Understanding How RMI Professionals Learn
Gifted RMI professionals often find themselves in teaching roles—whether leading training sessions, mentoring colleagues, or presenting to clients.
The following principles of adult education are designed to support and enhance that instruction, offering strategies that make learning more engaging, applicable, and effective. The content is organized around 11 key principles:
Designing Purpose-Driven Objectives—aligning instruction with workplace outcomes. Effective instruction begins with knowing what the learner should achieve. This anchors all other decisions.
Reinforcing Relevance—emphasizing real-world applications of learning. Once the objective is set, you help learners understand why it's important—connecting the content to real-world roles.
Activating Prior Knowledge—drawing on learners’ professional experiences. Before diving into new material, effective instructors tap into what learners already know.
Valuing Diversity—knowing your audience by recognizing individual backgrounds and learning preferences. Acknowledging the varied backgrounds and learning styles ensures inclusive, respectful instruction from the outset.
Focusing on Problem-Solving—centering instruction on real-world challenges by contextualizing the need. Adult learners engage best when solving real challenges—so frame the “what” with the “why now.”
Promoting Active Learning—incorporating experiential activities to foster engagement. With the problem established, active learning becomes the method for exploring and resolving it.
Using Storytelling—making the learning stick with relatable narratives that illustrate application. Storytelling can deepen engagement, especially when paired with active learning or case scenarios.
Chunking Content—managing complexity by structuring material into digestible, progressive segments. As content is delivered, chunking makes it more digestible and easier to scaffold for deeper understanding.
Progressing Through Bloom’s Taxonomy—deepening learning by guiding learners toward higher-order thinking. Advancing instruction into more complex cognitive tasks is essential for achieving mastery, and Bloom’s provides a deliberate framework for building that complexity in ways that strengthen understanding and support meaningful application.
Encouraging Reflection—consolidating understanding by incorporating opportunities for critical self-analysis. Structured reflection ensures learners process what they’ve learned and connect it to practice.
Fostering Collaboration—extending learning by building community and peer-to-peer learning. Collaboration not only reinforces knowledge but also invites new perspectives, solidifying learning through peer exchange.
Each principle offers practical ways to elevate instructional impact, whether in a classroom, a boardroom, or a virtual learning space. While each stands on its own, there is meaningful overlap among them; together, they form a flexible and interwoven foundation for creating learning experiences that resonate with adult learners and drive real-world outcomes across the RMI field.
RMI professionals need to know why they’re learning something, and better yet, how it relates to the work they do.
Framing Your Session: Setting Expectations Up Front
They thrive when instruction is pragmatic, significant, and relevant to their position.
For instance, an RMI instructor may begin their session with something like,
“Today, we'll explore the latest advancements in property risk assessment tools. By the end of this session, you'll be able to understand the new features of these tools, how they provide more accurate risk evaluations, and the way they can streamline your daily operations in property insurance."
Instructors may even double down on the real-world practicality of their instruction:
“As property insurance professionals, your goal is to accurately assess risks to provide the best coverage for your clients. These advanced tools are not just theoretical concepts; they're practical solutions that you can use to enhance your risk assessments, reduce claim times, and offer better policy options."
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To ensure the material resonates accordingly, RMI instructors should regularly reiterate relevancy, sometimes framed as takeaways, throughout the remainder of their session. This can be achieved with a variety of methods and modalities, including:
Case studies, such as analyzing a house fire to show how risk assessment tools could have identified potential risks more effectively.
Interactive demonstrations, where learners engage with the new tools as the instructor highlights their relevance to specific roles and responsibilities.
Frequent emphasis on and summaries of key points, revisiting how the tools enhance precision and efficiency in risk assessment while linking these benefits to learners’ daily tasks. This repetition helps reinforce the practical significance of the material and ensures it remains front-of-mind for participants as the session progresses.
Direct calls to action, such as prompting RMI professionals to identify one area of their risk assessment process that these tools could improve.
