Page 244 - The Creative Training Idea Book Inspired Tips and Techniques for Engaging and Effective Learning

lucas chap 07 11/20/02 12:29 PM Page 233
Engaging and Energizing Learners 233
time for each segment than to cram a great deal of information into a time frame
that is too short to allow processing.
• Provide the tools and support learners’ need to be successful.
Keep in mind that one of your primary roles in a session is to facilitate the
exchange of information and knowledge and to help participants learn.
• Encourage success.
Take time throughout the session to provide positive feedback on learner perform-
ance. Using small rewards can also help in this area.
• Hold an end of activity review.
In addition to using periodic interim reviews during a session, build in a thorough
review of session objectives at the end of a program. Also, point out how they were
addressed.
• Conduct a follow-up discussion.
Take time after every activity to answer questions and to facilitate mental bridging
from the classroom to the workplace. This helps ensure all learners “get it” and
know how potentially to apply what was learned.

PUTTING YOUR BRAIN TO WORK: ACTIVITY

When you attend training sessions, what strategies have you seen used to excite participants and get them
involved?

In what ways do you think that you can generate learner enthusiasm in future sessions that you facilitate?

LEARNER-CENTERED ACTIVITIES

To engage and energize your participants effectively, you must build a variety of learner-
centered activities into each of your sessions. As you read in other chapters, participants
learn and retain more when they are an active part of the learning process. Such involve-
ment can be the result of individual and/or group activity. In whatever format, involve-
ment can lead to more confident, independent, and self-managed learners. Later in this
chapter I will outline a variety of group activities and energizers that I use to accomplish
this in my sessions and that you can also use to stimulate, motivate, and foster an enjoy-
able learning environment.
As Carla Hanaford 29 stresses, “To ‘pin down’ a thought, there must be movement. A
person may sit quietly to think, but to remember a thought, an action must be used to