2 Responses

1. It depends…
   …on what you are trying to achieve. Accelerated Learning is a tool, nothing more and as with all tools it needs to be appropriate to the task in hand.

   It’s excellent for stimulating new ideas and facilitating joined up working and teamwork. It would be of no use at all to teach IT system processes but excellent for developing programmers who were already familiar with a programming language and were needing to move to the next level. And so on…

   Me, I think when AL is used well it can be brilliant and my observation of this kind of training facilitated properly is that it’s highly effective.

2. What do you mean by AL.
   It depensd how you define AL I suppose.

   I’m aware of approaches and techniques that work very well in teaching processes and systems.

   Matrix 42 are one such organisation that offer train the trainer training in these kinds of accelerated learning techniques, and their course results on a formal qualification from the QCA. I believe they’ve done excellent work with Transco and its field engineers (lots of process stuff here).

   To find out more about AL, read Dave Meier’s excellent book, the Accelerated Learning Handbook.

   Colin Rose is a Brit and one of the world experts on AL. His books aren’t quite as readable in my opinion as the Meiers book.

   You can also look at some case studies at http://www.kaizen-training.com who run an excellent Brain Friendly Learning course and do so for many organisations. I must declare an interest here as I work with Kaizen.

   I recently left a ports operator after 18 mths as their training manager – just beginning to introduce AL techniques. These are being used mainly in ‘tool box’ talks to remind dockers and emphasise key safety messages. They are being well received from a traditionally skeptical workforce – they don’t even notice the AL element.

   Good luck,

   Martin