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An exemplar of effective instruction lies in how content is framed for maximum practicality. For example:
Good instruction: Providing an introduction to the RMI industry.
Better instruction: Demonstrating how risk exposure can be best explained to a client.
Building on this, it’s equally important to anchor instruction in the specific roles, responsibilities, and professional contexts of RMI professionals. For instance:
Good instruction: Exploring professional skills needed in the RMI industry.
Better instruction: Showing how claims adjusters can improve loss assessment form completion rates.
These distinctions illustrate the difference between theoretical knowledge and actionable insights. When instructors focus on the latter, they empower RMI professionals to enhance their client interactions and operational outcomes.
RMI professionals bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to their learning environment, and they are most motivated when they feel seen, respected, and valued.
Engaging Learners’ Prior Knowledge
This happens when instruction actively acknowledges and leverages their expertise. Skilled instructors do this by engaging RMI professionals’ prior knowledge—either explicitly through structured activities like pretests, quizzes, and self-reflection exercises (e.g., “Write the first three words that come to mind when you hear the word reinsurance.”) or implicitly through rhetorical strategies that resonate with learners' shared experiences.
Grounding Statements: Connecting to Shared Experiences
For instance, an instructor might begin a session with a grounding statement such as:
"Risk management and insurance is a field where change is constant, and even the most experienced professionals face evolving challenges. For example, consider the dynamics of underwriting in the context of emerging risks like cyber liability or climate-related exposures. Today, we’ll focus on how foundational principles can be adapted to navigate these complexities effectively and enhance your decision-making—whether it’s structuring policies, advising clients, or managing claims."
This approach acknowledges shared professional experiences while setting the stage for practical, targeted instruction. By framing the material around a common experience, it immediately connects the content to learners' professional realities and demonstrates respect for their expertise.
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To effectively bring prior knowledge into the learning process, instructors can employ several methods, including:
Anchoring content in shared experiences: For example, starting with, “Many of you have likely faced the challenge of analyzing a renewal proposal under tight deadlines. How do you approach prioritizing risks and assessing coverage gaps in such situations?” This invites learners to connect the content to a shared, situational experience that is common in their professional environment.
Encouraging reflection: Through short exercises such as“Identify one instance where a miscommunication about policy terms led to complications and describe how the situation was resolved.” This encourages deeper individual reflection about a personal or specific professional scenario, distinguishing it from shared group experiences.”
Tying instruction to practical, role-specific contexts: For example, “Imagine you are preparing a presentation for a prospective client who operates in a high-risk industry, such as construction. Your task is to explain how reinsurance supports the insurer’s ability to offer tailored coverage without overexposing the company to risk. What key points would you highlight, and how would you adapt your explanation to their industry-specific needs?” This scenario directly links the instructional content to a practical, role-specific task (client presentations) while tailoring it to a realistic professional challenge learners might encounter.
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By situating learning in such relevant and relatable contexts, instructors can foster a deeper engagement with the material. However, to truly capitalize on this engagement, it is equally important to differentiate between superficial acknowledgment of learners’ participation and meaningful activation of their expertise and experience:
Generic acknowledgment: Recognizing the number of webinar attendees—“We have 50 participants joining us today, which is fantastic!”
Meaningful activation: Framing the session by acknowledging a shared professional challenge, such as, “Many of you have experienced the intricacies of explaining reinsurance agreements to clients—let’s focus on simplifying those conversations using actionable strategies.”
Meaningful activation resonates more deeply because it validates learners’ expertise and ties the content to their lived experiences.
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While shared professional experiences and challenges can unify learners, it is equally important to acknowledge the wide range of individual backgrounds and perspectives within the RMI industry. Acknowledging this diversity ensures that instructional content resonates not only with the collective professional context but also with individual realities. RMI instructors should aim to create a learning environment where all participants feel their unique backgrounds are respected and their contributions are valued.
