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7/15/11

I feel out of the loop after being in Vegas for a week! I wasn't sure how much I would miss while I was gone. Sam and James made some videos and continued working on training and manuals, but I was able to jump right back in with what they were working on.

The last few days we've been considering the challenges of training 4 people at a time vs. training 100 people at a time. This is something teachers think about all the time. We don't have 100 students, but we're teaching full classrooms with close to 30 students so we often can't do the same things that we would do with just 4. I've tried using methods of grouping and differentiated instruction so that they're learning in smaller groups and helping each other out. With some of these methods they can go at their own pace and are hopefully more comfortable asking questions. We talked about ways to improve Hy-Vee's large group training by having the trainees turn to their neighbor and take 2 minutes to write down their questions on a note card. The trainers could collect these notecards and have a great way to find out what questions they need to answer. This way no one will feel nervous in the large setting and not get their question asked or answered.
We also thought about ways to structure the day so that employees will be more likely to stay engaged. These are some of the same techniques we use in our own classrooms.

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