Eric Johnson (00:00)
Welcome back to Boiler Wild. My name is Eric Johnson. I got a good one for you today. If you are trying to help other people learn, and if you are wondering how to learn, this one will help you understand a little bit about the science of human learning and what you need to do in order to help others learn and understand information. Because we've all been there. If you have tried to teach somebody, you show them something, and then you wonder why they don't understand how to do it.
Eric Johnson (00:30)
Or if they read something, you read a little bit out of a book, maybe about a boiler, maybe about a concept, and then you tell them to go do that. they've understood the concept, they understand what they wrote comprehension wise, but when you actually tell them to go do something and do that same concept, then they don't know how to do it, then they ask questions and they struggle to understand, even though they told you they understand it and
Eric Johnson (00:58)
This really comes into play what I call the half circle of death is I probably gotta come up with a better name for it, but that is you know, we've all seen the and this is no shade to anybody else, but we've all seen the pictures online about hey, you know, we had a awesome training class and you know, everybody learned and had a great time. Great, awesome, happy for ya. But then they take pictures and it's an instructor standing there.
Eric Johnson (01:26)
Typically like pointing at a boiler, a burner, a steam system, and everybody's standing in a half circle. Everybody there, while they think they may be learning, they're actually really not. They are observing, they are learning at a very low level. But if you show them a concept and then you tell them to do the concept, they are going to struggle. And if they never do the concept, yet they watch somebody else do the concept. Like for example, if somebody were to
Eric Johnson (01:56)
do burner linkage and set up burner linkage, you can watch somebody set it up and you can
Eric Johnson (02:04)
make sense or logically see what they're doing, you're like, that makes sense. that makes sense. And then somebody says, All right, now it's your turn. You're gonna struggle and you're gonna find out you actually don't know what you're doing and that none of nothing makes sense. And I I've told this story before, but I can always think back in high school. It was not too long ago, but long enough ago that it is well, what, I graduated high school, I think fourteen years ago, if I can do the math correctly. But
Eric Johnson (02:31)
I w not great at math. Math is not my strong suit, but I can understand general concepts about like the world. I'm very in touch. I I have the it factor, like the common sense it factor, but if you tell me we have to get exact numbers and to do this exact problem, I'm gonna struggle. So then I sit in math class and I was a little bit higher level student, so I would be in
Eric Johnson (02:58)
maybe a little bit more advanced math classes than I probably should have been. And everybody around me just seemed so smart and would just get concepts and I'd be sitting there just staring at the board like what is going on? But the teacher would and I r remember this always in my trigonometry class, 'cause I struggled with trig, and the teacher would be going over like, let's find the area under this curve or whatever.
Eric Johnson (03:21)
And they'd go through the problem. I'm like, like, yeah, that makes sense. I could see how she went from step one to step two to step three and like eight steps. It's like, yeah, that and then we do another problem. I'm like, okay. Like, yeah, that makes sense. And then she draws another problem on the board. She turns around and calls my name and like, Hey, Eric, why don't you come up to the board and do it? You get up to the board and all of a sudden it's like deer in the headlights. One, now everybody's staring at you, but two, it it's like, wait.
Eric Johnson (03:49)
I actually don't know how to do it because, and I'll tell you why, it's because I observed somebody else doing it and I never made the neuro connections in my mind to actually do it. When you watch somebody put something together, when you watch somebody do a concept, when you watch somebody do a math problem, you can typically see how they get from one step to the other. that makes sense. that makes sense. yeah.
Eric Johnson (04:15)
Two plus two is four. okay. And then they divide it by two. right. We're back at two. yeah, that makes sense. But if somebody says, hey, find the area under the curve, I wouldn't have any idea where to start. And then maybe I memorize that one problem and then they change up the variables a little bit so it looks a little different, but the steps are all the same still. I don't know how to adapt to that. And that's what you have to learn in the boiler room. no boiler room is the same.
Eric Johnson (04:43)
And no boiler is the same. Even if you have the two of the same boiler, if you've commissioned boilers, you'll know that you can't dump a curve into another boiler. And by dump a curve, I mean you take and commission a boiler and then you take that and then you load up all those parameters into the new boiler. You can do that and get close, but if you commission a boiler and then you dump a curve into the next boiler and you walk away, it's probably not gonna be correct.
Eric Johnson (05:10)
And the combustion readings are probably not gonna be what they need to be for every point. You can get it close, you can do settings that are not changing, like steam pressure set point and like low fire hold and settings like that. But all the tiny little stuff, maybe the boiler is built slightly differently, maybe the stack has slightly different parameters, configuration, the gas pressure is slightly different, all those things add up and there's
Eric Johnson (05:38)
Tons of variables, over hundreds of variables that probably all add together and make things slightly different so that you can't just have eight boilers and then you set up one boiler, you dump the curve into the other seven, and you're like, Yep, I don't even need to check these because they're gonna be great. Nope, that's not how it works. That's not how boilers work. Same thing with boiler rooms. You go to different boiler rooms. No boiler room is the same, they're all built differently, and all the concepts are the same. All the
Eric Johnson (06:05)
Base foundational knowledge is the same, but you have to understand how to apply all that base foundational knowledge to the boiler room that you're looking at. And a lot of people struggle with that because they will maybe go to a training lab and they'll understand what's going on in the training lab in a very controlled environment. They'll start memorizing what is going on in that single scenario. Maybe they only have one boiler in one situation where the instructor only talks from one point of view, which is all fine.
Eric Johnson (06:35)
But they're just learning that one point of view, and they learn, hey, if this is what a steam boiler looks like, this is what a steam boiler is. And then maybe they learn on a certain type of burner. that this is what a burner is. And they only have that point of reference. They they only have that point of view. But then you put them out in the field and the steam boiler looks a little bit different. Maybe it's from a different manufacturer. The burner's a little bit different. It's a little different design. All of a sudden they're like, wait, I have no idea what's going on here. Typically people
Eric Johnson (07:04)
The undereducated people will just call equipment junk because they don't understand it. I never understood that. No manufacturer goes out and says, you what? We're gonna build a junk boiler. You know, we're just gonna spend all this money and time engineering a boiler and it's gonna be trash. Yes. Are there issues with boilers? Yes, just like there are issues with cars. Car manufacturers spend a hundred X what boiler manufacturers spend doing RD.
