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#42: How safety is made
85 Plays6 years ago
Podcast series host Jill James speaks with two safety birds of a different feather, Jana and John. Each are Master’s-level instructional designers, with decades of experience developing safety training right on the evolving technology curve. Grabbing and holding attention is an art—anyone who leads training knows this. Often, it is poorly done (raise your hand if you’ve sat through to boring training). There are no two better-qualified individuals to speak about the science of effective audience engagement. John and Jana have developed safety content for every medium and mode of delivery since the 90’s. Listen to this episode to learn all about how memorable safety training experiences are created (it takes a village of really bright people).
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Transcript
Introduction: Meet Jill, Jana, and John
00:00:11
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by Vivid Learning Systems and the Health and Safety Institute, episode number 42. My name is Jill James, Vivid's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Jana Humphries, who is a Director of Learning Solutions, and John Davis, who is a Senior Instructional Designer and Project Manager. Both Jana and John work at Vivid Learning Systems.
Connection with Vivid Learning Systems
00:00:33
Speaker
Now, if you think Vivid Learning Systems sounds familiar, it is, because I said it just a moment ago. Vivid sponsors this podcast, and I work for Vivid as well, which makes Jana and John and I co-workers. So what does that mean? Does that mean that this episode is going to be one long infomercial or a shameless plug for Vivid? Or is it an indication that I'm running out of podcast guests?
00:00:59
Speaker
No, neither of those are true. So let's get that out of the way right
Becoming Accidental Safety Pros
00:01:03
Speaker
away. The reason that I asked Jana and John to be guests is because it occurred to me as we've been working together over the last number of years that they too have become accidental safety pros in their work. Yet neither one of them could have seen that coming when they set out on their career paths. Safety has indeed become an ancillary part of their day jobs or their first professions.
Modern Safety Training Methods
00:01:28
Speaker
So if you're not familiar with what Vivid Learning Systems does, one of the things that we provide is compliance-based online workplace safety training. And know that doesn't mean safety videos or video training or other outdated training methods from the 20th century, but we'll let Jenna and John explain online learning and instructional design among all of the other things that they do
00:01:56
Speaker
and how their work in this field at Vivid has turned them into one of our fellow accidental safety pros. So, Jana and John, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you.
Jana's Career Journey
00:02:09
Speaker
So, Jana, let's start with you. Could you share your story? What was your winding career path that led you to safety?
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, I started when I was a kid. I wanted to be a teacher. I always did, and I used to play with my friends. I'm sure I was a real fun kid to play with, and we would play school, and I'd make little pretend math worksheets, and I was the teacher, and just always thought I would be a teacher when I was kids.
00:02:38
Speaker
And when I was in high school, I discovered broadcasting and film and radio television production. And I just switched my passions and moved into that field and decided to get my undergraduate degree in broadcast communications.
00:02:58
Speaker
And in the last, I think it was the last semester of getting that degree, I took a course in educational television. And I learned about instructional technology and educational technology in that course. And I went, huh, I always wanted to be a teacher. And now I fell in love with broadcasting and film production. I wonder if this might be a way I could merge those two passions that I have.
00:03:24
Speaker
and put them together. And so, of course, I was done getting, you know, basically done getting my undergraduate degree. So it's like, well, I guess I have to keep going to school. And so I researched programs and found a master's in education program that I was interested in. And all of this was taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up here. My undergraduate graduate was at San Francisco State University. And my master's that I ended up getting an education
00:03:52
Speaker
with an emphasis in instructional technology is from San Jose State University.
Finding Passion in Safety Training
00:03:57
Speaker
So I started my career in Silicon Valley, was fortunate to work for most of my career for a consulting company or actually a couple of consulting companies where we worked with other companies, most of them in Silicon Valley to put together training programs. So a lot of what I did in my career was
00:04:21
Speaker
developing a program to help end users use a new system. So they're going to get some new finance system. And so they had to have special training for each of those end users. And although I enjoyed it and was able to use some of that broadcasting background and develop training programs that were effective, it was always about what we called speed to adoption. How fast can these end users learn the system?
00:04:51
Speaker
And I started realizing I just didn't have a lot of passion in that. It's important that people learn a system fast and not be frustrated, but I was starting to, I think, get tired of it. And one of the customers we had was a medical device company. And part of the program that we developed for this company made me realize that this company
00:05:15
Speaker
was developing devices that save lives. And I realized I had more passion for that project.
John's Path to Vivid
00:05:22
Speaker
And I started thinking, you know, maybe it's time for me to find something new. Maybe there's a medical device company I should work for. There's a lot of biotech here in the Bay Area. Maybe I should look into that.
00:05:35
Speaker
And about that time, an old colleague reached out to me and said, hey, I'm working for Vivid Learning Systems, and I'm going to retire pretty soon. And I think you should have my job. Wow. Yeah. And I'm here in California, and she's up there in Washington. And I said, huh.
