Four Reasons to Teach Skills, Not Theory
Despite the fact that there are many trends in the wider L&D industry right now, active skills-based learning is more important than ever. Many industry studies suggest that nearly 50% of the workforce will need training and coaching in the near future. How better to train than to focus on the skills they need?
Competency-based training is action-oriented and involves both the instructor and the student. Many of the basic principles used in learning can still apply to skill-based learning. There is nothing to prevent you from including learning outcomes or learning objectives and ensuring that they are consistent with Bloom’s revised taxonomy. The only requirement is that they tend to teach useful skills.
In andragogy, you shouldn’t really expect an older student to quote a book chapter or share an eLearning summary. What these audiences need are practical skills, and here are some reasons why this type of learning is so important right now.
1. The Most Effective Type of Learning
Competency-based learning is the most effective form of training for adults. According to several reputable studies, including one by the OECD, approximately 67% of adults reported improvement after participating in skill-based training. While long-term learning approaches focus on theoretical understanding and conceptualization, skill-based learning takes a more progressive approach. Both the end result and the process students go through are effective, engaging, and show consistent improvement. Even when students fail a lot to use a new tool, that can also be presented as a positive result. You can learn by clicking the wrong thing in a tool, you can only get frustrated if you can’t remember a fact from a book or compliance training.
Intellectually, it can be very difficult to explain to students that they need some basic understanding of why the EU was created in order to fully embrace a law like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the EU AI Law. With competency-based learning, you don’t need to ignore this theoretical foundation. You just package it another way. Teach students practical skills and go back to how post-WW2 Europe was a great foundation for a united society of former sworn enemies that eventually led to extensive privacy legislation. It’s not an easy pattern of truth to present, but the history of teaching can be chaotic. Another point that is easy to make is skill-based learning.
2. Competency-Based Learning Works in All Delivery Modes
It is a very common misconception that skill-based learning can only be done in person. This misconception may come from on-the-job training. Although there is a clear connection between the two approaches, saying that you can only do skills-based training automatically or by hand is oversimplifying the broader point.
Take the example of implementing GDPR. What is stopping you from starting an eLearning course about GDPR, with an example of a study showing the results of a company that does not ask for customer consent? And then work your way back to the core principles of the GDPR by showing more ideas? Show fines of up to €20 million that companies could face. Explore real-life studies of how GDPR violations negatively impact customers. Just ask almost anyone to consider how annoyed they are when they get an unsolicited cold call three times a week.
By exploring these small and highly effective methods, breaking down concepts and turning them into analytical skills, you can make visuals and content more engaging in any format. This applies to developing eLearning courses just as much as in-person delivery.
3. Competency-Based Learning is Essential in Our AI-Dominated Times
The focus is on how AI is changing education, changing our workforce and society at large. But, in one fundamental way, not much has changed. We still trust human judgment to make challenging final decisions. For many organizations committed to the safe and responsible use of AI, there is often a so-called human-in-the-loop (HITL) control. And while HITL training is important to ensure they are ready to make these tough calls, what exactly are we trying to teach them?
The ability to shout that the AI is wrong? Well, maybe as a practical effect, yes. But to say that this is “just seeing that AI has the truth wrong” is an oversimplification bordering on wrong. In most companies today, you need to understand how AI models work before you can accurately assess whether they are producing misleading or inaccurate content. Given that in most small to medium-sized businesses, you may be wearing different hats, another thing to remember is that most people doing HITL should also provide positive feedback.
And how can you give constructive feedback on how to fix an AI model if you don’t have specific skills and abilities related to it? HITL is not just knowing the truth and pointing out that the AI was wrong. It’s a skill set that separates human experts from AI. And knowledge, like AI, is not static. So our professionals who work as part of HITL controls need continuous skill-based learning to stay at the top of their fields.
4. Skill-Based Learning is Fun
Perhaps this is a personal opinion, and I will return to my GDPR example again to try to argue this point. Unless you’re a lawyer, I think most people who have been trained in GDPR will find it a dry topic. To be honest, it is not a very interesting topic to teach or if you start by teaching the story of the genesis of the EU, from how the European Commission for Coal and Steel started to how far the European Council (not the EU) reached with Convention 108 in 1981.
By the time I was able to explain that the Council of Europe is a completely different international organization compared to the EU, I probably lost half the room if this was an online classroom. Maybe I’m lucky if I deliver this in person. I also don’t know how I stand with you personally, but I hope you still find something here. But that doesn’t happen if you take a skill-based approach to learning the subject. And this may be deeply biased, but in my experience, when you teach any topic with tools and skills, most people will engage.
Even when I taught GDPR to a repeated group of Customer Support Representatives (who hated the topic), they could better understand these tools and processes when they were linked to clear job requirements. When they saw that the skills I was trying to teach them were something they really needed, rather than a boring theoretical foundation, I didn’t worry if my audience was going to sleep. In the classroom, on the Zoom phone, it doesn’t matter: skills-based learning is independent of the delivery method.
Whatever topic you specialize in and whatever medium you choose, skills-based learning gives your audience an immediate reason to engage. It is more efficient, flexible, and better suited to the demands of a rapidly changing workplace. And as an added bonus, it’s a very rewarding experience for everyone in the room.