To achieve this, RMI instructors can employ strategies that recognize and celebrate diversity while still addressing universal themes. This dual focus not only validates individual experiences but also enriches the learning environment by fostering an inclusive and comprehensive approach to instruction.
Some examples:
Providing illustrative examples that reflect not only the community they serve but also the broader spectrum of demographics, such as race and ethnicity, socio-economic status, and geographic location.
Incorporating scenarios that allow learners to see their own professional contexts represented in the instruction. For example, an exercise might involve analyzing a case study from a geographically distant region or a sector learners are less familiar with, prompting them to draw parallels and contrasts with their own experiences.
Designing group activities that encourage collaboration among participants with diverse perspectives and experiences. For instance, a workshop might assign learners to mixed teams representing different roles within the RMI industry (e.g., underwriters, claims adjusters, brokers) to solve a complex problem, such as developing a risk management strategy for an emerging market. This approach allows participants to learn from one another’s expertise while fostering a deeper understanding of how diverse perspectives contribute to problem-solving and decision-making.
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Among the many dimensions of diversity, generational diversity is one of the easier types to acknowledge in RMI professionals. This is largely because society has established firm definitions of generational groups, and educational research has identified and prescribed distinct learning preferences for each. However, it is important to note that generational diversity is not necessarily the most critical aspect of diversity to address. It is highlighted here because it offers a useful framework for understanding broad trends in learning preferences and can help RMI instructors create more tailored and effective instruction.
The following offers general guidance on the learning preferences of generational subgroups, though these should be treated as broad generalizations rather than definitive rules of engagement:
Baby Boomers: Baby Boomers prefer instructors to be approachable experts (Lynch, 2015). They are accustomed to lecture-based instruction, as long as it incorporates dynamic elements like participation, reflection, and feedback (Panopto, 2017). This generation tends to be comfortable with theory and confident in their ability to apply theoretical concepts in practice.
Gen X-ers value instructors who act as guides, enabling them to discover outcomes and solutions after being introduced to scenarios, challenges, and tools (Lynch, 2015). While they appreciate some lecture, they prefer workshops and seminars, especially those focused on case studies (SeamsCloud, n.d.). This generation expects instruction to be explicitly framed as relevant to their work and professional challenges (Wiley University Services, 2022).
Millennials: Millennials see instructors as collaborative guides, viewing themselves as co-creators of learning opportunities (Lynch, 2015). Having grown up with easy access to information online, they prefer instruction that contextualizes facts, emphasizes relevance, and offers opportunities for application. Millennials thrive in environments that encourage consistent engagement and incorporate technology into the learning process (Wiley University Services, 2022).
Gen Z-ers: Gen Z learners see instructors as partners focused on building practical skills. Like Millennials, they understand that facts are readily available, but they prioritize learning experiences that are relevant, applicable, and career-focused. This generation favors active learning opportunities and content designed to directly support career advancement (Yob, 2023).
Of course, RMI professionals are rarely grouped by generation for learning purposes, although instruction targeted at specific job levels (e.g., entry-level, mid-level) may indirectly align with generational cohorts. Nonetheless, generational trends still provide useful context for understanding potential differences in learning preferences. More importantly, they highlight the need for diverse instructional approaches that address the varied knowledge, experiences, and learning styles of RMI professionals, even within a single session.
In unifying the acknowledgment of shared professional experiences with the recognition of individual learner diversity, and tailoring examples to diverse needs, RMI instructors can foster meaningful connections between existing expertise and new content. This dual approach not only deepens understanding but also enhances learners’ confidence in applying what they’ve learned to their professional responsibilities.
RMI professionals excel when learning is experiential and directly applicable.
Figure 1
Kirkpartick’s Four Levels of Evaluation
Note. From Train the Trainer, by the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, 2021, p. 6.13.
Experiential & Active Learning
They thrive on instruction that not only explains but also provides opportunities for learners to actively apply their knowledge. This approach not only reinforces theoretical concepts but also builds confidence in tackling real-world challenges.
