Facilitate a group learning to develop curriculum for a non-traditional learner audience. Step 3: locating information about and analyzing non-traditional learning environments.Email me to request participant activity handout.
2. What is your “learning environment”?
•Tell us about your classroom, lab, or field
station!
Gina Bennett for COTR International
3. What’s your ideal learning environment?
•Now tell us about your ideal classroom, lab,
or field station.
Gina Bennett for COTR International
4. Optimal, necessary, & optional
•For a great training experience, start by
visioning an optimum learning environment
•Differentiate between environmental aspects
that are necessary and aspects that are optional
for training success
•Obtain accurate information about the
environment you will be teaching in
•Determine how many necessary aspects you
will have available & how you will compensate
for what’s missing.
Gina Bennett for COTR International
5. Getting accurate information
•To determine what’s optimal & necessary:
interview subject matter experts and trainers.
•To determine what will actually be available:
interview individuals with first-hand
knowledge about the training location.
Gina Bennett for COTR International
6. Creating an Environmental Analysis
•What varieties of training environments do
we need to consider?
•What do we already know about each
training environment?
•Using the information available, complete the
detailed Environmental Analysis.
Gina Bennett for COTR International
7. Trainer Profile
The trainer(s) for a program are an important
part of the learning environment.
Gina Bennett for COTR International
Editor's Notes
Ask participants to describe their current learning environment; e.g. do they teach in a classroom? Please describe. A trades shop? Lab? Out in the field? Brainstorm a variety of learning environments that the participants are familiar with. We are trying to find out what is the range of learning environments within their experience.
This time, ask participants to describe what would be the IDEAL learning environment; i.e. if they had unlimited budget, what would their classroom or trades shop or Lab or field environment look like?
Pick one particular environment with great variation between the current & the ideal situation; e.g. a trades shop. Why did the participant mention certain additional items for an ideal training environment? i.e. what did he/she think that those additional items would add to the learning experience?
You might mention that we just finished an exercise in determining the optimal learning environment. It’s important to know what you’re aiming for in an (ideal) training environment, even though you know the reality of your training situation will be somewhat less. But once you recognize the optimal, you can select training options that help you compensate for sub-optimal aspects.
First, consider the variety of training environments in your particular curriculum development project. For example, you may be developing training for mining in a rural training centre. What about community-based training in the rural areas? Are there other training environments or situations to consider?
Next, hand out the detailed Learning Environment Analysis. Remember the first step is to consider which questions are relevant to this situation.
The detailed Learning Environment analysis can be filled in as a class, in groups, in pairs, or individually. If we will be working with several distinct learning environments, it may be useful to break the class into several groups & assign one learning environment for each group.
At this point you can hand out the Trainer Profile questions. Once again: we can either fill this out as a class, in groups (one trainer profile for each training environment or program), or individually.
