A meeting planner needs a team to bring the learning event to fruition. Suppliers should have been selected during the design phase as part of the Request for Proposal (RFP) process. Successful meetings result from working with vendors who are chosen based on - in addition to their capabilities and pricing - their willingness to see themselves not simply as florists, DMCs, or caterers, but as partners who will help create a seamless event.

From the participants' perspective, all elements of the meeting should work in harmony to provide a learning environment that engages them beyond the event itself. It is during the development phase that meeting professionals can ensure that will happen.

Treat Information Differently: Extend the Learning
In selecting topics and developing sessions, meeting planners should look beyond the timeframe for the meeting itself. Access to information is no longer dependent on traditional handouts distributed only during the hours of the meeting. You can expand the scope of topics and sessions in five ways:

• Develop pre-meeting activities that support the learning component, including a marketing campaign that provides just enough of the upcoming meeting's content to persuade potential participants that this is a must-attend event. "In our quest to continue to add value to our members, we have created pre- and post-touchpoints for our participants," said Deene Alongi, director of meetings & conferences for the American Planning Association. "During our Planners Training Services workshops, we encourage presenters to send out 'thought provokers' to participants. This sets the stage for an intense, interactive experience and allows participants to begin thinking about the topic before arriving to the event. Several workshops at our National Planning Conference feature homework assignments. We work with our speakers to allow participants to earn certification credit for post-meeting homework assignments. In addition to offering more value to our members, the post-meeting work sets the appropriate tone about the importance of ongoing education through the AICP [American Institute of Certified Planners] certification."
• Focus on building a community by creating ways for attendees to connect and share information before, during, and after the meeting. For example, this past July, PCMA held an International Study Day, which brought people together physically (in nine locations) and remotely (via a Webinar) to help them prepare for the CMP exam. The event created a community of people working toward the same goal and learning from each other. P.G.B. Morriss recognized the importance of this kind of engagement when he wrote, "the more people who take part in a convention, the more successful it will be. Notice these words 'taking part in' for this implies cooperation … and constructive participation."
• Create handouts that promote learning, not the usual reprinting of PowerPoint slides. Include tasks for participants to accomplish (individually or in groups) during the presentation, and provide space for them to write down their ideas.
• Provide access to resources, with a list of subject-matter experts, Web sites, articles, and books.
• Coach presenters to foster learning by making sure that they understand the meeting's goals and the demographics of participants. All presenters should view their role as learning conduits, acting as motivators (offering transformational learning) and guides (helping to transfer learning).

Learners Are Challenging to Reach: Give Them Opportunities to Engage
Optimal learning occurs when the learners partner with the presenter and connect with the material. When developing content and its delivery, keep in mind the following ways in which adults learn best:

• Discovery Learning - Allow participants to discover information for themselves, rather than explicitly telling them. Another example of this is question-based learning, in which participants are challenged to unlock the answer to a question themselves rather than being told. Consider making a quiz-show format or trivia game part of the session.
• Problem-solving Learning - Skip the generalized explanations and go straight to a series of tasks or problems that participants find relevant and applicable to their roles.
• Immersive Learning - Develop learning environments that are similar or identical to situations in which the material will be applied in the future.
• Experiential Learning - Provide opportunities for participants to "do it themselves" by testing conclusions and hypotheses on their own and in groups.
• Collaborative Learning - Create learning environments in which people work in pairs or larger groups, tutor each other, and share information.
• Tailored Learning - Recognize that audiences are very diverse in terms of their learning styles, generations, and experience level. A novice needs to be familiar with the basics and conceptual understanding. An apprentice needs foundation skills and practice. A seasoned professional needs to keep up with changes in his or her discipline. A master needs to recognize when it's time to innovate. When you develop educational offerings, offer tracks that enable people to approach a topic from their particular level of experience. And recognize that learning is a fundamentally social activity, supported by informal learning opportunities at every level.

Match the Delivery Method to Content
Don't teach bowling from a textbook. Match the delivery method to the content. Some of the best learning experiences incorporate local culture and unique venues to link "context" to "content." An experiential education program gives participants the chance to get outside their everyday perspective and see their role in a different light. In the L(earn)2 Save the Titanic program, participants don sailors' hats and lifejackets to help them create the context of dealing with the complex challenge of the Titanic sinking. "Participants appreciate any form of participation and remember the content much longer because of the context," said Doug Bolger, chief l(earn)ing officer for L(earn)2. "If you want people to learn and remember, then engage them in a powerful, memorable context."