00:05:54
Speaker
I don't think so. My daughter's about to start high school. I really don't want to uproot her. And she said, well, I'm not so sure you have to move. Let's talk about this. So I started exploring a little bit more and I discovered the content that Vivid Learning Systems developed as safety content.
00:06:11
Speaker
And I'm a little embarrassed to say this now, but I will tell you, my first reaction was, wow, that's really boring. Another version of the financial institutions you're working for maybe in your head initially. Yeah, like, oh, I'm going to get really tired of this.
00:06:27
Speaker
And then I was like, really? People need training on like how to use a ladder? I've used ladders all my life. Well, maybe not all my life. Probably not well, Jenna, up until you started working. Well, I didn't have three points of contact. I know that. See, you are an accidental safety pro. Okay. So there was a moment where I kind of had this, I don't know, epiphany sounds a little too dramatic, but I just thought, wow, it's yeah, it is kind of boring. And
00:06:57
Speaker
maybe there's something we could do to make the training not so boring and make it more interesting. And maybe this is a job I should pursue. So fast forward eight years later and I've been with Vivid since then.
00:07:15
Speaker
You know, we're always striving for, you know, making that content not so boring and making it as engaging and memorable as possible. So anyway, it's been a great path to get here. And anyway, I enjoy my job every single day. And did you find that, you know, you said when you were with a medical device company, you know, you were doing something finally that sparked something. You knew that it was making a difference. Did you eventually find that in safety too?
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, because the mission that we have at Vivid and the mission that we have within the team that both John and I are a part of is to make memorable content.
00:07:52
Speaker
But we know the end goal is to help save lives in high risk work environments. And we really, I mean, I believe that we're making a difference in doing that with the content that we make. Awesome. Thank you for sharing your story. So John, what about you? What's what's your story? How did how did you accidentally get into this field?
00:08:13
Speaker
Well, I started out with a passion for creating videos back before I went into college. I knew I wanted to do something with video production. I liked telling stories on camera. I liked the elements of humor or suspense, everything that was possible. And so I thought I would
00:08:36
Speaker
go into that when I got into broadcast journalism. In fact, I see a lot of kind of uncanny similarities between Jana and myself and our career paths because I started in broadcast journalism and at the university you would be part of a team that would develop stories, produce stories. We had a little segment that we would run locally where you would be the news anchor
00:09:02
Speaker
But you would also edit the story, produce the story, write the script, contact who you're going to interview. You're kind of a very small team with one or two people. And as I kind of went through that program, I felt like maybe I could shift a little bit.
00:09:21
Speaker
have as much passion for doing news journalism, although it's not a dull moment, but I thought if we could get into maybe more of the educational side and not just information, you know, reporting facts. And so I found out about this program at my university in instructional technology to get a master's degree.
00:09:45
Speaker
And so while I was there, I had a chance to work in what was then called Distance Ed, where I had a program that was part-time job, and we would produce these videos for people that were remote from university, and you would basically produce a videotape.
00:10:05
Speaker
and send it to them in the mail and they would watch it and they would then have a weekly session with the professor where they could ask questions and so that's how I while I was in the program I had that job and I knew that you know the evolution of technology was going to keep going and
00:10:22
Speaker
So I figured that with the background in instructional technology, the tools and the technology continue to evolve, you know, they would just go continue to go hand in hand. And so I had a one of the former graduates of the program, one of the alumni's told me about the position here at vivid. And so I thought, well, that sounds like a,
00:10:45
Speaker
Washington, where's Washington? Where were you at the time? Oh this was in the Intermountain West in Utah. Okay. So you know the alumni would try to keep people informed about where there were opportunities and it was just for an internship. So I started and I did what instructional designers did and you know I had to meet certain criteria but that was really my introduction here at Vivid was to start as an intern.
00:11:15
Speaker
And how many years, how many years ago was that John?
00:11:19
Speaker
Well, that's been quite a while. I don't think I can even remember. So thank you for that, John, as the senior member of this podcast. And that's not anything to do with age. So you've, you know, the people who are listening right now are thinking, gosh, where are all these people? So Jana mentioned she was in the Bay Area and
00:11:46
Speaker
And John, you are at one of our offices in Washington. And as you all can hear from my Midwest accent, I'm smack dab in the middle of the country in the Midwest. And yet we're all coworkers. So I'm curious, you both found the field of instructional design and in similar ways.
00:12:10
Speaker
I'm wondering if for our audience who maybe hasn't heard the term instructional design before, if maybe you can share what that is or if there's some basic principles of how you do what it is that you do. Sure.
