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So, you are advocating a "this will be good for you" style of learning. It ignores the desires of the audience.

Many people prefer so-called passive learning experiences. They don't want to be called on or forced to participate.

If you listen to your audiences, you will find ways to deliver educational experiences in ways they want, not the ways you think they should want.

Marsha -- Odd how we believe social learning should come naturally (based on our assumption that we all learn best with others) yet creating successful collaborative learning sessions seems to be such a struggle...

Seems to me we need to weigh the differing levels of experience our learners have and take that into consideration when we organize our sessions (for a longer explanation, please see my post "It Doesn't Have to Be That Hard" at the aLearning blog).

I'm interested in how others handle this as well.

I read the article on alternative presentations and liked some of the ideas.

But I think the real challenge trade associations have is stretching out the good buzz from a good meeting to more than a few days.

Marsha:

I'm on the same page with you.

I believe that associations need to offer a mix of professional development opportunities from passive listening to talking head experts, which some people want as David states, to those that are more collaborative in approach. I agree with you that attendees won't learn or retain much information from passive listening. Yet, if they want to "check out," be motivated, get entertained or feel like they are learning, we should let them. It's association leaders jobs to help people understand the benefits of active, collaborative engagement.

Education research and science proves that people learn best when they are actively involved and that passive listening to a sixty minute presenter. Our brains don't automatically record everything said in a presentation. That's not learning. Passive listening produces the lowest form of memory ROI. Just read Professor and Neuroscientist John Medina's Brain Rules, or any of Howard Gardner's education books, or Neuroscientist Dr. Marian C. Diamond's research.

Association leaders that think of only providing talking heads in all of their education efforts are grossly misinformed and ignoring the facts of education research and science. Would a trade association continue to give its members outdated industry information because their members "liked it?" Of course not.

Here's my rhetorical question: Where are the learning professionals in designing conferences, meetings and association education programs? Why aren't there more people like yourself and Ellen challenging association's to higher standards of education, collaborative learning and using good adult learning skills?

If you also read my Associations Now article on collaborative learning, you know I am an enthusiastic advocate for claiming the potential associations have to excel in this type of learning. I decided to offer this blog as my own intellectually honest assessment of where we are right now and why. I don't disagree with David Patt that many learners are more comfortable in a listening mode but I have to thank Jeff Hurt for helping make the case for why we need more collaborative learning. It's about becoming better learners and creators of the knowledge in our fields.

I've been working with a national association on strategies to take its professional development to the next level. The task force on this project, which also had several educator members, immediately grasped how powerful it would be to pursue more active forms of learning in their profession. But they recognized that not just the instructors and facilitators would have to learn how to support different approaches, the learners themselves would have to become more proficient in these modes. This was confirmed in several focus groups early in the project where people acknowledge they needed some help in identifying their own preferred learning styles and in improving their ability to be lifelong learners.

So Ellen I appreciate your practical tips on how to leverage the preferences and capabilities of the different experience levels within association learning experiences. We would probably create much better experiences if we acknowledged these differences as strengths in a complex world where there really isn't one right answer.

I have a lot of sympathy for Michael's lament about maintaining the buzz of a learning experience beyond a good meeting. With collaborative learning I think we have a better chance of transferring the learning into practice, especially if we are able to help people create a few relationships to help sustain the learning. I'm no longer as enthusiastic about the potential of sustaining online learning communities much beyond the learning experience because the energy does seem to die out with time. I have more modest expectations now about creating learning communities; if we can help 2 to 3 members keep talking with each other, comparing notes, and encouraging each other in small friendly ways, it's another connection that adds value for the member and strengthens the association.

Marsha, I look forward to more of this discussion.

At our last convention, we tried to keep a few relationships going strong. It appears to have worked, but I would like to communicate this buzz to the other participants in a way that makes them want to act on the plans and goals that they took away from the convention.

I think one way to approach collaborative learning is to make it a part of a project that is worked on during the learning, completed, and then used by members afterward. Like what the Color Marketing Group does at its meetings (I wrote about it a few years back: http://bit.ly/an2plH and it sounded like an amazing collaborative learning experience).

But yes, everyone would have to know ahead of time that's what would be happening, hopefully prepare for it and bring whatever it is they do best to the session, and be passionate about creating something together that will have meaning and use in their work after the fact.

That, to me, would be an ideal collaborative learning experience. Just not what we're used to or expect to find at most association conferences.

Thanks Sue for sharing the link to such an excellent example of an entire conference built around collaborative learning. This Color Marketing Group meeting is very outcomes-based and probably attracts a repeat audience in a way that more episodic experiences simply would not.

The story does raise a logistics question I hadn't considered: space requirements for hosting many smaller working group sessions. There's something not quite satisfactory about expecting teams to collaborate effectively at tables sandwiched side-by-side in a large ballroom. And the economics of the meeting industry, perhaps excepting conference centers, could make collaborative learning more expensive.

I read your post immediately after communicating with a colleague in another association to get a copy of a really useful tool he had shared at a recent conference. Theoretically we could consider ourselves competitors and be less inclined to share. But social capital is a wonderful thing in collaborative learning. I just sent him my own version building on my past work and incorporating some of his. Now the conference we both attended could have been constructed to help us better accomplish that same end with input from many more participants. But no one thought about it. This morning's experience reminds me there could be another barrier to truly open collaborative learning in many professional associtions and most all trade associations: believing the rewards from competition are greater than the value of collaboration.