Mental health articles

As mental health professionals know from their course work and experiences in human learning, many factors can facilitate participant learning:
Maximize motivation: Whenever possible, the consultant should strive to maximize the intrinsic motivation of the employees. However, extrinsic motivation (e.g., monetary rewards, recognition, praise, Continuing Education credits) can also be useful.
Motivation is maximized when the material to be learned is made meaningful to the learner. Meaningfulness is increased when learners are provided with an overview of the material at the beginning of training, and when the material is presented in a logical, well-organized manner.
Provide feedback: Feedback should be immediate and ongoing to be most effective.
Feedback enhances motivation and reduces future mistakes.
Foster overlearning: Too often, an individual will stop practicing a new skill immediately after learning to do it correctly. The new skill will be soon forgotten if it is
not practiced regularly (this is common for university students, who quickly forget the material they have just learned once an exam is over). Overlearning occurs when an individual practices a new skill or studies material beyond the point of mastery, which is useful for tasks that will be performed infrequently or will only
be used under stressful conditions.
Provide frequent opportunities for active practice: Active learning (having the
participants practice the new skills they are hoping to acquire) is more effective than passive learning (allowing the participants simply to watch or listen to the facilitator).
Whenever possible, the consultant should also have the participants practice the new skill at various times throughout the seminar. “Distributed” or “spaced” practice
is more likely to be effective in the long run than “massed” practice (trying to master the new skill in only one sitting). This is especially true for tasks involving motor skills and certain cognitive skills (e.g., memorization).
Emphasize the appropriate type of learning: “Whole” learning ( learning a task as a
complete entity) appears to be most effective for tasks consisting of highly interrelated
parts (e.g., driving a car). “Part ” learning ( learning parts of a task separately) is more effective for tasks that are highly complex or that consist of relatively independent
components. When dividing into parts, each part should cover a cohesive
and meaningful segment of the task.
For example, if a consultant were teaching interviewing skills, part learning
might involve training in microskills such as reflection, summarizing, and paraphrasing.
Whole learning might involve having a participant conduct an entire interview,
with feedback given afterward.
Promote transfer of learning: The entire purpose of conducting a training seminar is
to influence how the participants will later perform in the “real world.” Positive transfer results in improvements in on-the-job performance. It occurs when training and job situations are similar, when training includes exposure to relevant stimuli
(e.g., several types of problems that are likely to occur on the job), when training emphasizes general principles that can be applied to the job, and when the skills acquired
in training are subsequently reinforced on the job.

Tags: Mental health