Instructional Design Principles
00:12:29
Speaker
There are several very common principles for instructional design and the ones that come to mind, top of mind,
00:12:40
Speaker
One is mainly just thinking about what your outcomes are gonna be. And I think of, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Covey, I just use the phrase begin with the end in mind of what you want people to be able to do or how you want them to behave. And with training, and especially with safety training, there's different layers of how you analyze that and figure out what you want to have happen. So with safety training, there's a behavioral outcome that you want
00:13:10
Speaker
That's that you want them to get home safely every single day. And in order to do that, they need to perform in a certain way. So you start thinking about performance objectives and you want them to perform by working safely and not injuring themselves. And so then you go down another level and you're like, well, so how are we going to make that happen? Well, they need to know things and they need to remember things that they're taught and they need to comprehend the risks
00:13:39
Speaker
And those become the learning objectives. And so if we roll that all up, we might teach someone about the importance of machine guards and hope that we teach it in a way that's memorable. And then from a performance perspective, when they're on the job, they remember, oh, I better put that guard on. And from a behavior perspective, it's because they, you know, they perform safely and they got home safely at the end of that day.
00:14:06
Speaker
Really the science of that behavior. Exactly. That you're trying to do. Yeah, great. Thank you. What else, Jenna? Well, you're also trying to figure out how you're going to measure that. So if we want these outcomes, how are we going to prove that they can do those things? And depending on what layer you're at or what type of training you're developing, this could be practice exercises that
00:14:31
Speaker
are in an e-learning program or if it's in a classroom program, it could be questions and answers or even a live demonstration that you can do something that you've been taught to do. That knowledge transfer piece. Yeah. Right? Okay. One that I think is always top of mind and probably where a lot of my passion comes from is having what you call a student-centered approach.
00:14:57
Speaker
always keeping the student top of mind, making content that grabs their attention, that's relevant to them, that they can relate to. They've got some context. It's not just a fact. There's some context to how this relates to their job. And, you know, that they're able to have some control of their learning that they, you know, can,
00:15:23
Speaker
explore content, have a moment to digest content. All of that has to do with having a student-centered approach. Yeah, go ahead. Were you finishing a thought? I was going to say that all of these systems, all of these thoughts come together in what we call a systematic approach. Almost all instructional design is going to follow some sort of systematic step-by-step process for how you're going to get through determining what those objectives are.
00:15:52
Speaker
And they've morphed and changed over the decades and some of the labels have changed. But the end goal is that you're always trying to make a program that will change behaviors in the most exciting and engaging way.
00:16:10
Speaker
So you just mentioned something interesting. You said decades, like decades people have been doing instructional design. And maybe, you know, before meeting you both, I didn't really know what an instructional designer was. And you've just mentioned that this is not necessarily a new field.
00:16:33
Speaker
What does that mean? Decades? Where else would have people seen instructional designers or what is that? How long has it been around? Well, it actually goes back to military from World War II. There were so many military personnel that needed to be trained and they needed to prove that they were ready to go out. They developed a systematic way to do training.
00:16:58
Speaker
And when the military training was so successful, psychologists sort of paid attention and said, hmm, I think there's a way that we can systematically design training so that we ensure that learning occurs. And so a bunch of learning theorists came out of that. And I think that's when programs started coming together in universities.
00:17:23
Speaker
You know, John was joking about them many years ago, but you know, these programs, you know, the one I went to was in the early, you know, I graduated in the early nineties. And so it's been around, you know, getting the programs. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I'm, I'm interested to hear feedback from listeners, if any safety pros out there also are instructional designers, if that was maybe something else they had in their background.
00:17:49
Speaker
because so many safety professionals do training and I'm wondering if as people are listening they're thinking oh I do that one thing or I do this thing or I didn't know that I was incorporating some of that stuff or oh crap maybe I maybe I needed to um so earlier
00:18:09
Speaker
You had mentioned that you use a systematic approach. So how do you both go about designing a course? Like what are the steps you take? And John, maybe this is one that you'd like to answer.
00:18:26
Speaker
Sure. So you have a basis for why you are creating this training, this outcome that you are trying to achieve. And in a lot of our cases, we have a regulatory agency that is making a requirement of people in whatever the industry might be, general industry or
00:18:48
Speaker
whatever that might be, you have to do something. You have to train workers. They have to work in a safe environment. And so there's a number of regulatory requirements that are produced with the goal of keeping people safe.
Designing a Course: Steps and Objectives
00:19:05
Speaker
But just publishing a document does not automatically achieve that outcome.
00:19:11
Speaker
We feel like we can produce this training that is makes it a lot more relatable. And so you have, okay, here's our requirement. It might be a regulatory standard or requirement. And so now we're going to try to dive a little deeper and determine what is it really relevant for our audience.
00:19:31
Speaker
And so it might only be parts of that. It might be all of it. That's really where you do some analysis at the beginning. And then you're going to create some objectives in the instructional design field or learning design. You need to be able to articulate what it is you're actually trying to accomplish.
