Using Interactive Tools in Instruction and Learning

Benjamin Franklin is credited with the saying, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”   Franklin, or whoever coined the original expression, understood the power of individual learning styles and how to reinforce what was learned in a classroom setting to cement learning and concepts in the students’ minds in the fastest possible time.

Interactive Education – Why are Interactive Learning Tools Important?

The three generally accepted learning styles are Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic: 

1. Visual learners gain information when they see it. 
2. Auditory learners gain knowledge through the spoken word. 
3. Kinesthetic learners learn by doing. 

Neil Fleming added Reading/Writing to this model creating the VARK model.  Research about the distribution of the population in the several styles varies greatly.  One study places most learners in the Visual category, with Kinesthetic style as second, and several combinations as the next higher groups .  Another study shows students learning best through Kinesthetic means. 

When given the Learning Style Assessment in an industrial setting, the distribution of learning styles was more even, but heavier weight was given to blended learning styles (Visual/Kinesthetic, Auditory/Kinesthetic, Visual/Auditory, or Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic).  Of the blended styles, Visual/Kinesthetic was the most common.

Understanding learning styles will lead a practitioner or instructor to know that all students do not learn in the same way.  Using one of the training delivery methods to the exclusion of all others will alienate many students in the class.  If an instructor lectures the entire class, the students who are Auditory learners will benefit, but the Visual and Kinesthetic learners will tune out and “check out” of the class.  Teaching, therefore, should incorporate all the learning styles to best reach the students.  As in school subjects such as math and English, when lessons are reinforced with interactive hands-on experience, the learning is better fixed in the students’ minds.

Interactive Teaching Games for Focused Improvement

As a practitioner, or manufacturing consultant, I collaborate with employees of client companies teaching them subjects such as Focused Improvement.  This is an approach to thinking about solving problems that answers the questions:

• What is wrong?  What is the problem?
• How bad is the problem?  What is the current situation (numerically)?
• What is causing the problem?  What could be some solutions to the problem?
• How is the problem fixed?
• How does the problem stay fixed?

This method is known as DMAIC – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.  This is a systematic process that can be used to solve simple and complex problems.  When used correctly, issues are fixed and stay fixed.  In the past, practitioners taught DMAIC in manufacturing training programs and then expected the client teams to go out and begin to solve problems.  Usually, the practitioner guided the team or class through an example in PowerPoint or on a flip chart, but often the client team would flounder when they tried to put the process in practice on a real-world problem.  The practitioner would then come back in the next visit with the expectation of a level of progress.  The client team would not have met that expectation, and the team and practitioner would start over.  This wasted precious time needed for the project. 

To reduce or eliminate the floundering, we designed an interactive method of teaching Focused Improvement.  The class would learn the material through lecture and PowerPoint or flip chart, then the lesson would be reinforced by practice in class.  We used a catapult as the means to reinforce the education through interactive elements.

Use of Interactive Tools in Instruction - Catapults, Paper Airplanes, and T-Shirts Examples

The catapult has several settings which were set randomly before the class. The team’s goal was to launch the 10 Pom-Poms into a container sixty inches away. The goal was for each of the teams to make seven of the ten Pom-Poms in the container. We had three teams working on this problem.

The first set of throws yielded dismal results. Only one team got any Pom-Poms in the container, and they only got four. Neither of the other teams got any. The teams worked through the DMAIC process to begin to solve the problem.

Once the teams determined the root cause and possible solutions, they set up the catapult and tried again.

The final results were much improved over the initial results:

Teach the Teacher

Albert Einstein said that insanity is “Doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results.” A corollary of this can be: “Insanity is doing the same thing different ways and expecting the same results.” If we teach tasks differently or emphasize different components of a task, it would be insanity to expect the same results. A concept known as Standard Work takes care of the insanity corollary. Standard Work gives the operator the steps of a job in the order they should be completed to make a quality product. When Standard Work is combined with proper training and education practices, we ensure employees learn the task the same way. 

Again, we use an interactive process to teach people to teach. We present the method in lecture and PowerPoint format, the Standard Work for a task, then allow the teams to teach back to each other. Below are the Standard Work documents for making a paper airplane and folding a T-Shirt.

With both of these activities, students learned the tasks more quickly and were able to apply their learning faster.

Other Uses for Interactive Training Programs in Continuous Improvement Education

Various maintenance solutions and preventions can be taught using the catapult as an interactive learning tool.  Seeing and experiencing the issue of worn parts (rubber bands, anchor string, etc.) and learning how to check to prevent untimely failure can be invaluable to students learning how to perform maintenance activities.  Failure modes can be easily set up to cause unscheduled failures, and the students can perform Breakdown Analysis (BDA) to find and correct the failure mode.

Centerlines (optimum set points) can be set, and a schedule applied to check the accuracy of the centerlines.  Corrective action when a centerline point is out of specification can also be developed and applied.
Of course, the original use of the catapult, Design of Experiments (DOE), can be used to teach experimentation to perfect or improve performance.

Conclusion

Because people are not the same, they learn differently and think differently.  Teachers need to tailor their lessons and instructional methods to reach all students.  Using practical/interactive applications allows all students to learn in their preferred method while reinforcing the lessons communicated by the teacher.