Eric Johnson (07:32)
And you know, it's all economies of scale. Obviously, the car market's a lot bigger, but they still miss things. and a of people say, they don't build them like they used to anymore. they don't do that. Car manufacturers are working in a very confined space of engineering. You have to repeatedly keep improving safety. You have to repeatedly keep improving technology. You have to keep
Eric Johnson (07:58)
up with latest design trends and to design a car that people want to look at and that is comfortable but you can't keep increasing the price to just whatever you want. You have to keep finding out how to shed pennies from every part of the car in order to keep costs under control. If cars were to expand into what what some other products have expanded, cars would be three, four hundred grand. But
Eric Johnson (08:27)
the economies of scale and just the engineering around cars on how to cut cost and how to do everything. I'm I'm sure car manufacturers would love to build a four hundred thousand dollar F one fifty that is supposedly built right for, you know, the average person, but nobody would be able to buy it. Nobody would be able to afford it other than a few select people.
Eric Johnson (08:52)
everybody say all they're greedy and everything. Well, you know, they built it right. They build them out of thicker steel. They did all this. They added cost here, they added cost there, and all of sudden, now nobody can afford it. It's the same thing with the boiler market. At the end of the day, boiler manufacturers have to build boilers that the market is gonna buy. And you can build the most beefy boiler you want, but if your cost is a hundred percent, seventy five percent more than an equivalent boiler.
Eric Johnson (09:19)
the contractor or the owner and user looks at it and goes, Well, what's really the difference? Cause they're not boiler people. They don't understand the difference. So they look at it. It's like, wait, they most they both make 10,000 pounds of steam an hour. Why is this one a hundred percent more than this one? Well I'm just going to buy this one. It still gets the same output. Because all they buy, all they care about is the output. Does the boiler actually do what it it says it's going to do? Yeah, over the long term, maybe the one that's a hundred percent more
Eric Johnson (09:48)
Is a bit better and can function whatever, but is it really worth the cost? it needs to last twice as long as the cheaper boiler in order to make it worth it? Like so there's all kinds of stuff that goes into building a boiler, designing a boiler. You gotta keep up with all the technology.
Eric Johnson (10:10)
And all the changing materials, the metals and everything. You can't just go out and just we're just gonna build a boiler one inch thick walls of everything. We're gonna weld it up, it's gonna be the most robust thing ever. It it would be super heavy, super huge, it wouldn't fit into places great, and it would be super expensive, and people wouldn't buy it in general. And now manufacturers don't have money to keep going. And yeah, you built the best boiler ever, but nobody bought it. So, anyways.
Eric Johnson (10:36)
let's get back to learning. So going back to trig class, I can watch my teacher do a problem on the board. I can understand what she's doing. She goes through steps one through eight. find the area under the curve. All right. Yeah, I did that, did in my calculator and everything. And then she calls me up to the board. Or even less, you know, you could say, well, it's stage fright.
Eric Johnson (10:58)
All right. Well then she hands out a sheet or she says, flip to page fifty four in your math book. And then she says, Do the first eight problems for homework. And then you like sit there, and I sit there, and I'm like, I I don't actually know what to do. And then, I look at my neighbor and he's like on problem seven. I'm like, wait, how'd you get the and I'm like, Man, why am I so dumb? But let's talk about boilers. But it's gonna be the same concept. If you
Eric Johnson (11:27)
Never actually apply what you're learning. You are never actually learning what you think you're learning. You can watch somebody tune a boiler, you can watch somebody commission a boiler, but if you never do it yourself, you're never making the neuron connections in your brain and applying the knowledge. So how do you know what knowledge to apply and how to apply knowledge? So there's this guy called Bloom. that was a guy, doesn't matter.
Eric Johnson (11:53)
You can look it up. Bloom's taxonomy, well studied. It's changed a little bit over the year, but it's nothing new. But Bloom's taxonomy is these layers of learning and comprehension. So you have these staircase, and I'll go through the staircase. Starting at the bottom, you have knowledge, and then working your way up, you have comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. And each step along the way is learning different levels.
Eric Johnson (12:21)
So when I'm watching my teacher do a problem on the board, she may be teaching me about what is a curve, what is an arc, what is a graph. That is knowledge stuff. I'm understanding the X and Y on the board. And then the comprehension, I'm starting to recognize and understand around all what those things mean. But if I stop there and then she tells me, All right, now you gotta go do this,
Eric Johnson (12:46)
I'm missing the application, the analysis, the synthesis, and the evaluation part of it. And if the homework starts at the application and in class I only learned about knowledge and comprehension, I'm going to struggle because now my brain is trying to put together parts of these this problem that I never knew. Same thing with boilers. If you go to a boiler training, whether it's in person or online, a lot of boiler trainings
Eric Johnson (13:15)
stop at and I'm probably being nice here, they stop at comprehension. But a lot of boiler training, they really are just knowledge. And even then it's very low level. Not that the material is low level. Everybody needs to know low level material, but if you go to a boiler training and the instructor just tells you information, you're not actually learning. You may learn something. You may
Eric Johnson (13:42)
Add something to your worldview, but if you know nothing and you go into a boiler training, you're gonna be lost by hour one. And the instructor telling you more information is not going to make you learn more. If you don't know what's going on by hour one and you're kind of lost and you don't know how to fit all these things into a mental model and you're not starting to apply it and struggle with it, the instructor talking for seven more hours is not going to help you anymore. It is just an information overload, it is well, well studied.
Eric Johnson (14:11)
That talking more and just throwing more information at the person does not make them learn. If that was the case, we could just stick people in a classroom. The instructor could talk to them for an entire month and then they'd walk out of the classroom and they'd be experts. That's not how things work. Humans have to struggle and make the neuron connections inside their head. And Bloom decades ago came up with this staircase and people have changed it. People have changed
Eric Johnson (14:38)
meanings around it, but it's the same thing. And I kind of knew I didn't know I've I've known about Bloom's taxonomy. I heard of it, but really until I started trying to understand learning three years ago, I understood the concept of why do people go to a training class and I can watch people do something and then when you tell to do it, it seems like they've never seen somebody do it. They don't understand how to do it. Well
Eric Johnson (15:04)
Bloom's taxonomy tells you exactly why. It's because they've really only shown been shown the knowledge part and maybe the comprehension part, but then you've never quizzed them or never actually had them do the application analysis, synthesis, and evaluation parts of the learning. And if you are a service technician, if you are an operator, if you are anybody, anybody
Eric Johnson (15:30)
This applies to anybody in the boiler field, but service technician, operator, fitter, steam fitter, whatever you want to call yourself, whatever job you are. If you only train at the knowledge and comprehension level, and then your employer goes, All right, great, you're trained and you go out in the field and then you struggle, this is why you struggle because you were never trained at the application analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels. And though the evaluation level is
Eric Johnson (16:00)
The level that a service technician needs to operate at. You walk into a boiler room and the customer says, Hey, we're struggling with this issue. You may have a general idea of what's going on, but you have to take in thousands of data points. You're looking around the boiler room, you're smelling, you're using your senses, you're trying to understand what's going on, what's on what is is the customer actually telling you the truth, or are they just telling you a symptom? What is the actual problem? You're you're doing all the evaluation.
