How many times have you daydreamed during training?
How many times has your attention shifted and you were thinking about what you will be cooking at dinner or what’s your to-do list for the evening?
It happened to me in in-person but also at online training. If the trainer does not know how to keep the learners engaged, it is absolutely normal that they find something else to do.
There are many ways how to avoid this, for example making things different or others that you find in Sharon Bowman's book (resources).
The Power of Paper
🖊️ Writing Stimulates Memory: Learners remember what they write, not necessarily what you write. Writing activates parts of the brain that aren’t used when learners simply listen or read. When learners write, their brain stores the information differently so that is more accessible later.
🖊️ Writing is Kinesthetic: Leaners remember because they write. It is the physical act of moving a pen across a page that makes writing a better learning strategy than listening alone. The movement stimulates the brain and the senses. The conversation between the brain and the hand helps cement the learning.
🖊️ Writing is Visual-Spatial: Learners remember where they write. They get a mental picture of the location of specific bits of information on a piece of paper: top, bottom, side, middle. The addition of visual cues such as color, graphics, and fill-in-the-blanks will create mental images of the content, making it even more memorable. But learners have to do the writing, not you.
🖊️ Writing Grabs Attention: It’s almost impossible for learners to write one thing while thinking about another. When the human brain is involved in writing, it has to think about the writing, at least until the writing is finished. That is not the case when listening.
But what can you do to use writing more in your sessions?
🎲Rapid Reflection: this is my preferred one. Because we learn from reflecting not from experiences. Second, we need silence time for ourselves from time to time. A lot of people have the main psychological need for solitude or simply to hear their thoughts in silence instead of while talking. And this is a perfect way to do this.
🎲Data hunt: whenever printed data is important for the learners to read, find ways for them to interact with it. They don’t need to do the same kind of interaction each time. One example here: print out concepts and their titles separately. Ask them to read them and match the titles with the concepts. Then highlight the two of them that are easier for them to remember and explain them to another person. You literally don’t need a PowerPoint anymore for this.
🎲 Three Card Draw: use index cards during or at the end of the training like this:
card 1: What? What have you learned about this topic?
card 2: So What? Why is this information important to you?
card 3: Now What? What is one way you might use this information?
One-phrase summary:
Learners remember what they write, not necessarily what you write. The conversation between the brain and the hand helps cement the learning. Try out using it in your sessions more and you will see the difference!
Resources:
Book: “Using brain science to make training stick” by Sharon Bowman
I am “cooking” a new on-demand training:
Facilitation - neuroscience behind - a 3h online session where I would explain some neuroscience principles I use in most of my workshops in order to create brain-based workshops that are universally applied independent of culture, industry, etc.