00:19:51
Speaker
If it's too fuzzy, then your design is going to suffer as a result. Or if it's too narrow, you might be missing part of the picture. So that's really important at the beginning that you really define what it is you're trying to accomplish. Your learners may not even realize that's what you're doing, but as instructional designers, you need to have something you can measure against. And so that's what we call these learning objectives. You might have a
00:20:17
Speaker
A term at what was called a terminal objective or instructional goal that says this is our big goal right here at the end of this training You can do these things and then you have smaller Objectives more specific that are sometimes called enabling objectives that are along the way You're going to do these things that will lead to this outcome at the end. Mm-hmm
00:20:40
Speaker
So once you've got those defined, you're on a really good start, and then you need to decide, okay, how are we going to present or design the content into something that really flows, that's logical, that
00:20:56
Speaker
that is going to make sense. Again, like Jenna was saying, we want to put ourselves in the shoes of our learners. If this is something I'm just learning about as an instructional designer, does this make sense to me? Do I have holes in what I'm trying to communicate?
00:21:13
Speaker
And so a lot of times you'll start with in the safety world, you know, can you recognize the hazards of whatever the particular? Topic is and and how do you respond? How do you protect? What are the controls in place? I mean, there's a lot of you know similarities in the process, but not everyone is identical Of course you it's not just gonna be cookie cutter every time. I
00:21:35
Speaker
Another technique that we have found a lot of power in and to really make our training effective is the use of storytelling. And so we want to have a lot of scenarios where you have an environment that our learners really can relate to and
00:21:52
Speaker
People pay good money to go to movies and to be entertained and they follow these stories and and they want to know what happens and so that's just inherent with storytelling and so when we can intertwine those into training you start with a beginning what you call a
00:22:13
Speaker
we call a hook or a grabber where people are like, oh, I want to know what's going to happen. Is he going to spill that chemical or is she going to, you know, totally forget to put on gloves, whatever it might be to try to really pull people in. And then they hopefully are going to see how doing something or not doing something is going to impact the characters in this story.
00:22:39
Speaker
Interesting. Interesting. So you were talking about objectives kind of in the beginning, the, you know, the terminal objective or the main goal and then the enabling ones. So if I'm if I tell you tell me if I'm getting this right.
00:22:54
Speaker
So would like a terminal objective, could it be that we want people to know how to wear the respirator properly? Like the goal is you know how to put it on properly and along the way it would be like you have to have the right fit and you have to do these fit tests and you have to adjust it in this manner. Would those be kind of enabling objectives along the way to the end goal? Would that be an example?
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, that could be a good example. If you're looking at respirator use, you would have, again, depending on, you know, is this a two week course? Is this a 20 minute course? Yeah. Are you going to be able to have, you know, your instructional goal at the end? Maybe it's just how to, you know, properly wear or how to don it. Yeah. You know, if you're going to be spending the entire course on just how to don a mask, then that would be your
00:23:48
Speaker
terminal objective and then you're the Enabling would be even smaller about you know facial hair or you know how you sure yeah, you can you can dive as deep as as you need to and that's really where your your analysis will tell you that You know to to succeed to measure this this outcome properly they have to you know learners have to you know and that's really where you're working with
00:24:12
Speaker
a subject matter expert, which we'll get into here shortly, to define what is it that we're trying to accomplish here. If you're gonna be an airline pilot, then 20 minutes will not be adequate to learn your skill. But if you've already had a lot of experience,
00:24:30
Speaker
and this is just refresher training, then maybe you can spend a shorter amount of time on whatever that topic might be. Or if you've never donned a respirator before, well maybe you need a little more time to learn all the elements. You gotta know what a cartridge is. You need to know the various aspects just to be introduced to them.
00:24:47
Speaker
Right, right. So, I mean, this is comprehensive, and I'm guessing that it's not just one instructional designer or just one member of a team that does all of this. So, John, can you explain, like, who makes up a team to be able to produce a course? You mentioned the word subject matter expert a little bit ago, but who would be on a team?
00:25:13
Speaker
Sure. We have the instructional design project manager, which that's my title. And then you have a instructional designer. You have a subject matter expert, which is the acronym SME, or sometimes they're called SMEs. And then we have on our development team, a producer.
00:25:35
Speaker
And so we have various disciplines. So within our development team at Vivid, the instructional design project manner, instructional designer, and then a producer, which is really a media specialist. The titles can vary from location or company, but they're really the wizards that are good with graphics and audio and animation.
00:26:01
Speaker
And all this team together, once we've done this analysis, we are creating the first milestone in our process, which is called a blueprint. And so it's not just one person on the team saying, this is what I think we should do. It's really a collaborative approach. And the subject matter experts are very important in that approach. Fascinating.
00:26:24
Speaker
So, both you and John have mentioned instructional design project managers and instructional designers. How do you go about finding an instructional designer or what sorts of industries are people going to find people like you and John in and what are their backgrounds?
