Quick Tips for Corporate Training Programs
Increase Participation in Corporate Training Programs
In all of my Corporate Training Programs, I require participation from everyone in the session. When I announce this to the group at the beginning of a course, I get the typical moans and eye rolls from participants who had heard that before from other trainers—only to be lectured at for the remainder of their time together. The challenge in those other classes is that the trainer was giving only lip service to the idea of participation. If you want to increase participation in your courses, the trick is to actually want and welcome learner participation. If you are committed to increasing participation, here are a few tips that can help you:
1. Ask Questions: This may seem obvious, yet I’ve seen plenty of trainers avoid asking questions. If you want your learners to participate, give them an easy way to do so. Ask plenty of questions to get them involved with the content.
2. Use Relay Questions: When a learner asks you a question, is your first instinct to answer it? If so, practice using relay questions. The next time you are
asked a question, turn it around to everyone else in the group to hear how they might respond.
3. Stop Asking for Questions: All too often, I hear trainers ask, “Does anyone have any questions?” as a way to increase participation. In theory, this is a nice question; however, learners don’t always know what to ask. Instead of asking for questions, ask, “What are your reactions to this?” In many ways, it amounts to the same thing, yet it is broader than simply asking for questions.
4. Use Small Group Discussions: Some learners simply do not want to speak up in a large group—and that’s fine! You can still give them a chance to participate by having a brief discussion with their tablemates to think of examples, formulate a question, react to a statement, or conceive a rebuttal.
5. Use Reverse Reviews: As good trainers, we build frequent reviews into our programs (right?). Instead of having to do those reviews yourself, ask the learners to do the reviews. This serves the same purpose of your doing a review, yet it gives the learners another way to participate.
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Good suggestions. Today’s participant needs to be involved in the learning, and the material needs to be relevant, timely, and readily applicable back on the job or you will loose them. By timely I mean teach them the “must know”, not “nice to know” of the topic.
Every activity needs to be relevant to the topic.
Questions are important. One idea is to try for an OPEN MIKE session where folks can ask questions, or make comments about what they learned, what else they need to know. This seems less threatening then asking if participants have questions.
Finally, create time and exercises to debrief and reflect on the learning. It is important to discuss the application of the material back on the job.
If you are looking for a great design and development method for all of this refer to Accelerated Learning.
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My favorite way to involve the audience is to ask a question amd give a $10 bill to the person who answers it. Perks up the interest right away!
Wow! That’s impressive! I hope you have a large training budget!
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Great post Scott. You should also mention incorporating video, which makes training more engaging.