Human Factors has been around as long as Humans of course, but it is only in recent times that we as organisations started to focus on the importance of HF training.
To deliver Human Factors training – In fact to deliver any training to an adult audience brings with it the challenge of engaging with the audience.
Adults learn in a different way to kids and we have to ensure that we do in fact connect to them ( How can we do this?) – So to ask a direct and relevant question, in this way we can draw a person into the conversation.
We can also solicit opinion related to the current topic for example do you think a or b.
Can we provoke to involve interaction?
Well yes but how and what is reasonable ?
We should never try to embarrass, rather to gently draw out the student so we can try to see the subject matter from their point of view.
A consideration regarding HF training is that we are not “really” teaching people about XYZ rather we are sharing an understanding of what happens!
In other words – What goes wrong and why it goes wrong, so that we are able to build on this understanding to see the role and involvement of the individual as well as to see the opportunities for positive intervention.
So as we mentioned above successful HF training needs to be relevant to the individual, It also needs ideally to be “theory light” conversely we do need to get several messages across (what are these messages as instructors we are the message managers !) As instructors we should also understand fully the nature and importance of our messages and to use CFU (checking for understanding) process to ensure that the message is received.
As we try to motivate our group we will find that they are at different levels of understanding and engagement so it becomes an interesting challenge for the instructor to keep everyone on board
Understanding Job Roles and Backgrounds helps the process as it enables the sharing of relevant HF related stories (It is the stories that the student takes away so if we can share a story which has an embedded message through which we will hopefully achieve a positive transfer of information).
How often should we stop for breaks?
Actually this is more important than it may at first seem, because to engage with adults means to treat as people as adults – short breaks every hour (or so) works very well as long as there is disipline – After all we still need to get through the material. If we share our objectives and reach agreement with the group we will go some way to bridging the gap.
Sofema Aviation Services (www.sassofia.com) offer Training for Aviation Trainers both initial and recurrent for more details please visit the website or email office@sassofia.com
