Kemerer (1991) on Learning Transfer

Kemerer, R. W. (1991). Understanding the application of learning. In T. J. Sork (Ed.), Mistakes made and lessons learned: Overcoming obstacles to successful program planning (New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, vol 49) (pp. 67-80). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Type of Work
Book chapter
Audience

• Performance managers
• Adult educators working in business settings

Purpose / Goal

• Describe what prevents learners from applying what they have learned
• Describe ways to increase the likelihood that learning will be applied “once learners return to their natural environments” (p. 67)

My Critique

• This paper offers a lot of good do’s and don’ts—sound bites of program planning—but, overall, it presents a view of teaching/learning that makes me uncomfortable.
  
• I understand that Kemerer’s background is in “performance management” and that the classroom is not an employee’s everyday workplace. However, I don’t think that calling the workplace a “natural environment” and thereby implying that the classroom is somehow “unnatural” is appropriate. It could be argued that humans are natural learners and that most workplaces are more unnatural to us than any learning environment.
• Kemerer is a behaviorist through and through. He seems to define learning only in terms of modified behavior. If learning does not occur or is not retained, it is because the behavior was not adequately rewarded. While he does allow for personal internalized rewards, he puts too little emphasis on them for my taste.
• Oddly, this chapter is part of a book edited by Sork; but Kemerer seems inconsistent with what I have read from Sork so far. Sork (2000) seems to have a more laid back approach to program planning—whatever works—as opposed to Kemerer who seems much more formulaic. Kemerer seems to say that, if organizations will just do XYZ, the results will be satisfying every time.

Key Points

1. Reward mechanism is required for learning transfer to occur
2. The best companies are best at
1. Structuring expectations
1. Requires clarity
1. “must be clear about the behaviors needed to adjust successfully to this changing role for learning transfer to occur” (p. 69)
2. Focuses on behaviors to be performed, not knowledge to be acquired
1. “unless performance expectations for participants in adult education are set out in terms of specific behaviors, there will be little or no transfer of learning” (p. 69).
3. Recognizes that people can’t/won’t learn until they are ready to learn
4. Sets realistic expectations
5. Recognizes dangers of unstable (rapidly changing) expectations
1. “One way to ensure that learning transfer will not occur easily is to shift requirements in the natural environment so rapidly that one never gets the chance to focus on expected behavior” (p. 70).
6. Encourage employee ownership of their jobs by listening to employees
1. “Companies that fail to listen to their employees have a much more difficult time gaining their commitment and continuous improvement than do companies that involve their employees in structuring personal objectives around the bigger, corporate objectives’ (p. 71).
2. Improving skills
1. Create focused learning objectives
1. “One of the best ways I know to inhibit the transfer of learning is to use learning objectives that (1) are written from the instructor’s, not the learner’s, point of view, (2) are so specific that they sound odd, and (3) do not mirror the exact tasks required by a job” (p 71).
2. Bad objectives
1. Describe teaching methods not learning outcomes
2. Example: “’Introduce learners to the concept of financial analysis through the use of ratios.’” (p. 71)
3. Good objectives
1. Describe what the learner can do after (as a result of) the learning experience
2. Are specific in terms of the exact tasks to be performed
2. Identify correct level of cognitive domain for objectives and focus teaching on that level
1. If want learners to apply learning or create as a result of learning then that is where the bulk of the teaching should be, rather than on just collecting knowledge about the subject
3. Recognizes the danger of “too many cooks in the kitchen”
4. Implement training programs on whole groups/units/departments rather than individual basis
1. “You only have to know a little about social psychology to predict that we would rather fit into our social work group … than apply new learning by ourselves. Thus, program planners would be far wiser to use the entire work unit, rather than the individual employee, as the unit of change” (p. 73).
5. Integrate training into the everyday workplace
3. Establishing rewards
1. Reinforce new skills/behaviors
1. Supervisor is the key to this
1. “in multilayered complex organizations transfer of skills requires total vertical integration where one succeeding management level reinforces the behaviors of subordinate levels. The best way to ensure failure is to start at the lowest level rather than at the top and work down” (p. 74).
2. Don’t delay implementation of training
3. Match financial rewards with new skills obtained
4. Don’t make employees wait for their reward
3. These companies reduced the # of classroom hours because the learning takes place in the work setting.