00:26:46
Speaker
Well, instructional designers are pretty much in every field. I think what it is is that our titles aren't necessarily consistent. And so what one organization may call it, a different organization might call it something different.
00:27:00
Speaker
We hear the words instructional design, a lot of times learning design, training. I've heard people refer to as performance consultants when they're instructional designers, educational consultants, educational technology. John mentioned multimedia before, so you can put that word in front of specialists or designers. Learning sciences sometimes is used.
00:27:23
Speaker
So it's a pretty large community. There's lots of LinkedIn groups. There's lots of organizations that focus in training and development with job boards and ways to find instructional designers if they're not readily available. But maybe not some of the smaller companies are going to have them, but most of the larger companies are going to have someone that's responsible.
00:27:48
Speaker
and has been trained in how to develop instruction. Yeah, interesting. And that's a good tip for our listeners as well, especially if you're working, like Janet just said, in a larger organization and you heard some of those job titles and you're thinking, hey, we've got somebody with that job title here. I didn't know that that's what they did or what their background is. And maybe this is someone I'd want to get to know that could help me with my job as a safety professional. So thank you for sharing that.
00:28:18
Speaker
So John, after you've got these objectives and you know what your topic is, how do you go about writing a course then? What's involved in that?
00:28:32
Speaker
Sure. So once we have got the analysis has been completed and we know what we're trying to accomplish and we've created this initial document called the blueprint that really is setting our outline for how we're going to approach things, how we're going to sequence the content and from there we go into what we call a storyboard.
00:28:57
Speaker
And so that could mean different things to different organizations.
Creating a Storyboard
00:29:03
Speaker
But at Vivid, that's really a document that contains everything that will be a part of the course. That's a narration script. That's going to be the screen text that will appear. It's a description of visuals.
00:29:20
Speaker
It's a description of interactions and practice activities. It's the test, you know, or the assessment, the post-assessment. All of those elements are included in the document. And then we, go ahead. No, I just, it's so many details I find this fascinating. Please continue.
00:29:44
Speaker
Right, so we have, so all these elements are going to come together and then it needs to, we have reviews, we have people that are going to be checking that yes, this is accurate. We have, one of those as I've mentioned is the subject matter expert.
00:30:00
Speaker
They are going to be not just reading text, you know, they're gonna be you know seeing some visuals and they they see Descript descriptions of how things are going to flow and how they're going to work and then we have technical reviews To make sure that you know, everything is not only accurate but also there's you know, no typos Misspellings, you know, it's ready to be published at the end
00:30:24
Speaker
Right, right. So is there an average amount of time it takes to produce a course or does that completely depend on the length of the course and the details in it and some of those other things that you talked about?
00:30:37
Speaker
Yes, it is heavily dependent. I mean, you can come up with some averages with the runtime of a course. It really matters on, you know, is this going to be very media rich? Is it going to be, you know, heavily immersive? Is this going to be?
00:30:56
Speaker
what we call page turners, which are not very exciting and don't have a lot of visual appeal. So that is going to really depend, you know, the less visual appeal you have, the less time has been put into it. Those are not going to take as long to produce. They won't be as memorable either. Yeah, makes sense. They're generally not going to be as effective for the end user.
00:31:21
Speaker
I always laugh that in e-learning or in online training, we don't want page turners. But when you're reading a book, you want a page turner, right? And different instructional design in a book version right now. That's right. If you're just clicking, you're not getting engaged. That's not what we're going for.
00:31:47
Speaker
Interesting. So now you both mentioned your formal education and instructional design and education, but how did you learn that safety piece? Like, how did that work for you both? John, maybe you start.
00:32:01
Speaker
Sure. So when I started with the company, it was immediately, this is some of the projects that we have going on right now with, I believe it was teaching employees about the various radiological hazards that they might encounter at a facility. And they were facility specific from
00:32:21
Speaker
What I recall and so like, okay, I need to kind of get into this as an instructional designer any topic that you're taking on you really Start to internalize it because you are living and breathing this topic for You know, however long the project might go. Yeah, you have to know it in order to teach it. That's a pretty
00:32:40
Speaker
fair assumption I think you can make of any teacher in any medium. You're exposed, I think, if you don't know what you're talking about pretty fast. So you have to get into the regulations, you have to try to get some practical experience from talking with others that have been in that environment, like our subject matter experts. So I can recall a time when learning about bloodborne pathogens, I believe it was,
00:33:07
Speaker
and reading through it and OSHA had a number that you could call and I'm sure this is still the case if you wanted to ask questions. And so I'm not an employer, I'm an instructional designer hoping to have some questions answered so I can be accurate. That was really kind of the beginning where we're forging these partnerships with subject matter experts. So now I don't call OSHA, we work with our subject matter experts because they already know that.
