DIY Visual Thinking School

Visual thinking school, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

Visual Thinking School (VTS) is a two-hour time slot that XPLANE sets aside each week, specifically for our teams to improve their visual thinking skills.

You can set up and run your own "DIY" version, either at work or at home. Here's how:

The trick is to remember that visual thinking is a holistic skill that involves training the eye, mind and body. The "XPLANE way" is evolving constantly -- most XPLANERs probably learn and try something new at least once a week.

You don't need to be an expert to run visual thinking workshops. Instead of thinking of yourself as a teacher, think of yourself as a learning director. Learning, as opposed to teaching, can be largely self-directed and is usually about a person trying to figure out a way to achieve a goal.

You don't need to be a teacher as much as a goal-setter. Once you have set learning objectives, you can have your team design learning activities themselves.

You could try rotating ownership of VTS to a different person each week.

Give the "VTS owner" a training goal and let them design the session. They can then make calls to subject-matter experts or do some research to fill in any gaps in their knowledge.

You will be amazed at what results you can get with that approach.