You naturally review your progress as you move through the other steps of the process above. For example, during a flying lesson you may find you cannot recall a few items on the checklist. You are already reviewing your learning performance. It’s now up to you to decide why you could not remember those items, and go back to the steps that need work.
I recommend taking the review process one step further and formalize your lesson reviews. What do I mean by this? At the end of each lesson, within a few hours, write down all the areas that you feel you did well, and why. This is positive reinforcement. In addition, write down all the areas you feel need further work. This is a key use of the detailed review log we discussed above.
Once you’ve done this, you can then decide why these areas need work. Which step (or steps) of the Memletic Process do you need more time in? Do you need to try a new technique? Do you just need more reinforcing and repetition?
If possible, ask your instructor, coach or teacher what you do well, as well as what areas you may need to work on. This feedback improves your review. By formalizing the review process, you get much more value from each lesson.
Let’s now look at some specific points on formalizing your reviews. We cover when to do a review, what to include, how to mark and analyze issues, and how to turn issues to actions. Feel free to vary the depth you go to in your reviews, so don’t worry if this appears excessive for some training activities. Just pick up what you think is useful to you.
Write your review as soon as possible after you finish your lesson. If it’s relevant, write down as many points as you can while you debrief with your coach, trainer or instructor. If they don’t spend the time with you immediately after your lesson, consider finding another who will.
If you do make a mistake or error during a lesson, immediately take any actions to correct the mistake as needed. If it’s possible though, also make a note on something you can look at later. This helps you remember the mistake so you can add it to the review process. Use a particular symbol, for example ‘±’, to mark items you want to review (target) later. If you do something well, also make a note of this so you can capture and expand it later.
Another idea is to ask your coach, trainer or instructor to write down notes while you are training. You should be able to cover most review points between the both of you. Alternatively, you may want to ask someone else to make some notes. For example, if you are doing presentation training, ask a friend in the audience to take notes while you present. Give them some points to think about, such as speech rate, volume, pauses and pitch.
Lastly, if you use or keep notes as part of a task or activity, review those afterwards to trigger more items to consider or improve. Examples of these notes might include meeting notes, flight plans, score sheets, and plans.
I organize my reviews into two sections. One section is an overview, the other is a description of the outcomes. Let’s look at what I used during flight training as an example.
The overview summarizes the lesson. For example, it may include:
The outcomes consist of:
Once you have written all the points you can recall, go back over each one. Grade each issue according to its severity or its ability to affect your progress. For example, for activities involving some risk you might mark each one as follows:
Once you have done the first marking, go through at least the critical items on your list and review what led to the issue. Try to understand the underlying causes.
A good technique to help you discover underlying causes is the Five Whys technique. Ask “why did that happen” at least five times in a row, and write down the result. For example, if you were doing flight training and you accidentally taxied across an active runway without permission, the exercise could go like this:
Issue: “I taxied across an active runway without permission.”
Why? I forgot to ask for permission.
Why did you forget? Maybe because I was at the end of a long flight and I was just glad to get on the ground.
Why were you glad to get on the ground? The flight was busy and was stressful. I probably just relaxed too early.
Why was the flight stressful? I probably didn’t do enough planning, and I was tired.
Why didn’t you plan enough? I stayed out late the night before, and then slept in. I had to rush my plan.
Why were you tired? Same reason. I stayed out late the night before.
Feel free to keep going as long as you need to. Go back to previous answers to explore more. For example, you could start at “Why was the flight stressful” and look at other issues that arose.
Critical issues typically do not happen alone. They are the result of several related issues. The Five Whys technique is a simple way to help elicit some of those related issues.
Once you have analyzed your issues, you have some solid material to help prevent these issues from reoccurring. You can decide on the actions to take. Continuing from the example above, for critical issues consider perhaps five actions. For procedural issues try three. For general issues, one to two might be enough.
Be creative when coming up with potential actions. Again, in the example above, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion “don’t go out the night before.” Instead, look at all the points that came out of your “why” questions. There could be several actions from this example, such as:
Keep your “five whys” and “five actions” with your flight review notes for later reference. Capture these points into your detailed review log, and then move the important ones across to your summary log.
Memletics Manual » Process Chapter » eNquire » Lesson review
Next Page » Title
This material is © copyrighted and is licensed for personal use only. For use in educational and commercial institutions, please contact us at www.memletics.com.