Facilitation is Not About Copying Others

It’s About Understanding the Science and Designing the Right Process

One major misgiving I have about facilitation in Singapore is that many of our facilitators are using processes of facilitation without actually gaining an understanding of the science that goes behind it. Without this grounding, many of our facilitators are copying processes instead of designing them. When we adapt processes without the help of the underpinning knowledge, our workshops will regularly need massive intervention by the facilitators to turn it around. This makes the workshops difficult to run and replicate. I have seen the worst of the lot; facilitated sessions that had become a farce that produced no real results and outcomes because the facilitators were too busy adjusting the processes that had failed to work instead of listening to the conversation and facilitating the interaction.

It is my hope that in sharing the following science of learning and motivation, it helps to improve the knowledge and confidence of facilitators in Singapore so that they could move away from copying processes to designing what is right for their target audience.

Gagne's Conditions of Learning and Nine Events of Instruction

In his book ‘Conditions of Learning’, which was first published in 1965, Robert Gagne had identified nine mental conditions for learning.

These conditions were derived from the Information Processing Model, which discusses about how information from the outside world interacts with the sensory registers of the human brain to build the different types of memory. From these mental conditions for learning, Gagne created a corresponding nine-step process called the ‘Events of Instruction’ to instrument the flow of information to encourage effective learning.

Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction provides the Facilitator the science for identifying a series of opportunities to design and develop the most appropriate set of actions and interventions to enable, encourage and sustain learning.

Keller's ARCS Model for Motivation

Motivation is rarely recognized as an important element in adult learning. It is always assumed that participants are excited to learn because of the information that is presented to them is useful to them. This is far from the truth. The responsibility to create the motivation to learn should be bore by the facilitator. Without this desire, retention is unlikely to happen amongst the participants and learning is just about strategizing to ‘survive’ the facilitated event and being seen to be participating.

Facilitators must strive to create a deeper level of motivation in the participants to help them gain insights at the facilitated session and transfer these back to the workplace as new behaviors.

The John Keller’s ARCS model was created as a problem solving methodology that helps facilitators identify, design and introduce motivational tactics at the most appropriate moments of a facilitated session to stimulate and sustain the participant’s motivation to learn. There are two parts in this model. The first is a set of categories representing the components of motivation. ‘ARCS’ is the acronym for four such components of ‘Attention’, ‘Relevance’, ‘Confidence’, and ‘Satisfaction’. These categories are the result of a synthesis of the research on human motivation. The second part of the model is a systematic design process that profiles the motivational characteristics of participants in a given learning environment and then design enhancements for the session that are appropriate in keeping the participants involved.

Maping Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction to Keller's ARCS Model for Motivation

Keller’s ARCS Model for Motivation is not intended to stand apart as a separate system for learning. It has been incorporated into Gagne's Events of Instruction to form a more comprehensive framework for designing facilitated sessions. The table on the left shows this mapping.

It is important to recall at this juncture that Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction discusses about how information gets into the different memories in the brain while Keller’s ARCS Model for Motivation talks about how individuals could be motivated to learn.

Therefore, when participants are motivated to learn, their sensory registers are more active and sensitive to the incoming information, and there is a greater tendency to keep this information stored in the long term memory.

Using these two sciences of learning, the design of a facilitated session could be more educated and scientific rather than intuitive and based on rules of thumb. The table in this link is a presentation of the various opportunities for action and application of Gagne and Keller’s model in facilitation. Feel free to download this for your personal use.

It is my hope that this article will help my fellow facilitators become aware that there is a science behind facilitation. Once you gotten it, sky is the limit.

Good luck.

This article was written by Anthony Mok on 27 Oct 2009

Copyright 2009 Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.