Consider the difference between passive and active learning:
Good Instruction: Learners hear about the role of a data analyst in RMI.
Better Instruction: Learners analyze sample datasets, uncovering insights and mirroring the responsibilities of a data analyst.
In this example, the "good instruction" approach represents passive learning, where learners absorb information but do not directly engage with it. By contrast, the "better instruction" approach exemplifies active learning, where learners interact with the material through analysis and application. This shift from passive to active engagement transforms theoretical knowledge into practical understanding and skill development.
Similarly, role-playing scenarios offer a controlled, risk-free environment for learners to apply new concepts. An instructor might, for instance, guide participants through applying a risk assessment framework to a hypothetical construction project. This immersive approach allows learners to practice problem-solving and decision-making in situations closely aligned with their professional contexts.
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When logistical, regulatory, or other constraints make hands-on experiences impractical, instructors can leverage facilitated examples and modeling techniques to bridge the gap. These methods can still make theoretical concepts resonate by showing their practical relevance and application.
By thoughtfully presenting and breaking down relevant cases or scenarios, instructors can make the material resonate and ensure its relevance to learners’ professional roles. For example:
Good Instruction: Learners are introduced to a high-profile liability case in the construction industry and review its key points.
Better Instruction: The instructor models the process of analyzing the case by walking learners through each step—evaluating the failed risk assessment with relevant documents, discussing the resulting legal and financial repercussions, and exploring how alternative strategies could have mitigated the outcome. By observing this demonstration, learners gain a first-hand understanding of how they could replicate the analytical process step by step in their own projects—examining relevant documents, identifying gaps in risk assessments, and making informed decisions to mitigate potential liabilities.
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To enhance the effectiveness of any learning method, RMI instructors should aim to design instruction that aligns with established frameworks such as the Kirkpatrick Evaluative Model (see Figure 1).
PLACEMENT OF FIGURE 1
While Levels 3 and 4 (behavior change and organizational impact) may be challenging for contracted educators to assess, impactful learning can still be achieved through the first two levels:
Level 1 – Reaction: Solicit learner feedback to evaluate the relevance, engagement, and clarity of the instruction.
Level 2 – Learning: Incorporate knowledge checks, case studies, or application exercises to gauge learners’ understanding and ability to apply new concepts.
By prioritizing hands-on experiences wherever possible and leveraging demonstrations or detailed examples when necessary, RMI instructors can ensure their content is both engaging and practical. This structured approach empowers professionals to transform theoretical knowledge into actionable insights, enhancing both individual and organizational performance.
RMI professionals are driven by purposeful learning.
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RMI professionals approach learning with a clear focus on tangible goals. For them, education is a practical tool to bridge skill gaps, achieve professional milestones, or advance personal aspirations. This results-driven mindset drives them to seek training that directly impacts their career growth, workplace effectiveness, and professional visibility—often reflected in showcasing performance-aimed skills on platforms like LinkedIn.
Successful RMI educators recognize this and align their teaching strategies to these objectives by:
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Effective learning objectives go beyond abstract goals, offering learners a direct link between instruction and professional practice. They provide a clear roadmap for what learners will achieve and emphasize practical outcomes rather than theoretical understanding.
Good instruction: "By the end of this course, you will understand the principles of risk assessment for commercial properties."
Better instruction: “By the end of this course, you will be able to use XYZ software to evaluate commercial property risks, identify key vulnerabilities, and create actionable mitigation strategies tailored to client needs."
The “better instruction” example ensures learners can immediately see how their new knowledge translates into real-world skills they can apply directly to their roles. The objective:
Clearly outlines what learners will be able to do (evaluate risks, identify vulnerabilities, create strategies);
Emphasizes the use of a tool (XYZ software) that is relevant to the industry, ensuring learners see the immediate applicability of their new skills;
Aligns with professional advancement by focusing on deliverables valued by employers, such as tailored client solutions and operational efficiency.