Eric Johnson (16:29)
of everything and then working backwards and trying to actually get to the root of the problem. But if somebody just says, Hey, we're having this issue with our steam boiler, you can't just be like, yeah, the fire side of a steam boiler is where the fire and combustion gases are. The water side of a steam boiler is where the water and the steam is. That is knowledge. But that's not actually
Eric Johnson (16:56)
the evaluation side of it. And if you know, I know the fire side of a steam boiler, I know the water side of a steam boiler, I know what a burner is, I know what all the burner controls are, great. That is all knowledge and maybe a little bit of comprehension. You can recognize stuff versus the evaluation part is, well, our when our our steam boiler every day at 3 p.m. shuts off and alarms for some reason. We don't know why, but every day at 3 p.m it alarms. Go figure it out.
Eric Johnson (17:24)
You can't just sit down and like look up. Why does a steam boiler alarm at 3 p.m. every day? That's not something you're going to find on Google. You have to start looking at, okay, why does this happen like this? All right, what causes it to alarm? Is the alarm actually coming from the boiler or is the alarm external? What is the customer trying to tell me? Is an alarm actually an alarm? Or are they saying this is an alarm, but really it's a non-alarm condition? But it's an undesirable condition that they don't want to see.
Eric Johnson (17:52)
And you gotta deduct and evaluate from there and you work backwards. But it's the highest level, it is the tippy tippy tops of Bloom's taxonomy, which is just like this learning pyramid of starting at the base, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. And that is why if you've ever taught somebody, if you ever taught somebody information, you show them something, maybe you show them something once, and this is super common with.
Eric Johnson (18:19)
Older people who are typically a little less patient with younger people. They've been in the field thirty, forty years, they have forgotten what it's like to be new or how much they've actually known and understood in that time. you compress 40 years of knowledge into your mind and it you don't actually think about all every day of the forty years. You you just think about maybe a couple lessons. Yeah, you can
Eric Johnson (18:46)
pick up here or there, man, 20 years ago I had this, but it something's gotta jog your memory. But you have 40 years of experience and you do things without even thinking about it almost at that point. So then you get somebody new that has basically no idea what you're going on. And you're like, all right, let's solder a piece of copper together. And they just start making mistakes that you're like, why can't you see
Eric Johnson (19:09)
This is so basic. Why don't you understand this? I've showed you how to do this. No, you can't do it that way. well, in this situation, you gotta do this. you can't solder with water in the pipe. I thought you knew that. I told you that. And you get frustrated and then they get frustrated and no now nobody's learning. And I was teaching class one time and this guy came up to me. He's like, yeah, you know, and this guy, definitely older. And he was like, you know, I you know I I try to teach other people and I typically give two
Eric Johnson (19:38)
Two shots to learn it. And if they don't get it in two shots, I just say, get out of the way. Let me do this. Cause I don't got time for them to learn. That is fine in the short term. That is not a long-term strategy. You will never develop people in the long term. And typically, l older field guys, you have to be very, very patient. And they are not patient. And you know, there's a couple of forces working there. It's not always their fault 100%.
Eric Johnson (20:02)
But if you give somebody two tries to learn and if they don't get it and they just don't have the it factor of you know just be able to pick stuff up and they can't make a mistake and you're just have zero patience for that and get out of the way. You gotta just know it. They're gonna get frustrated. They're not gonna learn. Well, you've only shown them the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you're trying to operate at the top of it. And that bridge and that gap, somebody is going to struggle to jump and make that gap if they've never actually learned.
Eric Johnson (20:32)
in an environment how to make that gap and then they're they're actually not given the opportunity to make that gap. So what does this actually look like? You know, that's all lot of fancy talk. Maybe you understand that you're probably nodding your head. Maybe you're driving, you're like, man, I know what Eric's talking about. I've been to those training classes. I've been the person trying to train somebody. I hope you are. Let me know. D DM me on LinkedIn or reach out Eric dot Johnson at Boilearn dot com. I can't be the only one
Eric Johnson (20:58)
Thinking this because I've talked to many people about this and they nod along. And this is once again a concept that I was struggling to understand, struggling to define. And then once I started really diving into how humans learn about three years ago when I started Boilearn I started figuring out that we've basically understood the science of learning since the 70s, and it is well studied and well written about how humans learn.
Eric Johnson (21:25)
And the boiler industry is just doing it wrong mostly. And it's not just the boiler industry, it's all all industries essentially. Everybody just wants experts from day one. And there people are not allowed to make mistakes. If you get onto a job site and they make a mistake, you know, that was a safety mistake, fire them. It's like, okay, well, did anybody die? No. Did anybody get hurt? No. But in this scenario, this thing could have happened and that could have happened.
Eric Johnson (21:54)
And was it really their fault? No. But it's a safety mistake. Fire them. Okay. Well, do they actually learn from getting fired? No. Like the next person coming in is probably gonna make that mistake. And but that's how people learn. And that's how people learned back in the 80s, back in the 90s, before everything was documented, before we had safety structure of well, humans are unsafe, doing the job is unsafe, boiler rooms are unsafe. So unless we do JSAs.
Eric Johnson (22:24)
For four hours to start the day and everything's permitted and this and that. Like it all starts from a place of good. But at the end of the day, we have to understand that boilers are dangerous, steam is dangerous, pipe fitting is dangerous, all this stuff has a certain level of danger to it, and there's no way to mitigate all that danger. Insurance companies w and HR offices and all that would love to tell you, well, if we just fill out enough applications and if we fill out enough.
Eric Johnson (22:49)
safety things and papers and evaluations and have enough experts come through we can eliminate all the danger. That's not gonna happen. That's never gonna happen. And at a certain point in time you just become ineffective. And if you want to pay for that, that's fine. If you want to do a one hour job and turn a one hour job into a two day job because you try to evaluate every single danger and you don't actually trust people to actually make decisions and to mitigate risk by themselves. Once again safety programs are great. All that stuff is great. But
Eric Johnson (23:19)
At a certain amount in time, you cannot take the danger away from steam. Steam is a pressurized gas and it is hot. It is always going to have a certain level of danger about it. If you want to take the danger away, shut down the boiler room, close the doors, and don't let anybody in. And now the boiler room can't be dangerous because nobody's around the boilers. But that's not how the world works. So going back to Bloom's taxonomy and really, I mean, you can look that up, but it really doesn't matter that you know that. That is just
Eric Johnson (23:49)
A guy he came up with this, but let me show you how to apply this. So I'm always trying to understand what other people are doing, what other companies are doing. And when somebody posts a webinar, when somebody posts a training and they say, hey, you're gonna learn these things, the number one thing that I that I see that I know that they don't know what they're doing, not that they don't know what they're doing. I want to let me rephrase that.
