The effectiveness of training or a class can vary based on every person because individuals can have different learning styles. For myself, I am a very hands-on learner and would prefer to watch someone a few times and then have them watch me for the remainder of the training, if that is an option.

I went to school back in 2014 to become a medical assistant and attended a trade school for this program. It was one of the best schooling experiences I have had throughout my education because it was so different than sitting in a classroom and reading chapters from a book. The first half of the program was “bookwork”, and the second half was our clinical period, however even during the bookwork half, we weren’t in a traditional classroom for every class. We did have times where we read chapters from books, but we also had educational games, interactive videos, guest speakers, and hand-on roleplay scenarios. We were larning by doing the actions of what we would be in the healthcare field.

Other trainings/classes that I have taken that were very beneficial have been the American Heart Association BLS training course and a few classes through OSU. What made these trainings/classes effective were the virtual simulations that accomplanied the coursework. I recently took a marketing class with OSU, and we had a backpack simulation every week where we learned different aspects of marketing. We had to design out backpacks based on what group of individuals we were targeting, had virtual employees walking us through the simulation and providing us feedback on our choices. and received instant results from our choices with the option to retry 2 additional times. By having the simualtion, I was able to have hands-on learning and received feedback based on my choices with explainations why my choices were positive of negative.

UPS recognized the need for hands-on training for the future of their company and opened a $34 million-dollar full-service pilot training center. They learned in focus groups that Gen Y employees wanted something simple, to be given hands-on training. They liked the interaction with the computer, but they didn’t like learning from it and by receiving hands-on training, they were able to better understand what was expected from them and the demands of driving for UPS.