Technical Skills Training: The Science of Education

By S. Eric Christensen, Ed.D. & Elinor C. Greene, Ph.D.

The following article is reprinted with permission courtesy of Papermaker Magazine (December 1998, pgs. 54-56).

In much of the forest products industry, education has become a necessary evil. Most training initiatives in manufacturing industries - including forest products - are classroom driven and led by trainers who are not educated as educators. Trainers deliver content that is often irrelevant, to passive and disinterested learners, on an overtime basis requiring 12-hour shifts, with little or no effective measurements. The training audience consists of employees who are used to having no accountability for their own learning processes or for the outcomes of their learning.

This article discusses these issues and proposes a foundation for success. The effective application of the science of education can produce increased productivity, decreased downtime and costs, and individual accountability.

The Science of Education
In the words of John Dewey, who is to education as Beloit is to paper machinery and as Einstein is to physics, "There is a science of education." Unfortunately, the science of education is rarely applied in the forest products industry. As educators and long-time practitioners of performance improvement interventions in the forest products industry, we have identified five major issues or challenges. These challenges have consistently undermined and eroded the work of educators and practitioners toward developing a skilled, high-performance workforce.

• Perception: Education and development in the forest products industry are perceived as costly, necessary evils by both management and labor. The perception that training costs outweigh benefits is outdated and restrictive. Management's negative perception is based on spending untold thousands of dollars on program development, training facilities, materials and labor, without producing a perceivable benefit to the bottom line. Labor's negative perception is based on training schedules that require employees to work 12-hour shifts in order to attend classes that are irrelevant and the requirement to attend the same federally mandated sessions year after year.
  
  
• History: Hourly employees are, for the most part, high school graduates. They have matriculated at institutions where the art of education, to paraphrase John Dewey, is severely lacking. Most employees are products of large classroom environments consisting of 25 to 35 students or more. They have spent their formative years sitting in rows, passively listening to instructors talking endlessly about content rarely pertinent to their lives or to their future careers, with success defined on a bell-shaped curve.
  
  
• Personal control: Most hourly employees have spent their adult lives working in environments that are actively hostile to individual responsibility, accountability for their own learning and the outcomes of their work performance. Management is hesitant to give up control and has indoctrinated workers into not wanting or not knowing how to gain control. Most hourly workers have been hired to perform a specific job, not to manage their work performance.
  
  
• The learning environment: The "drivers" behind performance improvement systems used in many companies are generally college-educated engineers who apply the instructional model of a university. These individuals are usually the product of large classrooms consisting of 30 to 300 students. Their methods, understandably, are based on their experience: students sitting in rows in amphitheaters, passively listening to an instructor explain theoretical content that they often find interesting. For engineers, the learning itself is a rewarding experience, with success defined on a bell-shaped curve. This educational culture contrasts sharply with the needs and objectives of the hourly workforce.
  
  
• The bottom line: The forest products industry is in the business of making money. Profit keeps the industry alive and hundreds of thousands of people employed. However, the narrow focus on profit often results in a devaluation of the human side of enterprise. This is the case in spite of the litany from the industry that "people are our most important resource." Slashing training budgets to improve short-term profitability is a misguided approach because it ultimately prevents the company from developing a highly skilled and accountable workforce.

These five issues, when played out at manufacturing sites, can produce failure for well-intentioned training programs. The gap between ideal and actual training is so great that many companies simply give up. As a result, outdated learning methodology is never replaced with more progressive models.

Foundations for Success
The gap between "what is" and "what should be" can and must be bridged. The bridge should be built upon the following foundations:

• Instruction must be systematically designed to meet present and future needs. This is done through a three-part methodology of "plan, do and continuous improvement." Planning consists of evaluating organizational goals as well as current and anticipated performance problems and developing a plan for prioritizing performance goals. Doing means applying measurable strategies designed to achieve prioritized performance goals. Finally, evaluating the bottom-line results begins the cycle of continuous performance improvement.
  
  
• Instructional designers must be fully educated, not partially. As architects of learning, they are much more than simply content experts.
  
  
• Trainers must be trained to facilitate and guide, not solely to stand up and present. For example, a trainer teaching operators to perform noncondesible gas (NCG) emissions tests must coach the operators through testing procedures in the work environment, rather than lecturing in a classroom.
  
  
• The responsibility for learning must belong to the learners, not the instructors.
  
  
• Learning should be self-paced and individualized where possible. That is, instruction should focus only on conveying content and skills that are new to the learners. Since adult learners do not need to relearn what they already know, companies can save precious time and training resources by eliminating redundant programs.
  