Eric Johnson (24:17)
that they don't understand fully that they're teaching people is that they in the learning objectives they use the word understand. And you may have done that and you'll see it now that you listen to this and you if you start looking at learning objectives. So, first of all, let me define what a learning objective. A learning objective is.
Eric Johnson (24:39)
A short summary bullet points of what you will be able to know or do at the end of the training course. And typically in the boiler industry, it should be what you're able to do because that's all that matters. I can tell you how to design a steam system off the top of my head. But if I can actually go out and do that, What does that really matter? I can tell you how to set combustion off the top of my head, but if somebody says, All right.
Eric Johnson (25:06)
Eric, you go out and set combustion on this boiler, set all this up, commission it. If I just know the knowledge about how to do it, but I've never actually done it, well, that doesn't really matter. So if I see a learning objective and I see the learner will be able to understand how steam boiler operates. Okay. That's great. That sounds awesome. Man, we can understand how steam boiler operates. However, a learning objective always has to be measurable.
Eric Johnson (25:34)
And the question is, how do you measure understanding? if you look at person A versus person B and you get to the end of the course and you're like, all right, great. Person A, do you understand how a steam boiler works? And they're just gonna nod yup. And person B, all right, do you understand how steam boiler works? And they're gonna nod, yup.
Eric Johnson (25:55)
But as an instructor, as an employer, as a coworker, how do you actually measure that they understand? And you will do this. Typically, people will do this. Well, if I just talk to them and have a conversation with them, I can understand what they're talking about and kind of see in my mind. And you make that evaluation. Well, that's a very personal evaluation. You can't have a conversation with everybody, and it is very
Eric Johnson (26:25)
subjective versus objective of well how do you actually measure good you know what is good work good work has a million different definitions depending on who you talk to somebody about you know if you're a pipe fitter and if all your fittings aren't exactly 90 degrees level and plum some people they only care about getting the job done does it have to look perfect
Eric Johnson (26:52)
And have the perfect horizontal and verticals and only run at 45s and do this and that, that is their standard of good versus somebody else of well, you know, we didn't really have the time to do it, but so but we just got it done, it works. Some somebody may look at that and be like, man, who did this? This is junk. They're not a good pipe fitter. Well, that's just an opinion. Well, we can't have opinions when we're we're training people. If we are having a learning objective of
Eric Johnson (27:20)
The person will be able to understand how steam boiler operates. You may be able to talk to them and you may be able to measure in your head, well, yeah, I think they understand how it is, but it's not actually objective. Versus an employer, if they have two candidates sit down and it's like, all right, do you understand how steam boiler operates? I say they're all gonna say yes, but how do you actually measure that? What does the employer actually do to say, all right, objectively,
Eric Johnson (27:46)
They're gonna understand how steam boiler operates. You can't measure understanding. You may be able to do it, but you are doing other things around it, and you're not realizing that you're doing those other things to eventually come back to the understanding for a better word, of yeah, the person understands how steam boiler operates because it's very subjective and if depending on who you talk to, it's going to
Eric Johnson (28:13)
differ. If you talk to somebody who's five years into the industry and they talk to a new person, they be like, yeah, I I think they know what a how a steam boiler operates. And you talk to somebody who's working on industrial boiler systems and giant water tubes and if the pilot isn't two million BTUs, then it's not a real boiler
Eric Johnson (28:34)
if they talk to the person, then they're like, no, they have no idea what the going on. They don't know how a steam boiler operates. It's subjective. So what so what what do you do with this? How do we how do we make learning outcomes that people can actually know? So they have to be observable and measurable. So the instructor can observe see or hear and evaluate each learner's performance according to a standard.
Eric Johnson (29:01)
How well, how many, or to what degree? And that is important. The standard. What is the standard you're measuring people on? And it can't just be your opinion. Yes, you can like feel people out, you can talk to them, you can have an interview with them. But if you have two people that have 10 years' experience sitting in an interview, how do you measure that they they have the same experience? You can talk to them for an hour, but now the same person has to interview every single person, and it's not scalable versus
Eric Johnson (29:29)
A company standard that says, hey, here's the standard that we want somebody with 10 years experience to have. How do you measure against this standard? And you may find that somebody, person A with 10 years experience, really only has four years of experience and understanding according to your standard. And person B has 15 years of experience because they worked overtime. They're a really A plus driven person. They go home, they read books.
Eric Johnson (29:56)
They're really driven, they're really dedicated to their craft, and they have more knowledge than a typical person with 10 years experience would to your company standard. You can measure it and you say, hey, this person with 10 years is actually at a 14-year mark. And we would actually give them a raise or hire them in at a higher pay versus this other person who's really only at a four-year mark.
Eric Johnson (30:23)
Because they've had the same experience. maybe they're an operator and they've only seen one boiler system, one kind of burner, one kind of boiler. You know, you see this online. if somebody's had a career operating boilers and they've been in the same boiler room for 30 years, and maybe it's a Cleaver Brooks boiler and Cleaver Brooks burner, and somebody says, what's the best boiler?
Eric Johnson (30:47)
They're gonna say, Cleaver Brooks. I've never I haven't had any trouble with it over 30 years. Well, that sounds great, but when you start digging into it, and it's not saying that Cleaver Brooks isn't a a fine boiler, but their opinion is based on one boiler. They have 30 years of experience on one boiler and one boiler brand and the same boilers in the same boiler room. Their opinion actually doesn't matter. They haven't worked
Eric Johnson (31:13)
And experienced every single steam boiler to the same degree. And that's why when you ask people their opinions online, you have to be very careful about actually taking weight to them because a lot of people will say, this brand is junk, that brand is junk. I've never had that. I always try to relate this back to cars. If somebody is a diehard Ford person and they drive Ford
Eric Johnson (31:36)
If a Ford breaks down on the side of the highway, they're like, whatever. stuff happens and then they get it fixed and they're like, Ford all day. But if somebody's a Chevy person and Chevy's Chevy for life, they've had Chevy for 25 years, and all of a sudden they buy it a Ford and 5,000 miles into buying a Ford, it breaks down on the side of the road, they're gonna be like, man, I should have bought a Chevy. I knew it. These Fords are junk. And they they already have this opinion about the
Eric Johnson (32:05)
The car or truck or whatever they bought, and Ford is bad. Well, same thing with a boiler. If somebody loves boiler manufacturer A, and that's all the experience they have on it, and they've been through the ups and downs of that. And you know, they they have this rose-colored glasses for boiler manufacturer A, and all of a sudden their employer replaces the boilers and puts in boiler manufacturer B.