Some instructors go a step further by tailoring their objectives to match job responsibilities and performance measures commonly identified on third-party sites like Indeed or LinkedIn. For example, they may emphasize learning advanced claims management techniques sought after by employers, such as AI-powered fraud detection or process automation tools to speed up claims processing. This alignment reinforces the connection between mastering identified skills and improving job performance, marketability, and career growth.
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As noted earlier, RMI professionals thrive when instruction is focused and pragmatic. To that end, each session or module should prioritize and explicitly identify skills that translate into workplace value.
For example, a session on risk modeling could break down into distinct chunks:
Mastering the technical aspects of using a new risk evaluation software.
Applying the software to real-world scenarios, such as assessing flood risks for residential properties.
Developing client-ready reports based on software-generated insights, tailored to industry standards.
Each chunk builds toward the ultimate goal of equipping learners with the practical expertise needed to excel in their roles and demonstrate performance-oriented outcomes.
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RMI professionals engage best with material that mirrors the challenges and opportunities they encounter on the job. Instructors can use techniques like the following to ensure their teaching resonates:
Analyze a real-life scenario where inadequate risk assessment led to significant client losses. They could then identify where better tools or methods could have improved outcomes.
Work with mock client data to create a risk profile, make recommendations, and present findings using industry-standard tools, simulating professional tasks.
By grounding instruction in realistic challenges, educators help learners draw clear connections between training and day-to-day responsibilities.
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Highlighting practical applications at every stage ensures learners stay connected to the material. Instructors can use techniques like the following to reinforce relevance and encourage engagement:
Emphasize how key concepts and strategies directly contribute to organizational success and client satisfaction (e.g., accurate claims adjustment reduces costs, enhances client satisfaction, and improves efficiency).
Encourage learners to apply new knowledge to real or hypothetical workplace challenges, promoting practical integration into their roles (e.g., identify a workplace problem and outline solutions using newly acquired skills or tools).
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RMI professionals value instruction that supports both immediate job performance and long-term growth. Effective teaching bridges technical know-how with strategies for professional advancement. For instance:
Good instruction: Explaining basic underwriting principles.
Better instruction: Sharing techniques for creating underwriting proposals that gain client trust and align with organizational priorities.
By aligning learning to both operational and aspirational goals, educators help RMI professionals connect their training to meaningful career outcomes. Reinforcing the career implications of newly acquired skills—such as how they enhance job performance and marketability—ensures that learners see education not as an abstract exercise but as a direct pathway to professional success.
RMI professionals need to know why they’re learning something, and better yet, how it relates to the work they do.
They thrive when instruction is pragmatic, significant and relevant to their position.
For instance, an RMI instructor may begin their session with something like, “Today, we'll explore the latest advancements in property risk assessment tools. By the end of this session, you'll be able to understand the new features of these tools, how they provide more accurate risk evaluations, and the way they can streamline your daily operations in property insurance." Instructors may even double down on the real-world applicability of their instruction: “As property insurance professionals, your goal is to accurately assess risks to provide the best coverage for your clients. These advanced tools are not just theoretical concepts; they're practical solutions that you can use to enhance your risk assessments, reduce claim times, and offer better policy options."
After, RMI instructors should regularly reiterate relevancy, sometimes framed as takeaways, throughout the remainder of their session. This could be done through case studies (e.g., an overview of a fire incident and how the risk assessment tools could have helped identify potential risks more effectively) and interactive demonstrations (e.g., learners are given opportunities to work with the new tools with the instructor explaining how each can be applied to their specific roles and responsibilities), by summarizing key points (e.g., reiterating how new tools can make risk assessment more precise and efficient), and with direct calls to action (e.g., encouraging RMI professionals to identify one aspect of their risk assessment process that can be improved with these new tools).
RMI professionals bring their own knowledge and experience to instruction.
They’re regularly contextualizing what they already know with what they’re being taught, building new knowledge on top of prior knowledge.
