#GuildChat for 1/18/19: Teaching Rarely Used Skills

Our next #GuildChat takes place Friday, January 18th at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Our topic for this week’s chat is on Teaching Rarely Used Skills.

Do you know the Heimlich maneuver? How to perform CPR? What about the proper way to change a diaper or provide detailed information at the scene of an accident?   

It doesn’t happen often, but certain skills (in the form of procedures and processes) can be critical, even to the level of life and death; skills people need but rarely if ever have to use. Even in our work environments there are key tasks that people need to be able to perform quickly when a job aid or step-by-step just won’t do.

In this week’s #GuildChat suggested by Jennifer Murphy, we explore how to teach people rarely used skills. What are the methods that work best and the strategies to keep up motivation for those skills even when the audience knows they may never have to employ them.

Join us this Friday to hear from the community and bring your own stories and examples for others to learn from.

Prospective questions:

Q1 What are some examples of things you’ve been trained to do that you hope you NEVER have to do?
Q2 What can help you retain skills you rarely use, but still want to do competently when needed?
Q3 How does the approach to teaching rarely used skills differ from teaching skills for frequent use?
Q4 Where have you seen L&D efforts go wrong in teaching people about skills/knowledge they won’t need to use often?
Q5 The chance of something happening being very low can lead to low motivation to learn it. How can this best be address?
Q6 How do you measure whether someone has learned something when they might never have the opportunity to demonstrate they’ve learned it?
Q7 What are some ways to productively push back when a stakeholder asks for time-intensive training on skills that will only rarely be used?
Q8 How can technology facilitate the ability to train rarely used skills?

Missed this GuildChat? Don’t worry – you can still read through what happened on our Wakelet transcript of the chat!