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FPAAZ Professional Development JourneyOur Quest for Satisfying Adult Learning
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What if your phone or laptop becomes another way to connect to a CE experience you actively want to capture, repeat, and incorporate into your practice? Maybe even- a channel getting your learning ideas into view and focus for others?
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Our Professional Development teams’ experimentation and evaluation of new ideas and varied formats toward this objective commenced before the 2020 Covid Pandemic. Poolside or deskbound, the Pandemic accentuated and accelerated these changes. | It has been an exhausting and humbling series of learning and event format experiments and mistakes. Some experiments were rewarded with clear wins and revealed repeatable formulae. Wins made it into our Learning Hub+.
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Problem:CEby lectureIsn't Sticky |  |
As we narrowed and defined the descriptors for the learning experience we were pursuing, we realized that our adult learning goals and assessments could be consistently measured by two dimensions: rigor and engagement. When we succeeded in increasing both rigor AND engagement at any of our events, our attendee’s satisfaction scores soared. We were onto something.
A lecture style format, regardless of the rigor level, results in a relatively low attendee engagement experience compared to workshops, field trips, case studies, or peer to peer learning. Academic studies have shown that when engagement is low, even if learning occurs and the perceived rigor is high, the retention and implementation of learned content following the program event suffers.
Why? Academic studies indicate that adult learners have a narrow tolerance and short attention span for simply sitting and listening. In this type of learning environment, it takes a superlative subject matter expert to keep most adults' attention and interest level high enough to result in learning at any rigor level, especially learning that might be retained and put into practice or use.
If we could produce learning programming that increased not just the rigor, but also actively engaged our attendees in what they were experiencing, would they would absorb more, have more fun, and offer higher program satisfaction evaluations, because they could connect their practice and profit to the information they were learning? Turns out...by our assessments, Yes!
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Objective:Offer Consistently Higher Rigorand Engagement
| There are some obvious ways to add more engagement into content delivery (eg: paying for talented presenters), but we also discovered there are other, more nuanced, affordable and manageable ways consistently to increase both rigor and engagement. Many engagement opportunities derive from the event formats themselves, the locations of events, the set up and software used to communicate concepts or invite interaction, or the attendees’ ability to prepare for and tailor the [anticipated] content ahead of time to suit their preferred learning style. In other words, event planning and how events are structured – before one word is spoken – can significantly raise the potential levels of rigor and engagement for any/all attendees. How we encourage attendees to prepare in advance to more easily absorb content increases engagement and thus, learning satisfaction scores. As we experimented with structuring events, “AHA” moments multiplied. Here are a few: |
· Example: Traditional event formats varied slightly, but even when the format changed, the learning content delivery was still primarily lecture driven. One AHA moment was the realization that Panel events/formats were not really a meaningful shift away from lectures. Panel events are simply more than one lecture, delivered in segments by different talking heads. Panel events can be harder to consume than a single talking head! ☹ · Example: Symposiums and Conferences are a series of lectures, made more consumable by inserting meals or mixers and more affordable by incorporating an Expo component and SWAG. If the meals are bad, the breaks are too short, or the Expo and vendors take over the CE content or reduce/impact the networking time, the rigor and engagement suffers. Quality of interaction – not quantity of attendees– matters the most. ☹
Lectures - content verbally delivered, usually in tandem with a visual reference/aid (eg: power point presentations), broken into 50 minute consumable CE segments -
are lecture events, no matter how they are paired with a meal or mixer, nor how many are offered in close succession, no matter what you call them or how cleverly they are marketed. ☹ · Realization: Satisfying e-learning experiences via Webinars are hard to come by. Webinars are lectures with less engagement potential than in person delivery. They reduce some in person event hurdles, like transit and parking, and they can offer rigorous content. But, when information is delivered via the internet through a computer screen rather than face to face, lecture-based learning options start with a lower engagement expectation than in person options offer, no matter how rigorous the content nor how engaging the presenter. ☹ |
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Chapter Conundrum 1:Offering Rigorous and Engaging CEcan be Expensive |
