The Sound Of Silence

Last night I was musing over what is, why it is so, and what could be. This isn’t something out of the ordinary for me – I do it on a regular basis really. But this particular session was about a project I have been undertaking at work lately. We are rolling out a series of interactive webinars to our blue collar workforce as part of a company restructure. This entails some serious efforts on the part of our team. Webinars are new to everyone:

• our trainers – as subject matter experts (8 )
• our moderators – driving the technology (5)
• our learners – geographically dispersed with low digital literacy (2000+)

And everyone has been putting in a truly herculean effort to make this project the success that it is so far (224 sessions across varied subjects in 10 weeks).

Following that, I have been watching the progress of our trainers with much interest. My experience as a moderator, conversations, and observations prior to this project led to me believe that it is more difficult for a face to face trainer to cross the digital divide and train in a virtual space. In some respects the project has reinforced this idea. Why? Because trainers aren’t just learning to teach online, there are preconcevied ideas about teaching and learning that sometimes don’t translate to the online medium. It could even be said there are things which need to be unlearned.

The area my musing focussed upon was dealing with silence. I noticed in the debriefs of many of our trainers first webinars that I was commenting on the potential of the trainers to increase interaction, stating that not doing so results in a mere conveyence of information (Ellen at aLearning Strategies has some musings about why this is a bad idea). How was this potential being left unfullfilled? By asking questions and answering them themselves. By letting only one learner answer a question and not building discussion. By not allowing learners to correct each other. Basically by not taking all the opportunities available to have learners participate. Noticing that this was a pattern amongst first timers, I had to ask “why is this happening?” Two of my theories, based upon conversation and observation is as follows:

Nerves – Silence is uncomfortable. As a face to face trainer, you can supplement silence with body language, silence can be visually meaningful. As an online trainer, interaction and communication supplement body language. So faced with a short silence after asking a question the easiest way for a trainer to break the silence is to speak again. Unfortunately this leads to passive participants, who may be providing silence in a more true sense by not listening to the trainer’s efforts at “non-silence”. It is more brave to use the silence in another way that gets participants talking, when participants interact and join in the conversation, true silence is less likely, even if there are a few pauses for thought.

A shift in power – Trainers are comfortable in and used to a face to face environment. They can wield their power bestowed by their position as a trainer easily in this environment. They stand, they learners sit. The learner is subordinate to them (see Ira Shor’s Siberia). In webinars, the physicality of the trainer is not so present. In our set-up, they are listed on the screen amidst the participants – the equivalent of sitting with the learners in a certain respect. So how can a trainer reclaim their lost physical power? By talking. Lots. By answering your own questions to show that you are indeed the expect. Of course, this proves ineffectual, and once again creates true silence as learners opt to check their emails etc.

To the credit of our trainers, they have acted upon the feedback provided to them and continue to move from strength to strength – there is alot less “talking at” and alot more “talking with” going on these days. They are a credit to our organisation and an example of what good e-Learning can achieve. They have moved beyond “The Sound of Silence” Simon and Garfunkel sang in reference to our focus on ourselves and lack of communicatin and have translated their focus on the learner in the classroom to the online environment.