In Marc Ratcliffe's article in our August 2012 newsletter, "Four Fun Ways to Follow-up on Training Transfer," he mentions encouraging your training participants to email you with how they used some of the content they learned in training. "You could use an incentive such as access to a members' section, a free subscription to an online newsletter or enter them in a drawing to win a book," he writes.
We use that in our sessions at The Bob Pike Group, too. It's a great way for the trainer to see what information connected with the learners and hear about new ways participants adapted the information into their own training sessions.
When past participants email us about what they implemented, we then provide a link to one of our "fabulous, semi-valuable" prizes like an online timer they can download. It's simple, free and effective!
Because we receive some wonderful tips from our learners, we wanted to pass some of them onto you.
One trainer paired learners up and had them come up with one question on the roles and responsibilities they had. The question was then written on an index card and put on the wall. The whole group then "clumped" the questions together in topical groups. Questions that were off-topic went into "the duck pond." Other questions were either answered during the meeting or during the closer where all questions, including the duck pond questions, were reviewed.
Vibhuti Shah, a trainer at Duke, implemented the gallery walk. The Gallery Walk has small teams of participants creating flip charts with different topical information, such as "Ways to Use Twitter for Training." The flip charts are then hung on the wall around the room (using easily removable tape like painter's tape). Each small group then Gallery Walks each poster and reviews the content. Each group may also add their own additional thoughts to the poster. Vib also modified how she garnered questions from her participants. "I changed my style on asking, 'Does anyone have any questions?' to 'What questions do you have related to this?'"
And Tonia Brunson at United Airlines went all-out and tried a whole variety of new techniques at her next training including learning partners, which she said "worked great. I had them introduce themselves to their learning partners and think it made them feel more comfortable talking at least with them in other activities through Day One." She also switched up the classroom set-up by including kinesthetic manipulatives like smelly markers and toy hand clappers. "The class immediately commented on how fun the set-up looked," Brunson said. "I had them smell the markers and open their kits and look at everything for a few minutes."
How have you adapted, adopted and applied techniques from our workshops? Let us know at ezineeditor@bobpikegroup.com!