Eric Johnson (32:31)
And they're like, I don't know anything about these things. And they're learning the quirks of this boiler versus that boiler. And boiler manufacturer B has an issue within the first year. They're like, man, these things are junk. I I haven't had these problems with these other boilers. Man, they don't build them like this anymore. junk. Well, the person, their opinion is has really no weight, and they're also making conclusions on a very, very small amount of knowledge based on.
Eric Johnson (33:01)
what they're seeing and it's not always an an equal, unbiased opinion. And that's why you shouldn't ask for opinions on the internet. And if you do, sidebar, don't ask for career advice on the internet. I don't understand why people do this because they're like, well, this is my life. I'm getting paid twenty eight dollars a an hour, but I really want to go do this. What do you guys think I should do? Go do whatever you think you can do. If you want to go do this, go do that. If you want to go do that, go do that. Like
Eric Johnson (33:31)
People's opinion on the internet should have no bearing on your life. Go do what you want to do. Go get paid what you want to get paid, and go get the experience or go live wherever you want to live. Don't listen to other people's opinion on the internet. Nobody knows your life better than you, and nobody has to live your life more than you have to do. But, anyways, back to learning objectives. So the they have to be observable and measurable. And that is like defined. You can't just, well, Tim talked to him and he
Eric Johnson (34:01)
He thinks he knows what a steam boiler is. And yeah, this guy knows it. Yeah, you can get that. You can get a feeling, but how do you measure that feeling? Objectively, how do we put down into words? This person knows what a steam boiler is versus that person.
Eric Johnson (34:16)
most outcomes require high degrees of cognition according to Bloom's taxonomy. So most outcomes, if you know, if if we are training people how to be service technicians, a service technician, by definition, most of the time is going to be solving problems that the customer doesn't know how to solve themselves. And if we teach them at the lowest levels of this staircase, of this pyramid, at the knowledge and comprehension, and then we go out, yep, go solve problems for the customer, and they don't
Eric Johnson (34:46)
understand the highest levels of of Bloom's taxonomy, which is the evaluation part. If we never train on the evaluation part, then they're gonna struggle and you're gonna get frustrated as a manager, as an employer, and you're gonna be like, why do these people not know how to do this? I taught them everything that they need to know. Why can't they do this? It's because there's levels to this learning. Just because they understand the knowledge and comprehension doesn't mean that they understand everything else. And you're just basically jumping
Eric Johnson (35:16)
a huge learning process to the evaluation and they're skipping all the steps. another point is outcomes must be achievable for students given the length of the course, the number of course hours, and the level of scaffolding provided through the classroom instruction activities. So if we have a two day course and in two days, may we're together for sixteen hours, but we'll have a one hour lunch break. We'll start a little late in the morning 'cause you know, people are
Eric Johnson (35:44)
Shuffling in, maybe we end a little bit early. Maybe we only get 13, 12 hours of good instruction. And good instruction means the instructor is telling people knowledge. And that by definition is not good instruction, but that is that is not wasted time. Not breaks, not lunch, not people milling around, not people asking questions, just instruction time 12, 13 hours out of the two hour days.
Eric Johnson (36:14)
So if you have a 13 hours of instruction, I would not expect a new person to be able to diagnose a parallel positioning system if they've never had any experience with a parallel positioning system. So you'll have these courses. Hey, you know, come learn parallel positioning. And the person comes in, they have no idea what's going on. And at the end of the two days, they're like, Yep, great, you're certified, you know what's going on.
Eric Johnson (36:42)
And all right, great. They took the course. The employer sends them out to a boiler and the boiler's thrown a code, the parallel positioning system's thrown a code, and then the employer gets frustrated. It's like, well, we sent you to the training course. Why do you not know how to do this? Well, one, they've only had two days on it, and really by two days, maybe 13 hours of instruction. But what were the learning outcomes for that course?
Eric Johnson (37:07)
And given the length of the course and number of course hours and the level of scaffolding, I'll talk about that through the course and activities, you're not gonna make a burner expert with parallel positioning in two days. It's not gonna happen. If somebody comes in and they're eighty percent there in those two days, they may be able to make a pretty big jump and they'll have a mental model to build around and they'll have scaffolding to build around.
Eric Johnson (37:34)
But if somebody comes in with no knowledge of parallel positioning and all of a sudden you're like, yep, two days later, you're good to go. No, they're gonna struggle because they've only learned the bottom of the Blooms taxonomy, the knowledge comprehension, and maybe a little bit of application. let's put a little curve into this little trainer that we have on this table. But that is way different than putting a curve into a live boiler that's running and rumbling, and yo, you gotta adjust gas pressures, and in this scenario, you gotta do that. And don't.
Eric Johnson (38:03)
run the boiler too much because now the load is going to be too low for the plant and you're going to trip all the boilers off and like there's all this stuff that goes on outside of it that you're not going to learn in the classroom, but you're going to learn in the field or have to know in the field. And people are going to struggle. You can't go to a parallel position class and two days later be an expert. And if you have learning objectives that say they'll be able to commission all boilers
Eric Johnson (38:28)
And this isn't a real learning objective, but just for the sake of time, they'll be able to commission all boilers with this parallel positioning system. Obviously, that is a very high-level learning objective that I, as an instructor, would not feel comfortable promising or telling students: hey, in two days, you're just gonna be able to commission all boilers with this, and you're not gonna have any problems because two days of instruction, you're good. In two days of instruction, I would feel fine.
Eric Johnson (38:57)
And this is a very this is overkill, but two days of instruction, I'd feel fine. Somebody being able to correctly set up the steam pressure controls on a steam boiler. So steam pressure controls, so the modulation control, the operating control, and the high pressure steam cutout control. Those three controls, be able to identify them on the steam boiler, understand what they do and how they fit into the operation of a steam boiler, and
Eric Johnson (39:23)
Why the set point it is, how it is, and how to set the set points and how to test them. In two days, and that would be overkill, but in two days, I would feel comfortable having a learning objective that they would be able to do all those things. We'd be able to move all the way through Bloom's taxonomy. They'll be able to understand all the knowledge and comprehension of part of it. And we get through the application analysis, synthesis, and evaluation so that somebody could walk into a boiler room and now they're looking at those three steam pressure controls.
