Businesses can learn something from tutors. Most of us can't count the number of times we've been in an "orientation session" that felt like an experiment on our ability to stay awake with little or no sensory input for hours on end. Companies still present information as though they are teaching third grade lessons half a century ago, as though there's no other way to do things.

I ran across this article from the New York Times that compares the way tutors teach with the way companies try to teach, and the idea fascinated me. Imagine if you could look forward to an interactive session with your human resource representative when you started a new job. Maybe if you had a computer screen in front of you and you could go look up the company website and do a treasure hunt to find the menu for the cafeteria.

The problem is that most necessary information is boring. But wait, don't tutors have to teach boring information, too? Somehow, they manage to make it interesting. Here are some tips I gleaned from the article and from my own imagination:

- break up subjects so you cover less ground, but the student really gets the concept
- add role-playing as a teaching tool for groups of four or more
- have the students ask each other questions after information is presented to help them remember it (and wake up!)
- avoid using sleep-inducing words like "policies" and "procedures". Instead, use fun phrases like "rules of the road", or "how we do things here".