T&D III 4 of 4: Understanding how practice helps learning

Explain how practice helps learning. Give examples of how this has helped you. Your response should be at least 250 words in length. You are required to use at least your textbook as source material for your response. All sources used, including the textbook, must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations.

Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
Define learning and learning outcomes.
Discuss the key aspects of each learning theory: reinforcement theory;
social learning theory; goal theory; expectancy theory, adult learning
theory, and information processing theory.
Explain the conditions that must be present for learning to occur.
Tell why self-efficacy is an important factor in learning.
Explain how the learning cycle relates to learning styles.
Describe how to select and prepare a training site.
Discuss generational differences and implications for the learning
environment.
Identify characteristics of good learning objectives.
Describe the contents of a design document and the features of an
effective lesson plan.
Written Lecture
As we continue our discussion on the training design process, emphasis must be placed on training that brings value to the organization by focusing on job performance. Performance is basically comprised of one's ability, motivation, and maturity. Motivation can be one of the most overlooked aspects of instructional strategy and possibly one of the most critical elements needed to meet the learners' needs. We find in many cases that trainees are being required to attend the class or attend in order to just pass a test in order to punch a ticket. Instructors must understand tools to achieve motivated learners.
Training management as with any other management process is a science and an art. Understanding motivation and how it relates to performance and learning is essential to any trainer. As with any science, theories apply. Theories are roadmaps to help us try to understand the complexities with learning and they can help us simplify, for example. John M. Keller defines four conditions that must be incorporated in any instructional design for a student to be motivated to learn. Keller's ARCS Model of Motivation, Attention, Relevancy, Confidence, and Satisfaction, when sequentially addressed and integrated, will encourage the students need to learn. Attention is the first and most important aspect of the ARCS model. Gaining and keeping the learner's attention and interest throughout the instruction is vital for the student to learn. To increase one's perception arousal, an instructor can use surprise, humor, incongruity, conflict, and participation strategies. Relevance asks the question, "What is in it for me?" Motivation and attention will not be maintained unless this question is answered. Benefits should be clearly stated. For example, for project management training, the benefit to users could be to make the user more productive or reduce their frustration by providing the user with a process that provides a logical approach to tackling a project. The whole idea of training is to make life a little bit easier for those that conduct projects, and that is what training should be all about.