Train-the-Trainer by DataHomeLab

4.2 How Aids Assist Learning

The human brain learns by sensory experience: by recording what we see, hear, touch and smell. The more senses that are involved in the learning situation, the better we tend to learn. Although language is the basis of instructional communication, hearing is only one of the senses. Simply saying something to a trainee is no guarantee that he will remember or understand it, let alone be able to apply it. The one common feature of learning, as defined in Theory of Learning, is VISUAL IMPACT, and this is particularly true in the practical environment of flying. The instructor should utilise Training Aids (TAs) on this basis in order to provide visual stimulation.

The way in which humans learn is very important, especially first impression (primacy), and therefore TAs used must be both effective and correct. They must create the right impression. The bigger the impact, the more effective the learning becomes.

To be really effective a training aid should involve more than one of the trainee's senses. We tend to remember what we see better than what we hear. Almost all training aids are visual to a degree, but no training aid is a substitute for seeing or doing the real thing. Whenever practical, the actual object or process should be used.

The three-line couplet is training-aids material's pedagogical thesis in its most compressed form. It is a folk version of the multi-sense argument made formally in cognitive learning theory: passive auditory exposure produces the weakest retention, visual exposure produces stronger encoding, and active doing produces understanding (the trainee can not only recall but apply). The instructor's choice of training aid should escalate up this scale wherever the lesson allows: where a verbal explanation will do, use words; where a visual will do better, add an aid; where the trainee can practise the actual task, prefer the practice over any aid that merely depicts it.

4.2.1 When to Use Aids

Training aids should be used at all stages of the learning process. When-to-use-aids guidance lists three stages explicitly, each with a different purpose for the aid:

To prepare the student

A simple slide, chart or poster can stimulate interest, give or review background knowledge.

The preparatory aid is a hook. Its job is to bring the trainee's attention to the topic and to surface what they already know about it (the prior knowledge the new material will attach to). A schematic of the system shown before any explanation lets the trainee orient themselves and prompts the questions they did not know they had. A poster summarising the previous lesson works the same way: it puts the trainee back into the mental space the new lesson will build on.

In the learning situation itself

A range of aids can be used to emphasise key points, show important relationships, explain complex material, retain interest etc. However the learning experience should not involve over-elaborate use of TAs as senses can be overwhelmed with the too much information.

The "however" is operationally important. Aid use is not monotonic: more is not better. Once the trainee's working memory is saturated, adding a further aid does not increase comprehension; it competes for attention with the aid already in front of them. The instructor's discipline is to choose the one aid that does the most work for each teaching point, not to layer slide on top of model on top of handout.

To reinforce what he has learnt

Use a slide, chart or poster summarising the material.

The reinforcing aid is the symmetric bookend to the preparatory one. Its job is to consolidate: to give the trainee a single image they can carry away as the recall cue for everything that was discussed. A summary slide, a printed checklist, or a final diagram on the whiteboard serves this purpose.

4.2.2 Selecting Aids

The main consideration in selecting a training aid is: will it help make the teaching point better than you can on your own? If it does not, it will be a waste of time and effort.

The nine-question selection checklist

Before making or using an aid ask yourself:

  • Is it necessary?
  • Will it help the student?
  • Does it involve more than one sense?
  • Is it accurate?
  • Is it simple?
  • Is it manageable?
  • Is it durable?
  • Is it portable?
  • Is it interesting?

The nine questions are the operational gate. An aid that fails any one of them is suspect; an aid that fails several should be rejected and the lesson redesigned around either a different aid or no aid at all. Each question targets a distinct failure mode:

  • Necessity rejects decorative aids: if the lesson runs without it, the aid does not earn its place.
  • Help the student is the trainee-centred filter; an aid that helps the instructor (a slide that prompts the instructor's notes) but not the trainee fails the test.
  • More than one sense echoes the visual-plus-auditory rule above; the multi-sense aid outperforms the single-sense one.
  • Accuracy is non-negotiable in a technical training environment; an aid containing an error is worse than no aid at all because the error is reinforced by the visual.
  • Simplicity rejects the overloaded diagram: an aid the trainee has to spend effort decoding consumes the working-memory budget that should be spent on the underlying concept.
  • Manageability is the practical filter: an aid that takes the instructor ten minutes to set up loses ten minutes of teaching time.
  • Durability matters for any aid the training organisation expects to use repeatedly; a fragile aid that survives one course is a sunk cost.
  • Portability matters when the instructor moves between rooms, between bases, or between aircraft types.
  • Interest is the engagement filter: an accurate, simple, durable aid that bores the trainee fails to deliver the impact this section identifies as the precondition for learning.

Knowledge versus skills: which senses to recruit

The two-couplet rule maps the KSA distinction onto the sensory channels the aid should engage. Knowledge content (concepts, facts, relationships, rationale) lands through visual and auditory channels: an annotated diagram, a structured explanation, a worked example. Skill content (procedures, manipulations, motor sequences) lands only when the trainee performs the action: simulator practice, mock-up handling, hands-on operation of the actual hardware. The aid for a knowledge lesson is a slide or a board sketch; the aid for a skill lesson is the simulator or the mock-up. An instructor who tries to teach a skill with a slide deck has selected the wrong aid for the channel the skill is acquired through.

This is the operational reason for the 4.1 Introduction line about the "actual object or process" being preferred wherever practical, and for the Models emphasis in 4.3 Techniques for Using the More Common Training Aids. The closer the aid sits to the real task, the more sensory channels it engages, and the better skill transfer becomes.

How this section connects to the rest of training aids

The selection criteria above determine which subsection of 4.3 Techniques for Using the More Common Training Aids applies to a given lesson:

The selection logic does not stop at the planning stage. An instructor who finds halfway through a lesson that the chosen aid is not landing should drop it and reach for an alternative. The whiteboard sits permanently in the briefing room precisely so that this fallback is always available: when the projector fails, when the slide deck turns out to be misaligned with the trainees' actual prior knowledge, or when the conversation has moved off the prepared track, the instructor reverts to the whiteboard and rebuilds the explanation in real time.

Connections

  • 4.1 Introduction. The training-aids opener that defines what counts as a training aid and sets the "aid is not the lesson" rule this section operationalises.
  • 4.3 Techniques for Using the More Common Training Aids. The per-aid technique tips that this section's selection criteria point toward.
  • 4.4 Uncontrolled Note Taking. The trainee-side counterpart to instructor-led aids; relevant when the lesson uses the lecture technique.
  • 4.5 Controlled Note Taking. The instructor-led note capture that is the natural reinforcing aid for the When to Use Aids stage above.
  • 2.1 Introduction. The "Theory of Learning" the visual-impact and primacy claims here are drawn from.
  • KSA. The knowledge / skills / attitudes triad the senses-mapping rule applies to.
  • 6.2 Briefing Aids. The pre-session briefing application of these selection criteria.