Today's adult learners don't expect to learn solely from speakers, presenters, and subject-matter experts. Audiences who attend meetings today share the belief that the person sitting next to them in a darkened ballroom is as interesting as the speaker on stage. Open up your meeting agenda to provide enough time for valuable informal learning opportunities in which your participants interact with each other.

With information overload the norm, planners are challenged to create access to information that is current, relevant, pertinent, meaningful, and reliable. Beyond that, participants realize more value when content is dynamic and not predictable, and when the learning environment fosters discovery and harvesting of information.

Ultimately, all learners will evaluate a learning experience based on whether it allowed them to:

• acquire knowledge
• increase their comprehension
• break down the material into parts, identify and examine motives or causes, make inferences, and find evidence to support generalizations
• synthesize by applying prior knowledge and skills to produce a new or original thought
• apply the information.

Meetings as an Experience: Create Multi-Sensory Learning Environments
Great learning environments seamlessly integrate the learner, technology, and information by addressing the following areas:

• Physiological - Beyond being able to see and hear what is going on at the meeting, participants need a comfortable environment. For example, it has been found that attention spans decrease six to 10 percent for every degree the temperature goes above the comfort zone.
• Psychological - The arrangement and lighting of the room have a major impact on participants' concentration. Your eyes burn more calories in the average day than your legs (not too surprising when you consider their exhaustive daily cycle of shutting down when exposed to brightness and opening up in dim conditions, over and over again, a million times each day). Consider how the lighting will affect your meeting participants' level of alertness.
• Emotional - Associations forged by words, attitudes, situations, and examples can impede or aid the process.
• Social/Cultural - The seed is often planted in the formal presentation; the learning comes from networking, discussing, and interacting outside the session during refreshment breaks, luncheons, team-building exercises, or other group activities.
• Nutrition - Foods and beverages consumed by the learner prior to and during learning activities have a remarkable effect on their attention span and ability to learn and remember.
• Physical - The physical arrangement of the learning space can encourage participation or be a distraction, conveying a clear but nonverbal message about the learners' relationships with each other and the leadership.
• Technology - It shouldn't be about the "wow" factor, but instead should help drive home the meeting's message.
• Learning Strategies - The programming must be appropriate to the message being communicated, the environment created, and the desired outcomes. Regardless of the learning strategies employed - lectures, panel discussions, or nature hikes - they must fit together as a package.

Make the Environment Part of the Experience
C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy clearly identify the importance of the environment as part of the experience in their book The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers, using Starbucks as an example: "Contextual elements such as store location, interior design, lighting, product options and recorded music creatively combine to let patrons relax, read, chat with friends or savor the moment. While [Starbucks] stages the broad context through its experience environment, it also provides the scope for individuals to define their own contexts, and enjoy different kinds of Starbucks experiences. Some enjoy rearranging the furniture to suit a particular group gathering, others relish the flavor and aroma of specific coffee blends, still others simply like the convivial atmosphere, a social milieu that provides companionship, or a place for quiet reflection.

Starbucks recognizes that the creative combination of products, employees and consumer communities shapes the experiences of individuals." Starbucks creates a positive, harmonious environment using all elements within their stores, while allowing individuals to shape their experience. In the same way, a meeting planner must balance the collective group experience with the need for individualization to create extraordinary learning environments.

Lighting the Way

You can create a welcoming environment and transform a room with lighting. But lighting is not only important for aesthetic reasons; it affects learning, by: 

• Influencing attentiveness - Studies in academic settings demonstrate a positive correlation between daylight and performance. Lighting is measured by footcandles, or fc's. We are accustomed to the light intensity available during the day (approximately 500 fc on a dreary day and up to 10,000 fc on a sunny day). Compare this to the light intensity of artificial light (between 1 and 10 fc). Fatigue caused by too little light is generally experienced as tiredness rather than eye fatigue.
• Creating a mood - Lighting can overwhelm people if it's too intense; it can create a feeling of uneasiness if it's too dim. Proper lighting can ensure that the space is more functional. Lighting needs fall into three buckets: task, ambient, and functional.
• Supporting branding or messaging - Gobos (shapes cut into circular plates to create patterns of projected light) can project company logos; special lighting can support speakers, add drama, bring added recognition to your sponsors, or otherwise differentiate elements of the meeting. 

Sue Tinnish is principal, SEAL Inc., which focuses on improving the content of meetings for associations and corporations. She is director of the Accepted Practice Exchange (APEX) program.

Glen C. Ramsborg, Ph.D., is senior director, education, PCMA.

The How Adults Learn, Now series is sponsored by the Hiltons of Chicago, www.hiltonfamilychicago.com