Savvy instructors effectively leverage this behavior by activating RMI professionals’ prior knowledge (or suspected knowledge) through activities like pretests, quizzes, self-reflection exercises (e.g., “Write the first three words that come to mind when you hear the word reinsurance.”), and rhetorical strategies (e.g., anchoring content within learners’ shared experiences). In doing so—by bringing adult learners’ prior knowledge to the forefront—instructors help learners make more meaningful connections between old content and new content, thereby strengthening their understanding of the latter.
RMI professionals crave the ability to apply what they’ve learned.
Absent that opportunity, they want instructors to use examples or modeling techniques that demonstrate its application.
For example, an instructor could set up a role-playing scenario where RMI professionals are asked to apply a newly learned risk assessment framework to a hypothetical construction project. This would allow learners to practice the application of knowledge in a controlled, risk-free environment.
If time, space, or regulatory restrictions create limitations, the instructor could instead demonstrate the application of theoretical concepts, like a recent high-profile liability case in the construction industry. In this approach, the instructor could break down the incident, the risk assessment that failed, and the resulting implications, thereby offering a concrete example of the application of the concepts being taught.
Ideally, RMI instructors aspire to guide learners through instruction that adheres to the Kirkpatrick Evaluative Model (see Figure 1), though contracted occupational educators may not have access to data to confirm Levels 3 or 4.
Figure 1.
Note. From Train the Trainer, by the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, 2021, p. 6.13.
RMI professionals are goal-oriented.
Their education is purposeful, a means to a personal or professional end, usually gainful employment, career advancement, and/or social mobility.
Particularly successful RMI instructors
ensure their learning objectives are actionable and career-relevant (i.e., focused on building needed skills for specific positions; e.g., "By the end of this course, you will be able to independently conduct comprehensive risk assessments using the XYZ methodology, interpret the results to identify potential vulnerabilities, and propose effective mitigation strategies.")
keep learning focused, ensuring that each chunk of instruction directly contributes to building the skills identified in the learning objectives. For instance, one chunk might focus on mastering a specific risk analysis software that is widely used in the industry, making the learning immediately applicable and valuable.
regularly contextualize their instruction within workplace scenarios. For example, an instructor could use a real-world case study or provide a simulation exercise the learners could work through. The learners would then apply their learning to complex problems and make decisions, just as they would have to in their desired job roles.
By ensuring that instruction is actionable and directly tied to career advancement, keeping the learning focused and enriched with industry insights, and continuously contextualizing the instruction within actual workplace scenarios, instructors can enhance the relevance and effectiveness of the education for goal-oriented RMI professionals. This approach not only encourages the immediate application of skills learned but also strategically positions professionals to achieve their personal and professional objectives.
RMI professionals are problem-focused.
They know and have experienced common problems in the risk management and insurance industry and are looking for realistic, easy-to-implement solutions. Problem-centered instruction reinforces practicality and ensures adult learners are getting what they need.
To that end, a successful RMI instructor would forgo introducing theoretical models of risk management and instead begin by addressing a common problem, perhaps something like the need for modern and efficient risk assessment tools in the insurance industry. The instructor could then demonstrate how a new, state-of-the-art risk assessment tool can streamline the risk assessment process, reduce errors, and save costs. This would help reinforce the practicality of the instruction, ensuring that the training is directly relevant to the RMI professionals’ daily work.
To further anchor problem-focused instruction, a particularly savvy instructor might openly discuss the challenges they faced when first implementing the tool and how they overcame these issues. This authentic sharing builds trust and positions the instructor as an ally who understands the real-world challenges of RMI professionals.
Instructors who recognize RMI professionals’ challenges leave theory at the door and deliver their authentic selves. In focusing on solutions to common problems, they position themselves as allies and fellow industry practitioners who know what it takes for busy professionals to get the job done.
RMI professionals want to learn performance-aimed skills, things that they can showcase in their positions and promote on LinkedIn.
