Made to measure: tailoring your teaching for different learners

January 10, 2024

Whether you're teaching in person or through an online platform, there are two big questions you need to think about (and a whole lot of smaller ones, too). The first is what you are going to teach—the specific content you want your learners to engage with. And while we’ve covered that in another post and webinar, the other, equally important question is how you want your learners to engage with the material. In a recent webinar, Communications Specialist Rick Duchalski sat down with CarriersEdge CEO Jane Jazrawy to dispel some of the misconceptions people have about learning in general, to talk about tailoring your teaching to meet your learners’ needs, and also emphasize the one (not so) secret ingredient that your program absolutely must have.

Misconception #1: Learning styles

When the idea of formal learning styles first came about, the idea was that people had specific ways they could and couldn’t learn (visual, auditory, etc.)—and that each person needed to be taught in the way that was appropriate for them. While later research showed that this was not the case (and that any one person can learn in a bunch of different ways), a lot of people still believe in them. “But the reality is that they’re better understood as guideposts for learning,” rather than something people are locked into, says Jazrawy. People may prefer to learn in certain ways (or maybe their brain works differently), but none of that means a person is limited to just one type of learning approach.

Still, you should try to teach in as many different ways as possible in order to catch a wide range of those preferences. When it comes to building online content, it should be presented in ways that let people see it, hear it, respond to it, and more. Even if you’re not hitting every single style every time, that can be okay—just because a person likes to learn in one way doesn't mean they can't learn in another. But by working in a variety of strategies, it’ll be accessible to more people.

Misconception #2: “In my day…”

The flip side of believing that people have non-negotiable, hard and fast learning styles is the belief that how the instructor learned the material years ago is just how it should be taught now. “Training,” as Jazrawy says “is an art, not a science.” And a big part of that art is being open to switching up your style if you see that your students (whether it’s all of them or just some of them) aren’t getting it. And responding to those signals means paying attention not just to whether they are getting questions right, but also to more subtle cues.

When you’re delivering in-person content, pay attention to what the students are saying, but also what they’re not saying—non-verbal cues like body posture, distractedness and more could signal that the content isn’t landing like you intended. A good instructor will be tuned into those cues, so be ready to change your approach to get the students back on track.

That may seem like it’s difficult to do with online content, but there’s still a way to do it. By building in knowledge checkpoints, mini quizzes and more in-depth assessments— as well as surveying your learners—you can get a sense of how well the material is being processed and how happy your students are with the program.

And any good training program will use a blend of online and in-person, which means that you’ll have a chance to follow up with students face-to-face, to make sure the online material is landing.

Misconception #3: My drivers only want short videos

There’s a strange myth that floats around the industry about how drivers like to learn online—‘they’ve gotta be short videos, that’s all they’ll tolerate’. And while some people have probably felt that way at some point, the reality is that this feeling is a response to something: bad content. In particular, long, drawn-out material that the driver has to sit through with no sense of how long it’s going to take, what they are supposed to learn and when it’s going to be done.

Whether in person or online, good material needs to have signposts built-in—signals that tell the student how long it’s expected to take, what the learning objectives are, and checkpoints to remind them how far they’ve come and how much there is to go. If you can do that, you’ll find that your learners are more tuned in and more willing to go on a longer journey with you because they aren’t spending valuable mental resources wondering how much energy they need to save up so they can make it to the end.

The not-so-secret ingredient

There's a fourth point that may seem a little obvious, but its value can’t be overstated: the material has to be quality content—not just a gloss of common knowledge or repetition of the regulations, but a deep dive into the kind of things drivers actually need to learn about. For all of the concerns over learning styles, building in signposts and meeting objectives (as well as being sensitive to student engagement), the thing that will render them all meaningless is if the content stinks. And although it applies to in- person training, it’s especially true of the online experience: “People get distracted by all sorts of bells and whistles in online training, but the most fundamental question you should ask is whether or not it’s good, quality content,” warns Jazrawy. And if the quality isn’t there, none of the rest of it matters.

But if it is, your training program (including both online and in-person components) can boost your drivers’ skills if it can (a) address different learning strategies, (b) meet learner expectations with appropriate signposts throughout, and (c) include follow-up practical training to make sure the learning sticks.