Eric Johnson (39:52)
And they're evaluating all right. Well, the boiler is running this way, so I know that the high pressure steam limit control isn't an issue because it is the highest set point, and the boiler is maybe short cycling. Okay, well, I need to check the modulation control because if the operator is set too low or the modulator set too high, now the boiler is just sitting in high fire. So then they watch the boiler, and maybe the steam pressure is 50 pounds.
Eric Johnson (40:22)
hits 50 pounds and the boiler's still in high fire and all of a sudden the boiler cuts off and goes to post purge. They go, okay, well, if the if we're trying to maintain 50 pounds, well now I need to adjust the operator or maybe I need to adjust the modulator. And then they start making the evaluation. They they have a higher level understanding of what they can do versus I can write down the definition of what a high steam pressure cutout is, what a modulation steam pressure control is, or what an operating steam pressure control is.
Eric Johnson (40:51)
They don't know and have an understanding of higher levels of of the blooms taxonomy, the pyramid, if they don't understand all the levels, then they're gonna struggle. and then the level scaffolding. So scaffolding is just what it what it sounds like is scaffolding. You know, you build layers. If you're gonna build a scaffold, just like a cake, you're gonna
Eric Johnson (41:14)
make layers on a cake with scaffolding you're gonna make layers. If we start out with Boiler 101 and I go, all right, Boiler 101, let's talk about nox
Eric Johnson (41:25)
They may be able to understand what I'm talking about. They would have be able to draw some general conclusions, but talking about burner emissions and NOx and O2 and CO2 is going to be the eighth level of a scaffold. And they are missing the seven levels in under that. So now you're trying to build the eighth level of a scaffold and it's missing the seven levels. So you can build it all you want. You can build it out in the classroom. You can talk about it.
Eric Johnson (41:52)
they will be nodding along, they'll probably have their arms crossed, and you'll be observant instructor will be able to look at them and all you'll see is just glazed over eyes, and nobody will be writing anything down. Nobody's learning if they're not writing anything down. That's an objective fact. the drop off of learning curve, people only remember maybe 10% of what they learned.
Eric Johnson (42:15)
in a classroom for memory. So if somebody talks for eight hours and you don't write anything down, you objectively have learned nothing. You won't y you may be able to think about what they talked about. You may be able to pick up one thing. But if you write down two pages of notes, now you can go back and have those notes and have that scaffolding with the notes and be able to build a mental model around your notes and right, I remember that. yeah, I remember that. And yeah, this problem. This is how I did it. you know
Eric Johnson (42:42)
how to size a water softener. I don't have to remember off the top of my mind, I wrote it down in this class of how to size a water softener. So with scaffolding, if if you do a Boiler 101 class and you start off the first hour with let's talk about combustion and O two and CO2 and nox that's the eighth level of scaffolding and they're missing one through seven. And if you don't scaffold, you they're gonna struggle. They don't have a mental model to build off of and they don't have a base to build off of.
Eric Johnson (43:11)
You have to start at what is steam? What is a gas? Very base level things, the first level of the scaffold. But if you talk about what is steam and you just essentially take steam all the way to well, now we're talking about velocities of steam and all this stuff. Velocities of steam would be maybe level six of the scaffold if we're just talking only about the properties of steam. And to a new person.
Eric Johnson (43:38)
understanding that steam is a gas and understanding steam is hot and that it changes temperature with pressure, that is the first couple layers of the scaffolding. If you just start talking about steam and you just zoom right all the way through and at the end of the day you're talking about sizing steam pipes and doing all this stuff. Well, like we just built the first layer of the scaffold at the beginning of the class. It is very unlikely that all those layers are rock solid and that they're able to understand level seven, eight, nine, ten of the scaffold.
Eric Johnson (44:08)
And that is what is happening when somebody is going to a training class or they are learning or reading a book. they don't know it, but they're slowly building scaffolds and they're building understanding. And you'll see this. This is most prevalent if you're doing on-the-job training. So you're going to take a new person out with a senior person. And that senior person, they may be wiring up a simple control. And the new person can understand that. They understand a little bit of basic electricity.
Eric Johnson (44:36)
They're like, all right, yeah, that makes sense. And then they go to the next call and or next thing. And then the senior person is setting up a PID loop for a controller for a oven. And now that new person, maybe they can watch and yeah, that makes sense. but it's going back to the trig problem. Once again, just because you observe somebody do it doesn't mean you know how to do it and what they're doing. If somebody is newer.
Eric Johnson (45:02)
And all of a watches a senior person try to set up and calculate a PID loop of a controller for a burnoff oven the person is gonna be lost. They that's scaffold level 20 and they're missing 18 layers in between, but not every service call or how when you're working with on the job training you can't control the problems your customers have. So if you just send somebody out and they observe a senior person for one month.
Eric Johnson (45:29)
They may be able to see scaffold one through three, but also they'll see scaffolding levels 20 through 40. And if the person's doing high level stuff at 20 through 40, yeah, it's a good experience for them to be able to watch somebody work through something But at the end of the day, that new person is not actually learning anything that is measurable and can actually be used. Yeah, they may be able to take a trick or two from it.
Eric Johnson (45:58)
But they are not learning the information in the order that they need to. once again, just trying to make this clear, if you go to a college and you take four years of college classes, you don't start off with linear algebra if you've never taken calculus.
Eric Johnson (46:16)
you're gonna work through four years, hopefully in an order that makes sense and you're gonna build off the year previous. The classes are gonna build off each other and it's going to hopefully make sense. If you just gave somebody whatever amount of classes that four years is of college, you're like, choose whatever classes you wanna do. It doesn't matter the order you take and as long as you get through all the c classes, you'll get a degree.
Eric Johnson (46:41)
Well, somebody's gonna struggle because they're gonna pick a class and not understand the prerequisites for that class, Same thing with on-the-job training, and that's the biggest fault of on-the-job training is you typically can't control what the person is seeing or doing that day. And while it may be a good experience for them, it's not the experience that they need at that time, at that moment, and that is what scaffolding is called.
Eric Johnson (47:08)
And you should be able to scaffold. I'll talk about scaffolding another time. Scaffolding in a training class. It's the same idea and concept, but that's something I've really been working on in the last year is scaffolding. And once again, just all right, we're gonna learn about steam, and at the end of the day, we're gonna be engineering steam systems. Well, you know, there's 40 layers of scaffolding in between. And while I can tell people about steam in the morning and be engineering steam systems in the afternoon and telling them.
Eric Johnson (47:38)
That doesn't mean they're actually learning.
