Yes, what if they remember nothing from your event? “Meetings are often so overloaded with material that learning may be hurt more than it’s enhanced,” says Andrea Driessen, Chief Boredom Buster, No More Boring Meetings. (Read her article for seven ways to boost learning.) What’s worse than remembering nothing from the event? If attendees learned … [Read more…]
Learning: it is probably one of the most misunderstood and misapplied concepts today. Many of us assume learning results from attending a class. We believe that our brains are like sponges that just absorb whatever it hears or sees. We presume that learning is a byproduct of listening to a lecture. We’ve even given names … [Read more…]
How many conference speakers have you seen that don’t want attendees asking, answering, commenting or participating during their presentations? From the speaker’s point of view, the presentation seems to be moving along nicely as the content is covered. The room is silent except the speaker’s voice. And surely that means that the audience is attentively … [Read more…]
Dr. Russell Mumper, Vice Dean of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy at UNC Chapel Hill, decided to try the flipped classroom concept. He knew that with the explosion of information there was no way to teach his students everything. Instead he used his content to teach them how to become active, lifelong learners. He then … [Read more…]
The future conference is not about the environment, the furniture, the venue, the audio visual or the technology. The future conference is about increasing the paying attendee’s ROI. The future conference is about helping the attendee transfer and apply their conference learning to their job. Actually, the fundamental job of future conferences is threefold: To … [Read more…]
The research* shows that much of what we do in our conference education is actually counterproductive. (*See partial list of research and books at the end of Dangerous Assumptions Part 1 post.) We spend too much of our conference time on delivery of information. The web is a better information delivery model than our events. … [Read more…]
It’s a very dangerous assumption. We assume that if our speakers are talking, our attendees must be learning. We equate telling from the stage with audience education. Telling does not equal learning. We’ve placed a value on experts talking instead of a value on attendees’ learning. It’s backwards thinking and it’s one of our conference’s … [Read more…]
As adults, we are rather lazy learners. Much of what we hold as fact regarding learning is actually illusion. We waste a lot of effort, time and resources with common-sense accepted educational practices that are rooted in intuition, tradition and myth. The most effective learning strategies and education programming are counter-intuitive. We need to build … [Read more…]
Most keynotes fail at actually providing learning and retention. Sure, many keynotes are inspirational, motivational and provide an engaging story. And if that’s all we’re looking for from a high-paid professional speaker for a keynote, it works. However, when an organization pays $10,000-$75,000, or even a higher fee, for a 45- to 60-minute message, we … [Read more…]
Your conference is spreading the cult of myths, traditions and rituals. How so? What do you mean? You ask. Providing conference education is not as intuitive as it seems! Science shows that there is a right way and a wrong way to design, deliver and implement conference education. Unfortunately, most conferences ignore the science. Instead, … [Read more…]
