Learn to become a qualified professional Compliance Instructor
As an investigator, compliance professional, fraud controller, security risk manager or OH&S officer, you ask questions in your professional practice every day. Questions are your tools of trade. In this article, Mike Evans from the Australian Security Academy shows you the trainer how to use that skill in the class room to engage learning.
Engaging structured Questions for Investigation, Compliance, Security Risk Management and Fraud Control Trainers used in classroom and Internet learning activities at the Australian Security Academy Pty Ltd.
Practice and implement these questions into your daily training activities, you will be pleasantly surprised by how much learning you can evoke, by asking the right question at the right time! Knowledge, skill and or attitude gaps can close effortlessly with the right questions.
These can be used to evaluate progress during a session and deepen trainees learning. The aim of Competency Based Learning is to have the trainees implement their training in the workplace in a fashion relevant to their workplace.
There are 3 stages of learning in which trainees are actively engaged in learning a new skill.
Experiencing – at this stage trainees are actively engaged in learning a new skill. simulations, activities, assessments.
Interpreting – the stage where trainees are trying to make sense of the situation, gain understanding, or place the training in the context of what they are training to do. Reflection, practice, research.
Applying – the stage where the trainee is concerned with applying their new understanding to real life situations. Possibly making generalisations about the training in a number of work situations. Actually taking a statement, conducting a security risk assessment or surveillance.
These questions can be used following, individual or group work, fish bowls, role - plays, presentations, before or after assessment or during general discussion. They are particularly valuable after a presentation by a guest speaker, or industry representative and will add value to the learning, in your classroom.
Experiencing.
What is going on?
How do you feel about that?
If you could guess at the answer what would it be?
Can you say that in another way?
What happened?
Were there any surprises?
Did anything puzzle you?
What did you observe?
What were you aware of?
Use these questions during, demonstrations, simulations and observations.
Interpreting.
How did you account for that?
What does that mean to you?
How was that significant?
How was that good/bad?
What struck you about that? How do those fit together?
How might it have been different?
Do you see something operating there?
Use these questions when going over the completed or nearly completed work of a trainee. Effectively they will learn twice.
Experiencing.
What might we draw from that?
What did you learn / relearn?
What does that suggest to you about ………….in general?
Does that remind you of anything?
What principle / law do you see operating?
Does that remind you of anything? What does that help you explain?
How does that relate to other experiences?
What do you associate with that?
So what?
How could you apply / transfer that?
What would you like to do with that?
How could you repeat this again?
What are the options?
What might you do to help / hinder yourself?
How could you do it better?
What would be the consequences of doing / not doing that?
What modifications can you make-work for you?
Use these questions in almost any learning circumstance, they can sting, illuminate, add value, and get low participators to rise to the challenge.
The advantages of employing these questions are many:
If the training experience is going as planned, you have a tool for guiding the pace, depth and intensity that you deem appropriate.
If there is difficulty with the learning you have a tool for deriving learning from what is occurring, so that benefit is obtained regardless of trainees attitudes or reactions.
The greatest advantage is that these questions can be used with any experience, in nearly any situation with the vast majority of trainees. They are generalizable, transferable and guaranteed to evoke learning.
Try to introduce three in each category to appropriate sessions, as they will evoke learning, promote interaction and become a very valuable instructor habit. Remember it is not your job to give bold lectures in the classroom; it is your job to get students thinking, learning and applying those skills in the workplace.
Direct the questions to trainees initially as a group, as they grow in confidence you can switch to individuals (or departments, or workplaces) for their input / view. Each one of the above questions is designed to draw out more learning.
They are not FATAL LEARNING questions where students have to guess the answers inside the teacher’s head, and will end up switching off, just like we all do in those circumstances.
