There are many reasons why it is important to make training interactive:
- people start to lose energy and focus when they sit still
- people learn better when they interact with you and each other
- people need to process what they hear and do something with it
- people need to practise skills, not just talk about them
- people learn more from doing and discovering rather than being told
There are other reasons but I won’t go into all of them now. My main point today is that you can rarely, if ever, make a training session TOO interactive.
I can remember several training courses I’ve prepared in the past when I’ve been concerned, looking through the outline of the day, that there wasn’t enough activity. One thing I suggest you do when designing training is to go through the day, or the session, and think about what the learners are doing at each stage – are they sitting listening or are they moving about, talking in groups, working in pairs, solving a problem, being creative…?
On occasion, I’ve done this and thought, ” I’m not sure this is active enough. “ And, to be honest, sometimes I haven’t had time to change things, I’ve just thought, ” I’ll deal with it on the day if I need to. ”
And I’ve always been right. Whenever I’ve had that doubt, I’ve always ended up at some point during the day thinking, ” I’m talking too much, I need to get them doing something. “ There’s always plenty of room for discussion, but sometimes that’s not enough. People need to be moving around and doing more.
Fortunately, I have enough experience that I can usually introduce some relevant activity when it’s needed, even if I haven’t prepared something specific beforehand.
But, on those occasions, I’ve always made a note to myself to try and make sure it doesn’t happen again. My rule of thumb would be – if in doubt, add an activity.
Two warnings, though.
Firstly, the activity has to be relevant and have a specific purpose. You need to be clear about the learning outcome from the activity, what will people gain from it, how will it help?
Secondly, make sure you allow time to debrief it. People need to think about what they’ve done and discuss it to make sure the key learning points are drawn out. You shouldn’t just rush from one activity to another.
But, with those caveats, I still think you can’t go far wrong if you make sure people are active and involved as much as possible and you cut down the time you spend talking.
At the very least, if you start to feel you’re hearing too much of your own voice, immediately split people into pairs or small groups and give them a point to discuss or ask them to draw a flip chart summarising what they’ve learned so far. It will be a useful review and it will add energy to the session.
