INFUSE ADVENTURE INTO YOUR TRAINING

Let’s plan an adventure!

Do you have any adventures planned this summer? Fun activities, new travels, exploring new places or meeting new people and being able to choose what you will do next is important as adults too! I wanted to give you some ideas here to help engage and excite your participants at your next training event, workshop or meeting.

They were so much fun…

Do you remember reading books where you could choose your own adventure? You would choose an element, and then you could flip forward to a different chapter to create your own story? Those books sparked a lot of joy in me as a child. I want to try to recreate that feeling for your participants and give you the tools to set yourself and your attendees up for success.

Many people find self-directed learning very helpful and they can pick the path that best suits their needs. They can pick from a menu of modules or videos and plan their own journey through your learning materials. There are also ways to infuse this adventure aspect or choice into live group training as well.

Some fun engagement tools to create an adventure.

There are many fun ways to build adventure and choices into your meeting.

Firstly, a simple way (if you’re not meeting in person) is to mail a box of goodies to your participants before the meeting that they can open up during your workshop. You can send 2 or more envelopes (or emails) that each contains a different scenario or case study and then have them choose as they go into different breakout rooms. You could also have them open the corresponding envelope, as they are randomly placed into breakout rooms (Room 1, they open envelope 1).

2. Another idea is to have your participants choose one object over another (let the majority rule here) and you can create a story, metaphor or analogy that will relate to each of them. That way your audience is choosing what they will learn from you at that time. Think about the learning experience journey as an adventure!

Spin the Wheel of Mystery.

3. If you have a series of lessons, you can add the topics into a picker wheel or wheel of names. This is a great tool for draws but can also be used to randomly choose the order of topics to teach your attendees. The wheel gives you the option to remove the topics as you have gone over them to keep them fresh and interesting.

4. Another way to do this is with an online poll so that your audience can choose the topic they most want to learn at that moment.

This does keep you on your toes and adds an element of interest for you as a facilitator as well. The adventure can be for your participants and yourself as a speaker or facilitator.

Build adventure into your slide presentation.

5. You can also add an adventure into your slide deck! Build in a skip logic option into your slide presentations (i.e. in PowerPoint). You have the ability to click on one icon and it will skip ahead to that portion of your presentation. Again, you can ask your participants to choose from a list in a poll or to comment and let the majority rule.

It really does make it more interesting when they have the ability to guide you on their learning journey. They will also learn more when they feel like they have control of making the decision to learn about what is most important to them. This is part of the best practices of adult learning.

Bonus Idea

6. Conversation Starter Cards, with questions you can use for icebreakers – you can also rename your breakout room with a short question.

What Adventure Tip will you start with?

I would love to hear from you! I’m curious to see what sparked your interest the most and where you will start. What adventure will you add to your lessons? (Please add a comment under the video on YouTube.) How will you design your learning experience? Is it a self-directed program or a live experience?

These five ideas will help you bring in the unknown adventure element and fun engagement. It can be a bit nerve-wracking not having a set agenda but if you’re prepared, you can create this wonderful element that is fun for you and your participants.

Hot Bonus Tip:

Having a toolbox of resources that you can pick from or books on hand that you can pull different activities from is a great idea. You can use these for icebreaker warmup group activities, your group can pick which one you’re going to lead that particular day.

Also, at the last minute a guest speaker doesn’t show up you have an option to choose an activity. You can continue a group conversation or you can have some things in your back pocket to pull out and fill in that time if you need it.

Video Tutorial: Infuse Adventure Into Your Training

Podcast

In case you missed it, here’s the previous blog post: How To Create Your YouTube Video as Unlisted

Author

Patricia Regier, MEd is the Online Expert who’s built a career on the belief that training and online learning doesn’t have to be boring. As Owner of Regier Educational Services and with a Master of Adult Education, Patricia is known for making her audience feel empowered, engaged, courageous and confident. Her debut book and keynote, The Online Shift teaches newcomers to the online space and seasoned professionals alike how to optimize their online presence and maximize engagement. She’s tried, tested and refined using the latest behavioral science, research and psychology to make sure your next online experience is a hit!