Data on Why CTA Uses Live Audio Classes
Why CTA Uses Live Audio Classes
Give your attention to the conversation.
Coaching begins with listening: to what someone says, how they say it, and what they want to understand or change. CTA’s live audio format makes that listening a central part of your learning.
You participate with your facilitator and classmates through discussion, coaching experiences, and feedback. Supporting readings, exercises, and recordings give you ways to prepare and revisit your learning.
Notice more in the person’s words and voice.
Without a video image to watch, you can practice attending closely to:
- The words and phrases a client chooses.
- Changes in tone, pace, and emphasis.
- Pauses and moments of silence.
- Your own urge to interrupt, offer advice, or prepare the next question.
These are invitations to be curious, not clues to interpret as facts. You learn to check your understanding with the client.
Connect what you learn with something you can do.
You bring life experience, established habits, and your own reasons for learning to coach. CTA’s approach gives you opportunities to connect new ideas with that experience.
You prepare with course materials, discuss what you’re learning, try it in coaching conversations, and reflect on feedback.
Audio classes are one part of that process. Written resources, practical exercises, and coaching between sessions help you build understanding through different activities.
“I’m noticing how much I still have to learn.”
You may begin training feeling comfortable helping people, then notice how often you give advice, interrupt, or steer a conversation. That new awareness can feel uncomfortable.
A useful learning framework calls this conscious incompetence: recognizing a skill you haven’t yet developed. The phrase describes a learning experience, not a judgment about your ability or potential.
Noticing gives you something specific to practice. With feedback and repeated experience, you can make more deliberate choices and gradually become more comfortable using your skills. You don’t have to sound polished to begin learning.
What neuroscience and learning research add
Adults can continue developing new skills. Research on neuroplasticity shows that the adult brain remains capable of adapting with learning and experience. Developing a skill takes practice; hearing an explanation is only a beginning.
Returning to learning helps it become more usable. Learning research supports practice spread over time and recalling ideas from memory. Explaining a concept in your own words and applying it in a later session are useful ways to revisit learning.
Attention is part of the design. An audio format removes the need to monitor your camera image or other people’s video tiles. CTA uses that opportunity to focus practice on listening and conversation.
These findings inform the learning approach. They do not establish that audio is the best format for every person or every learning task.
Research background: adult brain plasticity and learning ; spaced retrieval practice ; proposed contributors to video fatigue .
Try listening with one intention.
In your next conversation, let the other person finish before planning your response. Notice a word or phrase that seems important, then check your understanding.
“You mentioned feeling stuck. What does ‘stuck’ mean for you?”
Nothing to submit. Just notice what changes when you give the conversation more room.
A foundation for different coaching settings.
Listening, curiosity, and checking your understanding are useful in phone, video, and in-person conversations. Each setting also brings its own considerations.
You don’t need to plan an audio-only coaching practice to learn through audio classes. Consider whether the format fits your learning and access needs, and ask Lisa about anything you’d like to understand.
Have a question about learning through audio? Email Lisa in Admissions
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