00:33:37
Speaker
But did it work when you called OSHA? Well, the person on the other end of the line was very polite, but he must have asked, are you just starting this job? Is this your first day on the job? Because I don't feel like you really have a handle on this yet. Well, I don't. That's why I'm calling you. And yes, I am an intern. Thank you for asking. That's awesome. But they did take your call. They did take the call. They did answer the question. But he could not restrain his commentary.
00:34:07
Speaker
So, so there you heard it from someone who's tried. OSHA is helpful, but apparently some of it comes with a little color commentary. That's great. Jenna, how about you? How did you, how did you learn safety? Well, since John had already navigated OSHA at the time I got here. You knew you weren't going to do that. Yeah. Well, I have to say, you know, he paved a lot of the, you know, the way for me. And, um, you know, there, when I got here, we already had a library of courses.
00:34:36
Speaker
We wanted to improve upon them, but we had a librarian. So I was able to learn a lot from going through our courses. And then once I realized, oh, there's this OSHA.gov, and I started exploring the regulations and understanding, oh, that's why we train that, I understand. So I started making that connection. I remember the day you did a presentation for the company and you pulled out your
00:34:58
Speaker
your big 1910 book and it had all these posted flags on it and he showed it to us on screen in the 1926 book next to it. I went, I wish someone had helped me make that connection a few years ago because it was just one of those I just didn't quite, it didn't click at first and I understood it at some point before you did that. Trust me, it takes a while for it to click with many of us. You're not alone.
00:35:22
Speaker
And it was probably one, not that John didn't tell me this, it's probably just, he probably did, it just didn't click. So I always tease it was through osmosis, but it's a lot of going through what we had in place. And then John mentioned our subject matter experts, they're amazing. And just like you talk about, we get you and we tell you one thing and you've got stories to tell of some incidents, some very sad story oftentimes, and our subject matter experts have them as well.
00:35:53
Speaker
And so you learn a lot just talking them it's fascinating sometimes you know we just get into these early conversations about we're going to develop a course we're trying to look for a story we need some examples we need some relevance and you know it's sometimes hard to
00:36:07
Speaker
stop them. We don't need that many. Those are some really great stories. But you learn a lot just talking to them. Right, right. So how do SMEs or subject matter experts, do they need training to help you develop an online safety training course? Or what makes a good subject matter expert if any of the safety professionals who are listening right now are thinking, hey, this sounds like something I'd like to do.
00:36:36
Speaker
You know, what, what makes a good one? And I probably should disclose, I am not an SME for our company. We all work together, but I have, I have other, other responsibilities within our company. And so you guys have your own bevy of SMEs. What, what makes a good one? Well, I think, you know, one of the key is that they're still working in the field. And so, you know,
00:36:59
Speaker
If they were a subject matter expert that we had here on staff, they would be a valuable person to have, but they're not daily getting new stories and new experiences and things to tell us to help us make our content relevant.
00:37:15
Speaker
a fantastic component of our subject matter experts that they actually are still out in the field. But in terms of training, if we don't explain what we're looking for, we're not going to get what we're looking for.
00:37:31
Speaker
You know, John mentioned it's more than them looking at the words that we're going to have on the screen or the words that the narrator is going to speak. They're helping us at story development to make sure that the, you know, what we're going to have in the story makes sense. It's relevant. The piece of equipment we're considering having in the scene makes sense. We've got the guard in the right place. You know, we'll give them little,
00:37:55
Speaker
images before we start animating things to make sure that the way we have the scene set up and staged is accurate. When you first start working with the subject matter expert, they tend to be more focused on the words and the narration and it takes a little training to say, no, no, I need you to really carefully look at that image. I remember one of our
00:38:17
Speaker
You know one of the courses that I was pretty early on here And you know we thought it was perfect, and we you know heard soon after putting it out there that our trucks didn't have The chalks on the truck initiative, and it was like one of those things like wow We thought we thought of everything we got the goggles we got the vest we got everything perfect We were focused on the character. I guess more than the equipment
00:38:38
Speaker
And so it's just, you know, it's a learning experience was for us as well. We need to make sure that's part of the checklist. You've looked at every piece of equipment. Everything is accurate. Every PPE element is correct and, you know, wearing, you know, the right way. And, you know, even it could be some drawn character, 3D or 2D character, but we're trying to make sure it's as accurate as it possibly can be.
00:39:00
Speaker
It takes, you know, some training back and forth of us understanding the words they're telling us and them trusting us that, you know, we're going to present the content in a way that students can digest it. So we sort of, you know, we bow to their expertise and then they bow to our instructional design expertise and it makes a really wonderful partnership.
00:39:21
Speaker
Hmm, wonderful. So what about the safety professionals who are listening and are thinking they want to develop their own online training? Is, is that something they can do? Yeah, certainly. Um, there's a lot of tools that are out there for developing online learning. Um, you know, I'd really suggest you stay away from just like the slide show presenter kind of programs that are out there because yeah, but there are some e-learning software programs that are out there.
