Interactive sessions to teach skills

Interactive sessions to teach skills

Changes in behaviour most often involve the mastery of skills. We cannot teach skills through a PowerPoint presentation. I know we have grown into believers of PowerPoint and it is not hard to see why. We moved from teaching using a blackboard and chalk to the use of an overhead projector with transparencies to the use of actual slides that needed to be arranged in a carousel in the right way in order not to have an upside-down projection. PowerPoint was such a great improvement. People who became good at animation of slides produced dazzling presentations, sometimes so dazzling that the content of the presentation got a bit drowned. But it got us stuck in didactic teaching.

We do not want to replace didactic teaching by experts with didactic teaching by peers. The peer effect may not last very long. All too soon the peers doing the didactic teaching may be seen as authority figures themselves.

Effective teaching of skills requires a total interactive approach and has typically 4 main components: tell, show, do and feedback.

Tell

The classical way of teaching skills was telling people what to do and subsequently it was hoped that they would do what they were told. Even though telling alone is rarely having the intended effect of change in skills or behaviour, it remains an important part of the interactive teaching process. And if we really still want to use PowerPoints, that is the area where as an introduction to the skill a short formal didactic presentation still deserves its place.

Show

The second essential component of interactive teaching is to show the audience how the skill that needs to be practiced is performed correctly. We tell first how to do it and then we shut down our didactic discourse. If the skills required any equipment or tools, e.g., the wearing of sterile gloves, we have to ensure that during the preparation of the session all necessary materials are available. Small group approach for interactive teaching like this is quite essential. If small groups not an option, multiple facilitators may be required to properly ensure the ‘show’ part is effectively delivered to all participants.

Do

Subsequently, all participants are expected to perform the skill in front of the teacher and the peers. Teachers require some essential skills at this point to reduce tension for people to perform in front of others a new skill. I can feel the reader at this point object that reduction of tension is easier said than done. That is where proper feedback comes in.

Feed Back

If we see something wrong, we criticise. We are good at giving criticism, and we are not so good at giving praise. True?

To teach skills effectively we have to learn how to give proper feedback to the learners. If after we have told them and showed them, they do it with some mistakes, we can start to scold them and make them feel small. The result is that they feel bad and will not have learned the skill. The right way to give feed back is to use the sandwich technique:

A sandwich with three layers:

1.       Positive feed back: tell them the parts they did right – with a bit of praise for it

2.       Negative: Tell them how they could improve – in an understanding way

Positive: If they make this improvement consistently it will lead to good results