Specific Recommendations for Increasing Learning Transfer

• “Use imaging skills to develop clear pictures of ideal behaviors” (p. 75).
• “Focus on what participants in an educational activity should be able to do better after their attendance” (p. 75).
• “Allow time for discussion by participants on how a particular educational experience links to their world” (p. 75).
• “Break down complex functions into simpler components or tasks” (p. 75).
• “Be as specific as you need to be so that others see the same behaviors as you when you describe them” (p. 76).
• “err on the side of being too specific rather than too general” (p. 76)
• “Demonstrate to participants how what they learn today and apply tomorrow can lead to the attainment of their larger goals” (p. 76).
• “Use action verbs to describe required behaviors” (p. 76).
• “Tie programs to specific tasks that participants will do after they return to their natural environments” (p. 76).
• “Focus on the next three months” (p. 76)
• Make sure expectations are doable.
• Teach to “expectations that are not likely to change in the short term” (p. 77)
• Encourage participants to help set expectations and/or adapt objectives to their individual situations.
• State objectives in plain, everyday language.
• “Allow time for application in the learning environment with plenty of feedback and reinforcement” (p. 78).
• Teach in multiple ways.
• Practice adapting the learning to various specific situations
• Work toward changing the larger group/unit, not the individual.
• “Emphasize the informal, natural network of learning as much as possible” (p. 78).
• “Encourage participants to apply new skills as soon as possible” (p. 79).
• Reward appropriately (no chocolate cake for successful dieting)

Great Quotes

• “For most people, learning is only a means to an end” (p. 68)
• “For most people, learning is only a means to an end. Effective educators understand this, and they design programs that show how learning can be applied, or transferred, from an “unnatural” classroom setting or training session to the actual setting where the learner works.” (p. 68)
• “Great companies make the transfer of learning almost seamless because the work environment and the learning environment are one and the same. … For every employee, they answer three questions clearly:
  
  1. What am I supposed to do all day long?
  2. How can I get better at it?
  3. What will be my reward for doing my job right?” (p.68)
• “They have also created a supportive work environment where the employee and supervising manager work together to ensure that answers to the three questions listed here are never in doubt. (p. 68, emphasis mine)
• “I suspect that one of the greatest inhibiting factors to my own transfer of learning to the work world was that I spent hundreds of hours sitting in classrooms and libraries learning rather than doing” (p. 69).
• “one of the reasons that universities have had to scramble for funding in the last ten years is that many people no longer buy the myth that knowledge automatically leads to application” (p. 69).
• “I often find training programs are twice as long as they need to be, with too much time spent on knowledge and comprehension and too little time on application” (p. 72).
• “Courses that assume that participants will be able to apply new learning merely because they know and understand that new learning make an inferential leap that inhibits transfer. This leap is similar to the proposal that one can lose weight or quit smoking simply by understanding the negative effects of obesity or of carcinogens on the body” (p. 72).
• “As Rogers (1983) predicted years ago, in order to get a critical mass of change among many people, the first target group should be the influential few, the good communicators, and, I hasten to add, those who most likely do not require any training. … it is less successful if aimed at middle and late adopters than at those bold few who can influence the total group” (p. 73).
• “In the business environment, focus on well-written policies and procedures supplemented with job aids to form the basic foundation for learning job tasks, rather than on formal courses” (p. 79).
• “Encourage participants to apply new skills as soon as possible. Successful application is its own reward and will reinforce the learning” (p. 79).

References

• Sork, T. J. (2000). Planning educational programs. In A. L. Wilson & E. R. Hayes (Eds.), Handbook of adult and continuing education (New ed., pp. 171-190). San Francisco and Lanham, MD: Jossey Bass and the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education.