Eric Johnson (47:40)
And then lastly, course outcomes are related to the essential questions and therefore relevant to the course and meaningful to students. So there's this thing called reverse training design. And it is we are creating the course outcomes and then working backwards. And a lot of training courses are not built that way. They are built, what do we need to know? We need to learn steam boilers, we need to learn combustion, we need learn boilers. So then they talk about these topics and then they get to the end, and then they're like, all right, well, what
Eric Johnson (48:09)
Should they know at the end of this? And then they write down some learning objectives that maybe are measurable or maybe are not. And then it's like, all right, well, that's the course. That's Boiler 101. Great. Happy for you. But are they actually learning what they should be learning and what is essential? And the hardest thing I've had to learn, and I'm still learning it, I'm still struggling with it every single day. Is
Eric Johnson (48:33)
What is essential knowledge and what is nice to know knowledge? And when you are becoming an expert, and I would like to think I'm an expert, I'm an expert in basic boiler stuff. But when you are an expert versus somebody who is very, very low level knowledge, you think everything is essential. in this situation you gotta know that. In that situation, you gotta know this. and this tip and this tip, and all of a sudden you've overwhelmed them with all these tips and all these fun facts and everything.
Eric Johnson (49:03)
And the person is so overwhelmed that they don't know how to do anything. And at the end of the day, you have to cut away all that stuff. You have to trim down the branches and say, All right, if we're starting at ground zero, day one, somebody knows nothing. They've graduated high school. How do we get them in the boiler room and knowing things as soon as possible and as fast as possible? You have to trim all the fat away and you have to say, All right, this is what they have to know. And you have to be very clear and very intentional with it. And if you have a course
Eric Johnson (49:32)
about steam boilers and all of a sudden you want to throw in two chapters about hot water boilers because it's nice to know or there's a fun fact in there or whatever. That is nice to know information that is not essential information and needs to be cut out. The learning objectives if we do reverse training design, the learning objectives, if you are at the starting with just the knowledge and everything and then you make your learning objectives, you're doing everything backwards. You need to start at the end of the course. What will the learner be able to do
Eric Johnson (50:02)
At the end of this course. And the keyword is do action. We are about action in the boiler industry. What can the learner do at the end of the day? At the end of this course. And once again, don't make it, the learner will be able to do all these expert things. You have to be realistic. Hey, if we're training for two eight hour days, what can they actually do? And if you just make the learning objectives just the sky high thing, once again, they're not going to be able to do those things. And you're not going to be able to teach them all those things. So
Eric Johnson (50:31)
Most courses, when somebody looks at the learning objectives, they should be like, that's it? Like, that's pretty low level. That's all we're gonna learn in two days. Yes, because if you go through an outline of a two-day course and you're just running and ripping through this outline, you are just telling people information. It is knowledge. And but they're not applying all of Bloom's taxonomy all the way up. The comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. They're not going all the way through that in the course.
Eric Johnson (51:01)
And if you rip through that huge outline of let's go through an entire boiler room A to Z and you tell them all this knowledge and maybe a little comprehension, at the end of the day, they're not gonna be able to do much with that knowledge and they're statistically gonna forget 90% of it. Just because your outline is super long doesn't mean that the person is gonna come away with with super long list of knowledge. The more refined and defined the learning objectives of a course are.
Eric Johnson (51:29)
The better the person will be. And at the end of the day, all this stuff is nice to know. And while this may not seem like a lot, in two days, people overestimate what somebody can actually learn. cut the losses and say, All right, we're gonna break things down and we're gonna scaffold and slowly go back and forth and we're gonna learn what a steam boiler is and then.
Eric Johnson (51:51)
We're gonna go learn this thing and then come back to a steam boiler and we're gonna slowly build these layers of the scaffold and layers of knowledge. And every 15 to 20 minutes, we're gonna have a different change of pace with the course. The instructor's not gonna be talking anymore. We're gonna be applying things and then we're gonna have analysis and then like evaluation, like and it depends on what level the course is a higher level course. You all the people coming in need to have the knowledge comprehension, maybe the application side of it.
Eric Johnson (52:19)
So you can start at the analysis part of the course. If you go into a high level boiler training course, you can start at analysis because everybody will understand or have the knowledge, comprehension, application, hopefully, of it. A lot of people don't. You know, 20 year people experience don't have it. They they haven't learned the right way. They can actually do stuff for their employer, but at a learning course objective way.
Eric Johnson (52:46)
They actually don't have the correct knowledge. That's how you end up with people with 20 years of experience who are amazing and 20 years experience who make mistakes that you're like, man, they they should they should know that. Well, they don't. They haven't been taught the right way. It's not always their fault. And 20 years experience is not the same as 20 years of experience as somebody else. So once again, if you are creating course outcomes or if you are evaluating course, and I try to do this, you know, and I struggle with this.
Eric Johnson (53:15)
But I try, Boilearn I I want to teach people and actually get measurable results. What can you do? Keyword underline do at the end of the course. Going back over to it. Learning outcomes, observable, measurable. You cannot observe and measure understanding. So if you have a learning outcome and it says the person will be able to understand this just right off the course, you're probably not going to learn anything because they did not do reverse training design.
Eric Johnson (53:44)
They didn't work backwards. They're just making stuff up at that point. You cannot measure understanding. Well, you may be able to learn something or take something from it, but if if you're signing somebody up for a course and the learning objectives have they'll be able to understand this, it's they're just hoping and praying that, hey, we're going to present this information to you and that you'll be able to synthesize the information. You'll be able to evaluate the information on your own and you'll be able to apply that in the field. But we're not going to actually tell you how to apply that.
Eric Johnson (54:14)
And we're not gonna actually measure the application of that. We're just gonna hope and pray. Essentially, there's no better words than that. Hope and pray that if we tell you this information, you'll be able to know what to do with it. And 95% of the time, that kind of thinking fails. Number two, most outcomes require a high degree of cognition, according to Bloom's taxonomy. If we have a beginning training course.
Eric Johnson (54:39)
The knowledge and comprehension will be most of the course. That'll be scaffolding layers one through five. But if if we have a course that says, hey, we're gonna commission or gonna go to a boiler factory and we're gonna learn how to commission this kind of boiler, we have to get into the higher levels of cognition, the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, because commissioning a boiler is hard. It is more than
Eric Johnson (55:04)
I know information out of a book. I've read the information. You have to be able to do stuff. So then they have to be achievable outcomes for the length of the course and the number of course hours and the level of scaffolding. Once again, you can rip through an outline as long as you want and be able to talk at people. But you at the end of the day, you have to say, All right, this is what is realistically possible in two days. And it is typically half of what you think it is. If you are learning new information.