00:39:51
Speaker
Um, that some of them are pretty easy to use. Um, the one, you know, caution I have with them is that there is an expectation that there's some thoughts, some analysis, some instructional design going on behind the scenes and that you know, a little bit about how to, um,
00:40:08
Speaker
group content in a way that will make sense. I always make a joke that just because I have Microsoft Word on my computer doesn't make me a novelist. I've seen some really good programs done by subject matter experts. I have. I've also seen some really bad ones. Some people have the skills to do it and some people don't. I say definitely try it.
00:40:32
Speaker
try it. And if you happen to have an instructional designer in your workplace, work with them. Yeah, yeah. So you've talked about off the shelf course development software, and you've used the term online learning. I imagine that things have changed quite a bit over the courses of both of your careers. Because when you when you started, neither one of you
00:40:58
Speaker
Online learning probably wasn't even in the vernacular and so I'm wondering could maybe John could you take us on a little a little tour of what's what training technology has been like maybe a little bit of a timeline journey for us.
00:41:15
Speaker
Sure, it is really intriguing to see how some technologies have been around a long time they have just changed and How they are presented the the concept is still the same and yeah what I'm thinking of is projectors so you have
00:41:33
Speaker
from the 1950s, 1960s, you have a projector that is projecting this image on the screen with an instructor who's walking through whatever's being taught at the moment. And so that's been around for quite some time. And that was with the small slides and the beep in between. That's evolved quite a bit since back then. But going back through the timeline,
00:42:02
Speaker
We had a lot of paper that's been reduced quite a bit in the 1970s. And by the way, OSHA came to be in 1970. And then as the march continued, we had in the early 1980s, the advent of
00:42:20
Speaker
VHS and so before you might have had a film and an actual you know slides now you've got a VHS tape you can pop in and A lot more portable and so that technology was around for you know throughout the 1980s and this you saw in 1983 the mid 80s really personal computers coming into the market being adapted by businesses and
00:42:49
Speaker
in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. And one big event, this is not necessarily a plug for Microsoft, but PowerPoint debuted in 1990. And so that instantly made a lot of presenters and is still widely used today.
00:43:06
Speaker
1994 was when CD-ROMs really became available. They were used as training mediums. Vivid had its first course or suite of courses on CD-ROM. And so that really kind of gave rise to or were replaced by DVDs.
00:43:30
Speaker
as a medium but still a disc that has to go into a computer tray or into a if you're showing a video on a large screen mm-hmm a DVD player you also have really starting to see computerized records from the you know mid 90s into the early 2000s the acronym LMS learning management system that did not used to be a thing prior to you know about around 2000 yeah saw something called course management system and
00:44:00
Speaker
And then the early 2000s, getting a little bit closer to this current century, we now had really the rise of online learning, e-learning, several terms that were coined to what do we call this thing that is now on the internet and it's not just cat videos and it's
00:44:19
Speaker
Not just you know movie reviews. It is actually educational Something that can be tracked and so you see in the late 2000s of 2008 2009 Where use the rise of social media and people can post about what they're learning or they can look at smaller pieces of instruction they can share what they're learning and
00:44:43
Speaker
You see now cloud-based software cloud-based LMS and then you see smartphones and mobile devices really Multiplying and so if you can imagine life without your smartphone that was prior to about 2005 or 2010 and now that really have just become just synonymous with online learning people are gonna want to know how
Training Trends: VR and AR
00:45:09
Speaker
Can I take this on my tablet? Can I take this on my phone? And so we're seeing in the last five or six years where we're migrating to mobile devices more and more. And really there's a few trends I could mention too while I'm on the subject is you've got the latest trends are really gravitating toward
00:45:31
Speaker
exciting technology like virtual reality, augmented reality, VR and AR are their acronyms. We see their use because you can put someone in an environment by just putting something over their eyes and now all of a sudden they think they're in the top of a building or they're driving a vehicle or they're in this other environment and it's becoming more and more widespread and really it's very exciting to see how companies can adapt that.
00:46:01
Speaker
Right, right. And so people who are listening, I'd invite you to think about what decade is your company in right now with training? You know, I mean, sometimes the answer might be 1990 or 95 or some of the places that John has been talking about. And thanks for sharing, you know, kind of what the trends are with virtual reality and augmented reality as well.
00:46:24
Speaker
I know just a week ago, Jana and I had an opportunity to experience virtual reality and be able to trial some training and see what that was like. And as we're keeping our finger on the pulse of trends and moving ahead, that was really interesting too.
00:46:44
Speaker
So, John, regardless of these different methods for training and what's evolved over the decades, safety professionals still have to combat that question from their employees. Why do we have to do this again?
