Finance Training in The Times

Hi - well you have seen The Times article but for those of you like me whose vision is not 20 20 here is the article verbatim.

Pigs can't fly but they can teach you more about finance than an Excel spreadsheet

Want to make learning fun? Then, says Carly Chynoweth, it is time to let the animals out
It is difficult to see an immediate natural synergy between management accounting and pigs. One involves balance sheets, profit-and-loss statements and nicely-cut suits; the other goes oink and has been an unwitting player in a global panic about flu.

Yet underwriters, trainee managers and other staff at Allianz, the insurance company, are using novelty stuffed pigs to learn the serious business of corporate finance. The aim is to teach those without finance or accounting experience the basics of company accounts and cashflow management, helping them to get a better idea of how their own work and business decisions fit into Allianz's overall operations.

As to why they use fluffy porkers — alongside a small tractor, a plastic farm and a wad of fake money — well, it makes things more fun. And that means people learn better and remember more, Paul Dunn, managing director of P3, the training company that runs the programme, said. “If you think back to school, you will find that the subjects you enjoyed are the ones that you remember, while you emptied the others out of your head the moment you left the exam.”
The novelty value also helps the lessons stick in people's minds. “Playing with fluffy pigs is not natural for people at Allianz. They're really quite a sober organisation,” he said.

Pigs should help people to remember 30 per cent more than if they had spent the day looking at a PowerPoint presentation or dissecting spreadsheets. In fact, Mr Dunn said, people can learn the same basic concepts in a day that they would learn in a three-year management accounting degree.

The day begins with Allianz staff setting up a simple business — a pig farm — and creating their accounts as they go. Every time they buy or sell something, be it stock or farm equipment, they move it in or out of the play piggery and shuffle large laminated sheets, which gradually build into a giant balance statement that takes up several metres of floor space. If it wasn't for the age of the participants, the training course could look like a particularly creative primary school class.

The training course was unlike any other that Jenna Kim, an engineering graduate on a management trainee programme, had been on. “It was exactly the right balance of seriousness and a little bit of humour. And it was good to have something more tangible to help clarify the concepts,” she said.

Using a pretend pig farm was more effective at getting across basic points than setting up an insurance company.

“You needed something relatively basic. If you tried to make the business too complicated, you would be trying to understand it rather than the principles.” The use of physical money means that mistakes that lead to a cashflow crisis, for example, become immediately obvious.

For workers who spend the day glued to a computer, playing with toys is also a welcome break. Jason Howes, a sales manager, was particularly pleased that he didn't have to spend the day wrestling with Excel. “When you think about financial awareness [training], you assume it's going to be spreadsheets,” he said. “I had worried that it was going to be all about maths...When [the trainer] started the pig farm exercise, I was quite surprised.”

While Mr Howes still has more coursework to go — a considerable self-study component, as well as another training day — he is confident about facing the three-hour exam at the end of it all. “I feel a lot better about it now than I did previously. Getting my head around ratios and things was a lot easier [this way] than just seeing it in black and white.”

Sian Tarbuck, who runs Allianz's Underwriting Academy training centre, said that the overall response to pig-based learning had been very positive. “Finance can be a bit dry, but people felt that it had been brought to life,” she said.

If everything continues to go well, Allianz may begin to incorporate “fun” learning techniques into some other modules, although as yet there is no plan to go the whole hog.

See it online in TimesOnline or on Carly's site CarlyChynoweth.com

Article on Adult Learning techniques in Finance Training in The Times

MATTERS OF STYLE IN HOW ADULTS LEARN

In this article we explore the issue of IMPOVERISHED LEARNING, how proper use of Learning Styles Theory can extend the return on investment of training, teaching and learning. In this first article we will explore the problems of using the theories. Then, in the following four articles we will explore four key theories that help us understand how people learn.

THE Problem

Almost all teachers, trainers and educators KNOW that every person they are helping to learn has different learning styles. In this new series we explore the basic modern concepts and constructs of this theory.

Learning styles are characteristic strengths and preferences in the ways we take in and process information. What this means is that some learners tend to focus on facts, data, and algorithms; others are more comfortable with theories and mathematical models.

Some respond strongly to visual forms of information, like pictures, diagrams, and schematics; others get more from verbal forms such as written and spoken explanations. Some prefer to learn actively and interactively; others function more introspectively and individually.

Functioning effectively in any professional capacity, however, requires working well in all learning style modes. For example, competent engineers and scientists must be observant, methodical, and careful (characteristics of the sensing style in one of the learning style models to be described) as well as innovative, curious, and inclined to go beyond facts to interpretation and theory (characteristics of the intuitive style in that model). Similarly, they must develop both visual and verbal skills. Information routinely comes in both forms, and much of it will be lost to someone who cannot function well in both of these modes.

The reasoning of learning styles has two outputs for educators. Firstly, people learn faster if we tailor learning to MATCH a persons learning style, or alternatively, we should advance a learners ability to learn by enticing them to learn differently, extending their learning styles to include their non preferred styles.

This fundamental reasoning has problematic issues :

• 
  Whether at school or in an organisational context, helping learners learn though extending their learning style takes time, money and effort and therefore traditionally is ignored. We just don’t help people to learn how to learn.


