The problem, the association discovered, was that the education was lacking — not so much in its content, but in the way it was being delivered. “We learned that, to our attendees, the expertise in the audience was as important, if not more important, than the expertise of the people sitting on the dais,” says Wilkins. “So we looked at how adults learn and applied these adult-learning principles to our meeting.” The result has been packed sessions and attendance increases year over year.

It sounds pretty simple, but the truth is, most associations rely on lectures and talking heads instead of what the educational research shows to work best when it comes to educating adults: interaction, role-playing, and peer-to-peer dialogue. While lectures do have their place — most notably, when you just want to impart information, not necessarily spur attendees to act on what they learn — that's not the world we live in today. As Suzanne Murray, president, Axdev Global, a Norfolk, Va.-based management consulting firm, says, “Years ago, the focus was on what you knew — the more knowledge you had, the more degrees, the better. Now it's shifted to not just what you know, but how are you applying it — the performance.”

Times have changed in other ways as well. Technology is rapidly making education a commodity via the Internet and e-learning applications, companies are more cognizant than ever before about getting results for the bucks they spend sending employees to a conference, and the new generations entering the workforce expect hands-on learning and lots of multimedia.

With these changes come opportunities — for those up to the challenge. “We have some tremendous opportunities to incorporate a greater variety of learning formats, shifting from presenting information to facilitating dialogue and learning, and balancing the content knowledge of presenter with the practical life experiences and the wisdom of the people in the room,” says Jeffrey Cufaude, founder of Idea Architects, an Indianapolis-based meeting consulting firm.

Time to Change Your Perspective

“Meetings, it would appear, are designed to mirror the look and feel of the worst high school or college experience,” says Joan Eisenstodt, chief strategist, Eisenstodt Associates, Washington, D.C. “You're in a huge lecture hall listening to someone drone on, and there's not enough time for real discussion.” Adds educator, consultant, and attorney Tyra Hilliard, Esq., CMP: “Rarely do you see people focusing on education from the learners' point of view. Just delivering the topic is not education — it's got to be received. You can have the world-renowned expert speaking on the hottest topic in the world and it may still fall flat — it still may not reach the audience if you're not integrating adult-learning principles.”

Generally, the more actively adults are engaged in an educational sessions, the more they learn, because they are tapping into the experience and knowledge of their peers. “Adults have a lot of experience and professionals are very intelligent people and therefore can frequently problem-solve just by the peer-to-peer, interactive, engaged, dialogue,” or self-directed exercises, says Hilliard. The “expert” should be more like the “guide on the side,” providing insight and expertise, but also facilitating discussion, encouraging ideas, and offering feedback. “That's interactivity at its best,” she says. (See sidebars on page 18 and 22 for more on adult-education principles.)

Exercise Their Right Brains

Aside from the fact that lectures don't allow for interactive learning, they also don't appeal to the portion of the population who are right-brain thinkers, people who are more visual, creative, subjective, and holistic in the way they think, says Eisenstodt. “Meetings are designed for left-brain people — people who are more logical, analytical, and subjective. But research shows that right-brain thinking is going to really make people do better work,” she says, referring to a book by Dan Pink (www.danpink.com) called A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Quite frankly, educators say, association meetings are a left-brain world in need of some right-brain thinking. And some associations are hearing that message. For example, the American Academy of Audiology took a right-brained turn by employing a creativity coach to work with presenters both before the meeting, via a Web training session, and on site in the presenters room. The coach provided feedback on presentation techniques, not content, and suggested ways to engage learners and make ideas more visual, adding “a few right-brain ideas to the left-brain facts,” says Cheryl Kreider Carey, interim executive director at the association.

Here is how three other associations incorporated adult-education models — with some sometimes unexpected results.

Case 1: Listen to Your Learners

The only way to know for sure what will reach your audience is to ask them, as the Council on Foundations did via a member survey. The survey showed that respondents felt there were too many “talking heads,” that the sessions tried to cover too much ground, and that they had just as much experience as the expert. In short, they wanted a little less talk and a little more interaction. While about half of the attendees said they came primarily for the networking, the other half came for the education. The time had come to marry education with networking to revitalize their increasingly empty sessions.

For starters, COF limited each session to 90 minutes, with at least 45 minutes set aside for audience interaction. “We don't mean just Q and A,” says Wilkins. The interactive sessions could be small table discussions of an issue thrown out by the presenter, or case studies that invite feedback from the attendees. If it's a panel discussion, sessions are limited to no more than two panelists, plus a moderator.

This is a concept that Cufaude calls “concentrated” content. “A lot of presenters just pour content over the participants and there's no time to do anything else,” he says. But concentrated content is key ideas, insights, or assertions put forth by the presenter as a catalyst for engaging attendees in conversation and interactive exercises.

The Council on Foundations also developed an online tool that walks session designers through the requirements mentioned above. “It shows them exactly what it takes to get a session at our conference,” says Wilkins. They will work with the designers and presenters on ways to make the sessions interactive, and they require presenters to provide resources — either handouts or post-session resources — so attendees don't have to worry about taking notes.

Since networking and learning were equally important to COF members, Wilkins built in time for open-space sessions — informal sessions without moderators where attendees lead the discussions. “We apply open space in different ways,” says Wilkins. It could be time set aside in a particular session, she says, kind of an “open mic” portion where people can throw out topics from the floor and mingle and discuss them. They also build open-space sessions into the program, blocking out rooms where people show up to discuss a pre-determined topic.