  
• Skill demonstrations must be required. For example, a paper machine operator must demonstrate changing out a felt to a predetermined standard. The performance coach must observe learner performance using consistent, task-oriented check sheets to ensure reliable measurement and evaluation.
  
  
• When skills are taught in the classroom, students sometimes have difficulty "transferring" the knowledge when they return to the shop floor. As a result, instruction should take place on the job.
  
  
• Instruction, where possible, must be taken out of the passive classroom environment.
  
  
• Learning must be a part of a hierarchical system of knowledge and skill acquisition.
  
  
• Training should not be a knee-jerk reaction to a traumatic workplace event, such as an injury or a fatality. Mills must make an investment in training just as they would make capital investments in plants and equipment.
  
  
• Training must result in measurable outcomes including cost, productivity, quality and safety indicators.

This foundation supports the creation of a systematically designed, criterion-referenced learning system¹. Such a learning system is a critical element of organizational change. Without such an approach to training and development, the road from a management philosophy of "control" to one of worker "commitment" is not only painful, but for all practical purposes, impossible. The change process may be long and arduous, but the results are irrefutable: increased productivity, maximized quality and improved safety performance.

Measurable Success
"Criterion-Referenced Instruction" (CRI) is one of the most effective vehicles available for the creation of this new foundation - particularly in technical skills training (see footnote). CRI has produced overwhelmingly positive results where it has been effectively applied in the forest products industry. Successful CRI training outcomes include:

Safety: After CRI training at one mill, eight production departments reported no injuries, recordables, or lost-time injuries over a 14-month period. All employees were tested through "hands on" skill checks.

Skill Acquisition: In a recovery boiler unit, operators reported that, for the first time in memory, all employees knew what to do, how to do it, and actually did it - without the operators having to coach or lead anyone by the hand. For example, heat exchangers in the recovery boiler had always been perceived as dangerous, and operators were afraid to work on them on their own. After CRI, operators reported that their fear had changed to respect, their knowledge of the process was complete, and that their skills in recovery boiler operations - as well as their confidence in their skills - were maximized.

Cost: One paper machine realized annual savings of $169,000 based on the development of new refiner start-up procedures. This occurred after a needs analysis identified operator skill deficiencies - particularly in the area of abnormal operating conditions. After the mill designed, developed and implemented skill-specific CRI modules, refiner start-up problems were eliminated.

Reduced training time: CRI typically reduces the time needed for training by 38% to 70%, eliminating the need for 12-hour shifts to accommodate training. The reduced training time is made possible by moving training out of the classroom and onto the shop floor and by focusing on specific skills rather than broad background information.

Organizational change: In one business unit, hourly employees are now qualifying other hourly employees, based upon measurable standards of performance. As a result, the application of the CRI methodology has become the foundation for organizational change.

Lessons Learned
To paraphrase Socrates, Plato, Dewey, and Bruner, education functions best when:

• The responsibility for learning is placed squarely upon the learner's shoulders.
• Learning is designed for the learner.
• Learning is a process of discovery which happens best at the job.
• Learning is part of a system of knowledge and skill acquisition, and not an isolated event or knee-jerk reaction.

Employees do not react well to training that they perceive to be part of a "program of the month" that will soon be eliminated or changed. Learning that is part of a systematic, well-planned program of organizational change, however, has a much better chance of success.

¹Criterion-Referenced Instruction (CRI) is instruction systematically developed to solve an identified, measurable performance problem. For each performance objective, a criterion or standard by which performance will be judged is specified. The criterion may be a time limit, an accuracy tolerance, or a proportion of correct responses. The training is built to facilitate attainment of the performance criterion and a hands-on performance test is given to measure mastery or criterion achievement.

About the authors:
Eric Christensen is manager of training and organizational development at Georgia Pacific Corp.'s Palatka, Fla., mill. Christensen has close to 20 years of experience at forest products companies. He received his Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts and his Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Elinor Greene is President of Performance Criterion., adjunct professor at Georgia State University, and Chair of TAPPI's (Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry) Performance and Training Development Committee. Her interests are distance learning, needs assessment, and return on investment evaluation. Dr. Greene has 15 years of experience designing web-based training systems and conducting evaluation studies in industry. She received her Ph.D. in Instructional Systems Design from Florida State University and is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). You can reach her at 404-854-8164 or by e-mail at Elinor@performancecriterion.com.