGauran, CRSP Byron McWhinnie, CRSP Kenneth Mercer, CRSP Timothy Merkley, CRSP Lloyd Merriam, CRSP Ulrika Merrick, CRSP Steven Musselwhite, CRSP Jennifer Nam, CRSP Erin Nawrot, CRSP Jonathon Neville, CRSP Sherry Ng, CRSP Darcy Niedermaier, CRSP Laura Niznik, CRSP Tyler Nolan, CRSP Akinwunmi F. Oladipo, CRSP David Otteson, CRSP Catherine Parsons, CRSP Verneke Peters, CRSP Jessica Pu, CRSP Christopher Reeves, CRSP Jennifer Remington, CRSP Vincent Rieu, CRSP Carolin Robinson, CRSP Samuel Rodriguez, CRSP Trevor Routledge, CRSP Jacqueline Roy, CRSP Jason Roy, CRSP Doug Sanders, CRSP Celine Serrano, CRSP James Shepherd, CRSP Noel Slaney, CRSP Rodger Sloan, CRSP Derek Smart, CRSP Michelle Smook, CRSP Gavin St. Michael, CRSP Kimberly Stubbs, CRSP William Sutherland, CRSP Melanie Sveinson, CRSP Jason Taylor, CRSP Tanessa Thompson, CRSP Colin Tobin, CRSP Flavia C. Torres-Moya, CRSP Melinda Triebwasser, CRSP Ashley Turcotte, CRSP Corrie Ann Vallis, CRSP Alex Vandelden, CRSP Kartik Vyas, CRSP Kevin Watson, CRSP Laura Watson, CRSP Frank Watts, CRSP Kirby Wempe, CRSP Lisa Wheeldon, CRSP Craig White, CRSP Karl Woolfsmith, CRSP Richard Wright, CRSP Lacey Wutzke, CRSP Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals BCRSP_NewCRSPAnnouncment_October2014Examination_COS Magazine.indd 1 1/15/2015 12:16:17 PM

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