Effective safety procedures and related training programs can literally mean life or death to workers in many industries. It's imperative that companies have effective training programs in place that communicate safe processes and procedures as well as ensure that employees retain and use the new information and skills on the job. With a new generation of younger workers who demand more interactive learning experiences, effectiveness is harder to achieve.
Many training programs rely heavily on PowerPoint presentations. However, many face to face training presentations are not optimized to maximize relevance and impact on audiences. This drastically reduces attention span and participation among audience members. An Audience Response System, however, makes PowerPoint an interactive experience. Each session participant uses a handheld wireless keypad to respond to questions posed by the instructor. Learners become active participants rather than passive ones.
Testing and Assessment
Using an audience response system, instructors can pose and tabulate test questions before, during, and after sessions. This allows for adjustment to the instructional design to include remediation loops if the group is failing to grasp a particular concept. It also provides for immediate tabulation and demonstration of results with pre-post comparisons.
Tackle the learning curve
When you add interactivity to a PowerPoint presentation, you change the learning paradigm. Instead of a one-way, "I talk, you listen paradigm," it becomes a participatory learning event. Interactivity can let you determine the level of understanding that people bring to the event so that you can gear the presentation to the needs of the audience. You don't need to cover the concepts that people are already familiar with, but instead you can allocate your time to teaching what the audience members need to learn
Measuring Application of Skills and Knowledge
Learning programs have little value if participants don't apply the new knowledge or skills on the job. Often, data collection after the learning intervention is difficult to obtain and analyze. Using an audience response system makes it easier to administer questionnaires two to six months after the conclusion of a program. Facilitators can gather program participants, co-workers, or supervisors to ask critical questions that measure application of new skills or knowledge.
Even when very mature systems are in place from a safety perspective, much of the training revolves around company culture. An essential piece of training is looking at how to affect individual safety behavior, and that's where Audience Response software and wireless keypads make a difference. Instructors can immediately measure and influence perceptions about safety.
Response systems allow you to evaluate how well learners have retained new material and how they are applying it on the job. This crucial evaluation process delivers the answers you need in order to determine how effective, skilled, and safe your workers are.
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