• 
  Where learning styles are utilised by educators, they are designed to provide learning to match and extend EXISTING capacities, with the hope that this increases or speeds up learning. This has had some success but misses the point.

Initial thinking in this area presupposed that people can learn better by understanding and EXTENDING their style. In other words, work the muscles of NON PREFERRED learning ability, where they are weak, balancing these with areas that they learn well with. David Kolb, who critically started the debate in this area, talked of a sequence of processes to assist learners. This was then extended by others by focusing on elements of the process and realising that we all have a preference for particular parts. Again, the initial thinking was to EXTEND learners capabilities in areas that they were weak in. However, this thinking has tended to be ignored by the learning community and now focuses on presenting information in the PREFERRED style, or worse, to ignore the styles completely and go with the traditional style. How Adults Learn is exactly aboutv this issue, should we learn better in the long term?

Most ‘experts’ in accelerated learning for instance, fail to extend a learners capacity to learn, they just deliver ideas and thinking in different ways to help learners absorb data in their preferred style.

By ignoring or using learning styles in this way, which forgets to help learners extend weaker learning styles, just reinforces impoverished learning and learners.

Here is the dilemma then, if professors, teachers, trainers and educators teach exclusively in a manner that favours their students' less preferred learning style modes, the students' discomfort level may be great enough to interfere with their learning.

On the other hand, if they teach exclusively in their students' preferred modes, the students may NOT develop the mental dexterity they need to reach their potential for achievement in school and as professionals. And to get on in the world needs dexterity! This way of teaching means we do no favours to either the learners or the organisations we are helping to provide the learning for. So then, which is best? Pamper to the style or help a learner to utilise a non preferred style better in the future?

An objective of education should be to help students build their skills in both their preferred and less preferred modes of learning. Learning style models that categorize these modes provide good frameworks for designing learning interventions with the desired breadth of both information and building learning skills. The goal is to make sure that the learning needs of students in each model category are met at least part of the time and provide frameworks for students to work in their NON preferred style in an acceptable way. In Attitudinal Based Learning theory this is called ‘Layering Learning’. By helping learners learn to use their non preferences, we educators help them get more from the future. We grow learners, rather than impoverish them.

Implications for Educators

There are many!

Teachers and trainers should understand that they have a dual role in learning interventions:

1. 
   Deliver the CONTENT, and
2. 
   DEVELOP learners’ learning skills

There are two ways we can do this.

1. 
   Design interventions that do both at the same time (done very rarely) Or
2. 
   Provide stand alone training to extend and develop learning skills - known as learning how to learn (done almost never).

Learning professionals are failing learners and the organisational need in the long term, by not tackling this issue. So called 'blended learning' can create impoverished learners, add short term value only and uses theory in a way it was never intended by allowing learners to work in their preferred style rather than add long term value by ensuring a broad developmental process to extend the learners' learning style.

Better to start a learning career with a ‘learning how to learn’ intervention and then reinforce their balance of abilities throughout their learning career. The chinese proverb seems rather apt:

"Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you will feed him for life"

Educators have forgotten that they should educate, not just teach content, however innovative and clever the way they present information. Perhaps training trainers and teachers how to educate should be high on the agenda for learning professionals?

References
R.M. Felder and R. Brent, "Understanding Student Differences." J. Engr. Education, (2005).
Alice Y. Kolb and David A. Kolb, "Learning Styles and Learning Spaces: Enhancing Experiential Learning in Higher" (2005).

It's been a while!

Sorry for those that have followed the blog, been really busy and life has been complex for the last few weeks, but we are back!

» What Everybody Ought To Know About Using PowerPoint for E-learning The Rapid eLearning Blog

This is a really GOOD blog about How Adults Learn and aspects of use of technology etc.

» What Everybody Ought To Know About Using PowerPoint for E-learning The Rapid eLearning Blog

How Adults Learn Theory

http://www.virtuallearning.org.uk/changemanage/pedagogy_practice/Learning%20theory%20and%20e%2339137.pdf

This is really good article on the structure of How Adults Learn, based on the more traditional and older theories.

Chocolate helps learning!

Just the news you were looking for!! You will be delighted to know that chocolate has been scientifically proven to aid How Adults Learn!.

Not only does the glucose within chocolate provide the fuel that your brain needs to function properly, but it also contains essence of cacao. As well as providing chocolate with its great taste this natural substance, encourages the body to release ‘endorphins’, the chemical which is responsible for driving your positive, happy moods.

In short chocolate helps get you into the right emotional state for effortless learning. Chocolate also contains high levels of phenol, a chemical that helps reduce the risk of heart disease, according to a researcher at the University of California It has a number of neuroactive alkaloids – including traces of cannabinoid-like substances or cannabis to you and me)

What’s more, new research from the University of Scranton in America suggests that the benefits may even go deeper than that. They found that chocolate is a more effective anti-oxidant, molecule for molecule, than Vitamin C. Amongst other things anti-oxidants reduce the electrical resistance in your brain, and thus enable the connections between your neurons to operate more effectively – another necessary requirement for learning!

Stick to dark high Cacao (70% or more). Cheaper 'milk chocolate' has lots more additives which are less good for you, and, dilute the postive effects of the chocolate.

So, next time you are feeling self-indulgent tell yourself you are simply improving your learning effectiveness!!!