Engaging Learners: Overcoming Fatigue
00:47:04
Speaker
not this again, safety again, and all of those things that all of us safety professionals get tired of hearing. So how does your work combat that for safety professionals? How does it help get around that frustration? Yeah. Right. I think the key is to engage the learners and
00:47:29
Speaker
help them see how this is important, how it's meaningful, how it really can make a difference. I think the attitude is, you know, it's, when you look at the science of instructional design, that is, you know, it's, if you don't have their buy-in at the beginning, it's very touched, excuse me, it's very tough.
00:47:49
Speaker
if you don't have their buy-in to reach them. They're not going to internalize anything. They're not going to say, yeah, that is important to me because they've already tuned you out. And that's true of classroom instruction. That's true of talking to a family member. If it's like, this is important, I need to listen up. And so that's how you try to use creativity. You try to really kind of
00:48:16
Speaker
in a creative way, remind them if they already know it. And that's another thing, I know this. I can't possibly learn anything. Well, there could be something they actually did not know that they thought they knew, or maybe it's approach from a different angle. The medium I think is important, but really good design is important. The technology is very helpful. It's very important, but really good design. They have to go together.
00:48:45
Speaker
To really get somebody involved right at the beginning, right? Right Interesting and and keep it fresh Exactly. Yeah. Yeah if you if you see the same thing even if it's really good after You know time and after you've seen a number of times you Like okay, wait a minute. I have seen this before right keeping it fresh. Yeah, I
00:49:07
Speaker
Yeah, right, right. So question for each of you, when you go about your daily normal home lives, does safety jump out at you?
Practical Impact of Safety Training
00:49:21
Speaker
Like, like the rest of us safety professionals now? Is it infiltrated how you live your lives and interact with your families? Yeah, it's kind of hard not to. I mean, I think
00:49:37
Speaker
My husband used to be a chef and I always think about it when we go out to dinner, it's really hard for him to turn it off. It's like, honey, could you just enjoy the dinner? And I do the same thing to him. So yeah, we're driving around and I might see a construction site and I'm looking at the sign to see what the PPE requirements are.
00:49:56
Speaker
I saw some people up on a scissor lift at the airport one day and I was kind of checking to see if it looked like they were doing it right. I don't pretend to know. I know all of the things that they're supposed to do, but I'm like checking to make sure. So yeah, it's pretty hard to turn it off.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yeah, and your eyes are just observing people's work too in what's going on around you. John, what about you? Oh, yes. I feel like we've succeeded when I remember something, whether I'm thinking about it per se or not. One of the videos in our bloodborne pathogens training was
00:50:34
Speaker
Showing a person pushing down this garbage into a container and a needle was in there and they get a needle stick and that's just so So memorable and I just like I cannot ever push garbage down with my hand. I just can't I won't and
00:50:50
Speaker
And so I'm like, hey, we succeeded, at least for me, that we don't want anyone to do that. And so our objective was to avoid needle sticks. And another objective, know how their blood-borne pathogens are transmitted well. Here in one short clip, it's memorable. And so I cannot push my hand into a garbage can because I don't want a needle stick, even if there's no chance of a needle being in there.
00:51:15
Speaker
I also, when I'm driving, there's some construction and I'm asking myself, are those cones properly placed apart? Is there sign up soon enough so you can slow down? That's just one of countless examples. Right, right, right. And you've done some food safety courses as well, right?
00:51:32
Speaker
Yes, right. I found myself thinking about how long that particular food has been above 41 degrees. And how long that food has been in the refrigerator because there are requirements that mandate how long, you know, because you don't want a foodborne illness.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a lot of modules I've developed that are still stuck in your head. Stuck in your head. They were memorable. Yeah, I feel like, hey, I've succeeded. I'm going to put on these safety glasses. I'm not going to take a shortcut here. I'm going to wear these earmuffs. I'm going to have three points of contact on this ladder. Yeah, a lot of it has stuck.
00:52:16
Speaker
Well, welcome to the family of safety, to both of you. We're happy to have you here and with us. Welcome to the inside of most of our heads. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Oh, man. And thank you both so much for sharing the science of your work. And I suspect that many of the people listening today are thinking
00:52:42
Speaker
Gosh, if I could only have one of these two with me the next time I try to deliver some training, how much easier this might be. So really, really appreciate you sharing your stories and thank you for what you do.
00:52:56
Speaker
Thank you for having us. We appreciate it. Thank you for spending your time listening today. More importantly, thank you for your contribution, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro Community Group on Facebook. If you aren't subscribed and you want to hear
00:53:22
Speaker
past or future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any podcast player that you'd like. You can also find all of our episodes at vividlearningsystems.com slash podcast. We would love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect to the show with more and more safety professionals like you and I.
00:53:43
Speaker
And if you have a suggestion for a guest, including if it's yourself, please contact me at social at vividlearningsystems.com. Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer. Until next time, thanks for listening.