The learners' declaration of rights, continued

Places please for effective instruction

In our last article, The learners’ declaration of rights, we were confronted with a proclamation of rights, as defined by the learners in our classrooms. Unfortunately, the learners got distracted by the latest Jon & Kate news and stopped their declaration before they had finished it. They are focused on us again, and conclude their proclamation of rights below.

The Learners' Declaration of Rights (continued)

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

We expect relevant content – Dead ends annoy us. If you take the time to teach us something, it should be applicable to our jobs. Even better, make it important to our careers. Best of all, make it relevant to our lives. Don’t waste our time impressing us with how much you know. We rarely leave a learning event wishing the trainer would have talked more.

We want you to believe in your content – When you put on a video, don’t leave the room. It tells us you don’t think the video is important. If you won’t watch it, we shouldn’t have to either. We can tell when you are bored with your material. If you do not believe what you say, we will know.

We don’t want to hear your troubles – Although we are sympathetic, the issues you face in your home life, how much you hate the content you are teaching, or how bored or annoyed you are with us is not our concern. We also don’t want to know how much you disagree with your fellow facilitators, your boss or your organization. Leave it outside. It’s our time.

We hate pointless activities – We don’t like icebreakers. They feel forced. We especially don’t like to be blindfolded or otherwise physically manipulated. We also don’t appreciate activities that take a long time for little payoff. We have more important things to do than be manipulated for small purposes.

We need to try it ourselves – Just because you said it doesn’t mean it is so. Our learning does not occur until we do something with the information. Give us time to apply material the material.

We don’t like being forced to give favorable evaluations – We don’t appreciate being told what to write on end-of-class evaluations. It’s our turn to evaluate, not yours. Don’t suggest what we should focus on, fish for compliments from us, look over our shoulder as we write or collect the evals in a way that tells us you will know who wrote what. Let us express ourselves anonymously without interference.

None of these statements are meant to be as harsh as they sound. We simply have different priorities than you do. Please focus on us and our needs. If you do so we will make an extra effort to learn what you have been tasked with teaching us. We respectfully submit this declaration and reserve the right to change our minds at any moment something more interesting distracts us,

Your Learners

With apologies to Thomas Jefferson and John Locke.

Somehow I don’t think they would mind.

In the next and final article in this series, we will examine this declaration from the instructor's perspective.