Instructors do well reinforcing that pragmatism throughout their sessions, and some go so far as to pair up their learning objectives with job responsibilities and employee performance measures identified on third-party sites like Indeed.
For example, an RMI instructor could tailor their learning objectives to match industry demands like advanced claims management techniques, ensuring that the skills taught (e.g. AI-power analytics for fraud detection, process automation tools to speed up claim processing) are those sought after by employers. The instructor could then reinforce how mastering identified skills will not only improve efficiency and accuracy in claims management but also enhance the professionals' marketability and value in the job market.
RMI professionals learn best when content is framed in a story.
An organized narrative is familiar and encourages learners to bring prior knowledge and experiences to make meaningful connections. In doing so, the instruction becomes more than just facts and figures about the industry; it transforms into a relatable and compelling journey that encourages engagement and reflection. Consequently, this storytelling approach to RMI education bridges the gap between understanding and application (see Bloom’s Taxonomy below). It allows RMI professionals to see the practical application of concepts in scenarios that mirror their daily tasks and challenges. They can see themselves in the instruction, making the learning experience more relevant and more impactful.
An example of successful, story-based instruction might be an instructor who creates a narrative around a claims agent working with their client on a complex claim. In the story, the client has just encountered a significant loss and is under immense stress, and unfortunately, the claims agent has exacerbated their client’s frustration due to a lack of empathy and understanding. The instructor then pauses the story to discuss with the learners how the agent’s actions could lead to negative outcomes, both for the client relationship and the firm's reputation.
Once learners have had the opportunity to bring their own experiences and knowledge into the discussion, the instructor steers the narrative towards a turning point, where the agent realizes their mistakes, and the story pivots to practice. The story now focuses on the specific strategies and skills that the agent needs to learn and how they can apply them to improve their interactions with future clients.
By the end of the instruction, the RMI professionals have not only learned specific skills in client communication and claim handling but have also seen these skills brought to life through the instructor’s story. The learners leave the session with a vivid, narrative-driven understanding of how these skills can positively transform client relationships and contribute to their professional success.
This method helps in organizing information into smaller, more digestible segments, making it easier for learners to process, understand, and retain material.
An excellent example of this practice can be found in Aubrey Cook’s “The eLearning and Instructional Design Roadmap.” When remembering and recalling phone numbers, we naturally chunk them into area code, city code, and individual code (three sets of numbers) instead of trying to remember all nine.
Figure 2
Note. From The eLearning and Instructional Design Roadmap, by Aubrey Cook, 2023, p. 17.
Learner engagement is contingent on an instructor’s ability to strike the right balance between too much information and too little substance. The quantity of information must be sufficient to be meaningful, yet not so extensive that it becomes overwhelming. In this delicate balancing act, RMI instructors play a crucial role; they must be adept at distilling complex concepts into their essence, presenting them in a way that is both comprehensive and comprehensible.
RMI professionals prefer instruction be broken down into manageable chunks of content.
RMI professionals' learning outcomes improve as instructors incorporate higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy into their instruction
Bloom's Taxonomy (below) categorizes types of learning objectives and activities in a hierarchy, from simplest (e.g., remember) to most complex (e.g., create). RMI instructors who work their way up Bloom’s promote deeper understanding and critical thinking among learners, ultimately providing learners with more practical and pragmatic educational benefits (e.g., improved job performance, career advancement opportunities, higher earning potential).
RMI professionals appreciate the opportunity for self-reflection.
Integrating periodic, reflective breaks between chunks of instruction is critical. They give learners the opportunity to process information and link new knowledge to what they already know and understand about the industry. Reflective breaks also encourage critical thinking, allowing RMI professionals to consider the practical implications of the instruction and how they apply to real-world scenarios in the RMI sector. These moments of reflection are not mere pauses; they are instrumental in transforming passive learning into an active, engaging process.
References
Cook, A. (2023). The elearning and instructional design roadmap. Oddly Sharp.
Society of Insurance Trainers and Educators. (2012). Train the trainer. The Institutes.