4 Tips To Turn Your Listeners Into Learners
Whether it's face-to-face training or live virtual training we want our learners LEARNING NOT LISTENING.
Here's 4 ideas to help move your learners from passive learners to active learners.
Idea 1 - Engage your learners every ...
Face-to-Face
ie every 7-minutes your learners need to do something. So if you would normally present a piece of content that lasts say 21-minutes, stop after each 6-7 minutes and say, "Take 1-minutes and ...
- Working with the person next to you, select the key point of what has just been presented."
- Working with someone not in your team, discuss if there is anything so far you feel you wouldn't be able to implement."
- Working with someone you haven't yet worked with, discuss how you would use these ideas in your own work."
Here you are not only breaking the content into bite-size pieces, but you're keeping the attention, involving learners AND adding movement.
Virtual
ie every 4-minutes your learners need to do something. This is to do with the Attentional Bias rather than the Hippocampus and the Reticular Activating System as in a face-to-face training. Every 4-minutes, pause and ask your learners to:
- Add something to the whiteboard or chat.
- Agree/Disagree with what you've said using their webcam and a thumbs Up/Down.
- Make notes on their handout.
- Share their key point so far via Chat.
- Share their thoughts so far with a partner in a breakout room (quickly create breakout rooms and automatically assign 2 participants to a room). Allow only 1-minute.
nb - if your learners are working collaboratively together in either environment eg group work or breakout rooms, there is no need to interrupt them, they are already active.
Idea 2 - Active Opening
Face-to-Face
Using teams of 4-5 learners:
Ask learners to take a sheet of flip chart paper, put the topic of the training in the middle and add everything they collectively know about the topic around the content title. Then ask them to use 3 postit notes and add three questions they'd like answered about the content.- Using flip chart paper, discuss and then add to the flip chart, the biggest challenge they feel they face when they need to use the content of training eg, when training, when presenting a product to a potential customer, when conducting an appraisal etc
- Create the training agenda in advance. Say to learners to take 3 post-it notes and that they will add these to the topics of most interest once you've explained them. Say that you will focus on topics with more votes and keep short those that don't have a lot of votes. Explain each topic. Ask learners to make their vote by adding their postit notes to their top 3 content pieces on the agenda.
Virtual
Let's see how the same 3 work in the virtual world.
- Using the Whiteboard or a pre-prepared slide, put
the topic of the training in the middle ask learners to add everything they
collectively know about the topic around the content title. Allow 2-3 minutes. Ask them to now add, one question they'd like answered about the content. - Ask learners to take 3-minutes and think about and add to a piece of paper, the biggest
challenge they feel they face when they need to use the content of
training eg, when training, when presenting a product to a potential
customer, when conducting an appraisal etc. After 3-minutes, ask learners to add their challenge to a pre-prepared slide or whiteboard. - Create the training
agenda in advance. Say to learners that they will need to add 3 annotations to the 3 topics of most interest to them once you've explained
them. Say that you will focus on topics with more votes and keep short
those that don't have a lot of votes. Explain each topic. Ask
learners to make their vote.
Idea 3 - Encourage Note Making
Face-to-Face
- Adding to the workbook. Make sure that you pause at regualr intivals and encourage learners to make notes on the key points for them.
- Ask learners to form teams of 4-5. Using a sheet of paper, list all the ways to ... (add something appropriate for your training) eg for trainers - ways you could review, for customer service - ways you could win over a frustrated customer, for sales - ways you could handle objections before they even arise etc. Ask one teams to share their ideas while other teams add ideas they missed to their list and then ask other teams to share ideas they have that haven't been mentioned.
- Frequently revisit an opening flip chart and add posit note 'How-to's' next to questions/challenges they had posed earlier. At the end of the training, they could take a picture of this with their smartphones.
Virtual
- Adding to the workbook/placemat. Make sure that you pause at regualr intivals
and encourage learners to make notes on the key points for them. - Create breakout rooms of 4-5 participants. Using a whiteboard or sharing PowerPoint, list all the
ways to ... (add something appropriate for your training) eg for
trainers - ways you could review, for customer service - ways you could
win over a frustrated customer, for sales - ways you could handle
objections before they even arise etc. Ask one teams to share their
ideas while other teams add ideas they missed to their list and then ask
other teams to share ideas they have that haven't been mentioned.
Using an envelope or mug, write key ideas on individual postit notes (or small pieces of paper) and add them to the envelope/mug. Remember to pause regularly and ask them to do this.
Idea 4 - Add Movement
Face-to-Face
- Work with a partner not in your team and ... **add the task**. This means they have to get up and move to find their partner.
- Put a flip chat sheet on the wall for each team. Say, "In a moment, not just yet, I'm going to ask you to (eg, list 10 key points so far, draw the flow chart for **your content**, draw an image that represents **your content** etc. Team one, your flip chart is there [point to it], team two, your flip chart is there **point to it** etc. Please all take a pen. The person in your team that will do the flipchart writing is the person in your team that is last to touch their flipchart paper - GO!"
- Set an exercise that might last 20-30 minutes. Suggest that small teams work outside of the room eg, coffee area, canteen, outside etc
Virtual
- At the start of the training say, "You'll need to find a clean bowl or mug and some postit notes (or small pieces of paper) - show yours. You have 1-minute to run and collect them then show us. GO!" After they show you, you can explain that this will be their ideas bank for keeping their discoveries.
- Say, "You have 2-minutes to go and find something that represents for you ... eg for trainers it might be something that represents action and something that represents boring, for sales it might be something that represents making a sale and something that represents losing a sale, for Managers it might be something that represents a teams working well and something that represents a team underperforming." When everyone is back, ask them to share their objects and why they symbolise the positive and negative of the content.
- Say, "Please make a note of the 3 key things for you so far - and I will ask someone to share theirs." Allow a minute or so. Ask everyone to turn on their webcam and show the gallery view of webcams on screen. Say, "The person to share their ideas, is the person that is [you demonstrate standing up as you say] LAST TO STAND UP". Ask that person to share their key ideas.
Call to Action
Next time you have a section in your training where your learners are simply listening - apply a strategy to get them actively involved with their learning.