Eric Johnson (55:33)
The second day, at least halfway through the day, if you are learning new information, you are doing something wrong. you should be working on the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the information you did in day one and really trying to loop and scaffold on that information versus learning new information. Cause if somebody learns new information and all of a sudden you're like, Yep, end of day two, we're good. All right, anybody have any questions? No? All right, yep, they learned.
Eric Johnson (56:00)
Yep, here's your pre-printed certificates. Everybody is certified now. Well, and then they go out and the employers go, Well, they went to this certification class and they can't actually do anything. So what did they actually learn? They came back and said, it was a nice course. Yeah, we had a great time. we drank beer in between day one and day two. And you know, we had I sat with my buddies and did this and we swapped war stories and did all this. Great. That's all fun stuff. That's great training stuff. But at the employer level, we are putting
Eric Johnson (56:29)
Money down and trading that money for hopeful skills that the person will be able to do at the end of it. And if you're trading money for feelings and good feelings and whatever, that is not a good business application of the money. And you're essentially just wasting money at that period of time. And then number four, course outcomes are related to the essential questions and therefore relevant to the course and meaningful to the students. So if once again, if your course outcomes, if you have course outcomes that are
Eric Johnson (56:59)
Hey, we're gonna learn about steam boilers, do all this stuff. Why are we talking about water softeners? Yes, water softeners are great to know about. Yes, in this case, we need to know that hard water builds up in steam boilers and scale and everything. But if we're if we just have a long list of course outcomes and those course outcomes, half of the stuff and information is not presented, or we don't bring people all the way through the knowledge to evaluation side of it and
Eric Johnson (57:26)
We just expect them to get the outcomes and we're like, Yep, we'll you know, we just present everything to them and they'll be able to do it. Once again, going back to that trigonometry class in high school. I would watch the teacher do the math problems on the board. I'd be like, that makes sense. all right. Yeah, I can do that. I'd be putting in my notes, doing this, doing that. let's do another problem, doing that, doing that. All right, let's do another problem. All right, that and then
Eric Johnson (57:50)
She would say, Hey, go do these next five problems, or Eric, you come up to the board and do this. Or I'd watch somebody else come up to the board. And all of a sudden it is, we've already done three problems together, and I've just changed the numbers and now come up to the board. it's like deer in the headlights. You have no idea what to do. It's because you haven't made the neuron connections and you've been working on the lower side of the learning. But if you come up to the board, now you have to actually
Eric Johnson (58:15)
Apply what you've learned or are learning, the analysis, synthesis, evaluation, be able to look at a problem, say, hey, this is where you went wrong. There it is a higher level of learning versus all right, yeah, I understand what a curve is. I understand what sign and cosine are. How do you measure understanding? I can't be the only one. I've talked to other people. I can't be the only one. Hopefully you're nodding along. And maybe you've been out of high school for 20 years, but you you can probably remember, you know.
Eric Johnson (58:42)
Most people in the boiler industry are not straight A students that are super high level and you sat in math class or sat in science class or whatever, you're like, man, you're looking around, you're Man, I'm dumb. Why why can't I get this? Why is it why does it seem so easy for everybody else? They do the problem on the board and now, but I can't do it when I look at the problem in a book. W why can't I do that? This this is a little bit in insight into how to do it. It's the last part of this. I know I've been going on about an hour.
Eric Johnson (59:11)
But I want to actually get down to actual some verbs. So what does the verbs look like? If we're building learning outcomes, there are verbs that you're going to use for every single level. And so the knowledge we can have, and these are just examples. This is not all the verbs, but for knowledge, we will have learning outcomes that use define, repeat, record, and list comprehension. We'll have learning outcomes that use translate.
Eric Johnson (59:37)
Restate, discuss, describe, recognize, explain, express, identify. The application side of it will have learning outcomes with verbs that are interpret, apply, employ, use, demonstrate, dramatize, practice, illustrate, operate, schedule, shop, sketch. The analysis side. We'll have verbs that are used in distinguish, analyze, differentiate.
Eric Johnson (01:00:06)
Praise, calculate, experiment, test, compare, contrast, criticize, diagram, inspect, debate, inventory, question, relate. Synthesis will have verbs that use compose, plan, propose, design, formulate, arrange, collect, construct, create, set up, organize, manage, prepare.
Eric Johnson (01:00:31)
Those are examples of verbs. And lastly, the highest level evaluation, judge, appraise, evaluate, rate, compare, value, revise, score, select, choose, assess, estimate, measure. So those are examples of verbs. So if you go into a boiler room or if you're looking at a set of plans, and if you sit down and you're looking at boiler specs and you say,
Eric Johnson (01:00:58)
What is the difference between boiler A and boiler B other than like basic differences? You have to be able to assess and measure and value and compare. Those are all evaluation verbs. You you have to be able to do those things versus the comprehension side of it is be able to recognize that boiler A is a steam boiler, be able to explain why boiler A is a steam boiler. You'll have to be able to identify the characteristics of why boiler A is a steam boiler.
Eric Johnson (01:01:29)
versus the evaluation side is being able to compare, value, revise, score, select, choose, assess, estimate, and measure why Boiler A is better than Boiler B. So hopefully this is a little bit inside. This is all stuff I knew and didn't know how to describe. And then I got into learning and learning design and how humans learn because I'm always striving to be better. And I know if you are listening to this, you are a listener of Boiler Wild, you are striving to get better as well.
Eric Johnson (01:01:57)
Every listener of Boiler Wild wants to get better, wants to improve, wants to lead others and develop themselves into a person of excellence. And we do that by being able to understand how humans learn so that we can be self-aware. And then when we are teaching other people, we can me also be aware of the struggle that they are going through and not get frustrated with them if we are teaching at a very low level of Bloom's taxonomy, the knowledge and comprehension. If we only teach them the knowledge and comprehension of whatever we're teaching them.
Eric Johnson (01:02:27)
Don't ask them to do the evaluation part and then get frustrated why they can't evaluate it. So that's all I have for today. Hopefully this was valuable to you. If you have any comments or if you are nodding along and saying, man, this is so relatable. I want to hear from you. I want to talk to people and hear their experiences. I always love hearing other people's experiences, how they learn, what they do, what they're doing.
Eric Johnson (01:02:53)
What works, what doesn't work, we are in this together, and that is why. And basically, the whole purpose of this podcast is to share experiences of the boiler industry so we can all get better. So I thank you for listening. If you have any questions, DM me on LinkedIn or email me, Eric.johnson at boilearn.com. I appreciate you all and stay wild.
