As a LAWTE member and university lecturer, I often am asked about how I assess the learning of my students. It will take several Fruits of Education columns to answer this question because there are so many aspects to the reply. Let's start to delve into it.

Back in the last century, I lived in Maryland and established training courses in the Washington, DC, suburbs with Marc Willis, Roxanne Fox and others from the National Capitol Area Branch (NCAB) of AALAS. Some facility supervisors told me that their staff members were not passing the technician certification tests. I learned to ask them several questions in response: what have you been doing to set the expectations for your staff members? Do you inquire about what was presented when Marc or Roxanne spoke? Do you yourself look at the handouts provided? Are you sure that all staff members attended the AALAS certification classes? The point of these questions is that a supervisor needs to set a standard about training and follow-up. Using resources to educate a team member represents an investment, and managers should appreciate both the investment and its potential returns or ROI. As managers, we cannot simply tell a staff member—let's call him 'John'—to go get trained. With transparency, we must help John to know what the training objectives are, what it means to the animal facility, what can be shared with other staff, what the impact on the animals can be, what ethical and regulatory reasons are behind the training, what it might mean to his career advancement (in Maslow terms, intrinsic and extrinsic benefits) and what institutional resources have been brokered to make this all important training occur.

Clearly (get the pun!), that's a short list (get the sarcasm!). It may even be intimidating. This is understandable: a lot is at stake, and the cliché that 'money is tight' applies to education, too. There are not many dollars or Euros or pesos to spend on a class when purchasing animal feed is the greater priority. Yet, regulatory agencies are expecting lab animal facilities to define more clearly the skills and knowledge of staff working with lab animals. What can we do? The answer is another cliché: 'do more with less'. A part of that is to ensure that training is as effective as it can be. ROI is maximized. Resources, like vendors used for training, are utilized to the fullest. John should understand this, too. Facility administrators need to be transparent when it comes to training.

Now let me be clear. I believe it is short-sighted for management to say that there is no money to train staff members or to send personnel to conferences and no time for staff members to participate in training classes or to leave the facility room to attend a webinar in the break room. Such statements clearly imply that training is not so important. A more transparent approach would be to negotiate training expectations, perhaps by saying, “John, can you come in an hour earlier, get your work done quickly and attend the noontime training session? We are planning pizza, and we'll hand out CE certificates for the training files.” This could be a solution with compromise from both sides. The work gets done, John knows what is expected and there is documentation in training files when USDA or AAALAC comes to visit. A win-win.

Let me go back to the training I did with NCAB/AALAS. When the message about transparency in branch-sponsored training got around, there seemed to be an increase in participation and dedication to classes. An initial challenge to address AALAS test pass rates had been resolved. John was going to training and knew why he needed to go. The next step was to evaluate John's learning style, his strategies at taking tests, his understanding of both English and scientific vernacular and his motivation to learn. These concepts will be addressed in future columns on the Fruits of Education.

It's appropriate at this time to introduce two training friends: Dr. Malcolm Knowles, the father of andragogy or adult learning, and Ms. School Marm, the classroom disciplinarian. Dr. Knowles recognized that adults learn differently than children. Ms. Marm often taught kids with a yardstick in her hand, making learning a particularly painful process. Rather than a rap on the knuckles, Knowles would say that adult learners—our animal care staff, our IACUC members, our investigators—should be motivated by satisfaction of their own interests. That motivation may include pizza or doughnuts during a training session, but it should also be accompanied with the transparent expectations of what learning ultimately means for all parties in the vivarium.