When teaching others new skills, don’t stop with merely transferring knowledge. Instead, provide a means or tool to put that knowledge to work! This makes it MUCH easier for people to apply the learnings.

One of the mistakes experts often make is to do a brain dump, then leave. But usually, your brain dump buries learners in details that quickly become a useless mess.

Create a tool! A checklist, flow chart (i.e. “if that happens, do this…”) a storyboard (think of the “in the unlikely event of an emergency landing…” card in the seat pocket in front of you), etc.

Below, I’m including a link to the “How Should I Research _____?” tool on my website. This is one form of reference material students can refer to after my class.

Use it to help facilitate productive conversations about your research, ascertain which methods are most appropriate to answer different research questions, identify the best approach(s), and or jump start your planning before speaking with your team.

One more tip… don’t just develop a tool and forget it. I constantly update and improve my tools, based on user feedback. For example, the glossary in this tool is a WIP. It includes the 100 terms we're defining through my current crowdsourcing project.