CE events are more costly/burdensome to produce than non CE offerings. Offering CE credit requires special advance work/reporting requirements from administrative staff. Well received CE programming – rigorous and engaging programming– becomes more expensive to produce and deliver regardless of event format when lecture style presentations remain the fundamental content delivery style, because honorariums will likely be required. A common way to provide both high rigor and more engagement is to book superlative presenters. The more dynamic and skilled the presenter, the more likely a timely or relevant topic receives satisfactory or high ratings from attendees. Such presenters are sought after, generally requiring payment/honorarium before agreeing to present. Many highly prized presenters are Subject Matter Experts (SME) who are also part performer. Their delivery style or approach to sharing content is engaging. That performance aspect creates the extra value that successfully garners honorarium. If a presenter isn't part performer, yet is highly sought, their content or prowess is deemed so valuable that learners are willing to suffer through lecture formats to glean the content. Presenters and SMEs who have more engaging styles are not the same as lesson planning for more engaging content delivery. The way the content is designed for lesson delivery and consumption changes in order to pull attendees into a subject, spark discussion and learner discovery. Presenters and SMEs who take time and care to arrange their content into formats and exercises that purposefully inject interactivity and exploration into the lesson plan do not have to be themselves engaging in order to create and deliver an engaging learning experience. Achieving consistently higher rigor and engagement in chapter learning programming - without breaking the bank - requires a strong desire to aim for it, a basic understanding of Androgogy (how adults learn) and consistent, patient, purposeful effort. Having a toolkit, roadmap and support system helps tremendously. |
LearningHub+ |
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Chapter Conundrum 2:Offering CEhas becomea Commodity
Offering CE is now table stakes. Chapters must do so, but it doesn't drive attendance, membership, or revenue. | Compounding the CE expense challenge for smaller, local associations is the increasing success of technology to bring a world of knowledge to our fingertips. Even as the costs and burdens of producing quality local, live CE content by lecture increase - consistently providing Rigorous and Engaging learning experiences - the market options available for a professional to choose how to receive and consume their desired topic or content by superlative presenters and SMEs have expanded exponentially. Free CE options for financial planning professionals are readily available 24/7 via a computer screen and an internet connection. Any topic. Any time. Free. From an Expert. The local chapter competition for delivering CE to their professional market isn't limited to virtual options. Financial industry companies and vendors - alongside the national levels of local trade associations, and other competing local trade associations - offer CE content as a business development tool or membership benefit - again, frequently, at no overt charge/fee to the recipient. Why would anyone pay more, drive further, and allocate their time away from productive revenue producing work to simply satisfy CE requirements? The consumption market for face to face CE is shrinking, and the options for free CE are expanding. Producing a service like CE faces rising costs with fewer attendees and shrinking revenue. For local chapters, offering CE as inducement for acquiring and keeping professional members is a losing business strategy. |
Chapter Conundrum 3:Professional LearningConsumption Preferences Have ShiftedFinancial planning professionals were more accustomed to attending in person chapter learning events before the pandemic. The pandemic forced our behavior, and our cultural norms, to adapt quickly to conducting business (and more) in virtual environments. These recently increased comfort levels with online interactions include adjustments favoring virtual learning. Research and time will tell how significant or permanent the preferences for online or in person learning are, but anecdotally, our observation and experience to date (based upon outreach conversations and event satisfaction assessments) point to 3 factors:
Introducing FPAAZ's Learning Hub+©.The FPAAZ Lifelong Learning team started experimenting away in 2017 from traditional "CE centric" chapter programming - predictably delivered via a lecture style format by SMEs on topics approved by the CFP Board of Standards or other industry authorities.* The changes to how we plan, produce and deliver adult learning options have been compiled and tested in what we call our Learning Hub+©, representing years of observed and documented experience delivering more consistently satisfying adult learning programming. The Learning Hub+© exists as a continually evolving handbook supporting our current and future volunteers, presenters and SMEs, and chapter leaders. When you see a Learning Hub"+"© indicator, you will observe a well-defined chapter gathering format with a SME or presenter willing to strive for rigorous and engaging content delivery, whether in person or virtual. Beyond CE, the Learning Hub+© immediately and directly improves learning relevant to Compliance, Practice Management, and Professional Development.
*Most topics were connected to the CFP Board of Standards lists of Principle Knowledge Topics or Job Task Analysis domains. |
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