How to make training more engaging & interactive?

Hello Everyone,

I'm hoping this awesome group of people can help me identify ways in which to make my annual training more fun and interactive. Any proven icebreakers, activities or games that have worked for others? I'm all out of ideas, and looking to  increase engagement in trainings which will hopefully lead to better retention. 

Thanks,

CM

Hi CM,

I'd recommend this webinar, it has several ideas and suggestions relevant to your question:

https://www.ifsqn.co...-effective-r184

Personally I quite like to use real life case examples, these often surprise the attendees and gets them paying attention and interacting with questions. I.e. if covering hand washing, I'd mention a case when X people were ill in X year when 'Joe' from X company didn't wash his hands after using the toilet/bathroom. I used to have a slide on binary fission which was just text and I'd explain that in certain conditions bacteria can duplicate X times to reach X cells after X hours. I then re-did the slide using a cartoon image of an E.coli cell and usied the animation function on powerpoint to double the numbers every 20 minutes, and had a little clock in the corner reflecting time, so after several clicks the whole screen is covered with hundreds of little cells, and I'd mention general infective dose and symptoms of illness too. I found that the attendees had more attention and reaction when they could see the cells rapidly conquering the screen, rather than me just telling them "after X hours you have X cells". Hopefully this will have a clearer impact with them when they think about contamination and temperature control.

I second what zanorias says. Anything with interaction or participation is better than not. A lot of people, especially those who have not had experience attending (or being invested in) conferences and so on, have a hard time processing information aurally unless they are challenged in some way. Making that challenge fun and interactive is usually the best way to engage groups. For instance, for our quarterly fire extinguisher training, we have volunteers use out-of-date extinguishers to put out mock fires. (It always gets the crowd riled up). During our weekly meetings, I sometimes ask a random person to demonstrate a procedure or GMP. If they mess up, someone else has to correct them (nicely). 

Games help too. 

I'd like to add:

Get them a light lunch or donuts + coffee ! Free food is always a good idea to get them excited and engaged :)