In 2006, personnel from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard [NNSY] in Virginia happened across The Bob Pike Group at a one-day conference hosted by the American Society for Training and Development. It was there that the seeds for the base’s view of formal learning were planted for participant-centered training.
“This was the first ‘a-ha’ moment; however, we were 'too busy' to stop and try to implement the techniques,” said Cynthia Smith, supervisor in Corporate Training Initiatives, NNSY. “There was the feeling that we had to 'redo' all of our products to implement,” Smith said.
“After attending our first [Creative Training Techniques Conference] Pike Conference in 2007, we decided baby steps were better than no steps, so we chose three topics in each product that were areas of weakness and revised how those were taught to be more participant-centered.”
NNSY brought in Bob Pike Group senior consultant Rich Meiss to help get all team members on board philosophically with participant-centered training as well as practically by doing additional facilitation and workshops on incorporating participant-friendly training methodologies. NNSY develops corporate training for about 12 naval shipyard facilities.
One of the first redesigns was a three-week engineering course and results were seen immediately. “We showed a 13 percent increase in exam scores consistently since the modification and no failures,” Smith said right after the implementation. The training also received “glowing reviews” from students, one of whom said, “This is the best class I've ever attended in 30-plus years of civil service.”
NNSY continues to model participant-centered, instructor-led teaching methods by hosting in-house BPG workshops and having members of their own staff develop participant-centered exercises. “I have personally seen many of the exercises, and they are excellent, including window panes, teach-backs, matching exercises” and more, Meiss said.
Since being named a Pike’s Peak Award recipient in 2010, NNSY has “developed a corporate instructional skills and techniques course for all new instructors in the shipyards. It goes over what they do prior to teaching, during the instruction, and after instruction. The course is delivered in a participant-centered training [PCT] methodology” and about 110 have now attended that course, Smith said. “Many more courses are being developed incorporating PCT now. I see it in short briefings/trainings now and many courses are adding activities to spice them up during revisions.”
“We are also continuing to work to expose as many instructors and training managers to the PCT concepts as possible so they will find ways to implement the techniques in courses and briefings they develop. We are doing this by ensuring workshops are conducted across the program, demonstrating examples of PCT during site visits, developing new corporate training products with PCT, retrofitting existing corporate training products with PCT, using the techniques in corporate meetings, providing training/briefings to upper management, and sharing success stories,” Smith said.
Annually, NNSY hosts on-site BPG workshops such as the train-the-trainer Boot Camp and Presentation Skills and has had about 400 personnel go through those trainings.
“I recommend the Boot Camp for all new instructors to start them off with the right philosophies to improve effective transfer of training [and] periodically attending the BPG conference is a great to energize your training team and get lots of great ideas to follow-up on,” Smith said. “I can't tell you how excited we are to have the tools we need to make training more effective and interesting (even fun!) for our workers. If nothing else, it will open everyone's eyes to see that we have got to get away from overuse of PowerPoint and focus on what workers need to DO during the daily work.”
Comments from NNSY trainings since PCT’s inception include:
What I did not know is that the alternative techniques to PowerPoint could not only improve the quality of training, but could actually reduce the time it takes to present the same material.
You could not help but be involved. I found it fun and useful.
I have had a great deal of training in this area and find that the Pike Group approach is superior to all the others.
The techniques I've gained in this training course have put life back into my job—thank you.
For information on our specific BPG resources, click the links below:
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