I’ve posted a series of classroom training tips over the years. This is a collection of ideas from my decades of facilitating training sessions. These suggestions are all based on my experience facilitating sessions and are shared here to help you address the same challenges I’ve faced.
- I feel like my icebreakers are a waste of time! Icebreaking activities and energizers should always be de-briefed, or else they’re just wasting participants’ valuable time.
- I can’t tape my flip chart pages to the wall! Sometimes as trainers we face practical issues like “how do I attach things to the walls?”
- My participants are anxious and unfocused! Use coloring books to help calm the mind and encourage focus.
- I get awkward silences when I ask a question. What do you do when your question doesn’t land? Silence is deafening and can destroy your confidence.
- Participants don’t want to do role play and they’re awkward. Participants and facilitators may balk at the idea of role play. But what if it could be effective?
- Participants are losing focus during small group time. How can we keep people motivated to stay focused and productive during these long stretches?
- I run out of time during my training. Your design is great and is timed out but sessions don’t ever stay on track.
- Participants can’t hear me. How many of us have said that we talk loud enough that we don’t need the microphone?
De-briefing an Icebreaker
When I led workshops with professionals in the foster care system, I would often use an icebreaking activity that required participants to close their eyes and, as a group the participants were given instructions to count up to 15. However, if two (or more) participants spoke at the same time, they would have to start all over. This is a surprisingly difficult challenge, and after about 5 minutes of counting, re-starting, and counting again, I allowed participants to open their eyes. This made the challenge a little easier, and after one or two more attempts, most groups would be able to count from 1 to 15 without two or more participants speaking up at the same time.
Once this activity was completed, I simply asked: what do you think this activity has to do with the foster care system? It got participants thinking and offering all sorts of answers. The answers participants offered during this icebreaking activity were then referred to over and over again throughout the remainder of the multi-day session.
When I led youth leadership conferences, I watched in awe as a colleague held the attention of 50 6th and 7th grade students packed onto a tour bus, rolling through the streets of Washington, DC, with this simple activity:
“Right now, we’re driving by the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on the left-hand side of the bus. There is a frozen yogurt machine in the center of the building. Do any of you know why there is a frozen yogurt machine in the center of the building?”
The students began to shout out answers such as:
- “President Reagan loved jelly beans. Maybe they have jelly bean-flavored frozen yogurt.”
- “Frozen yogurt is supposed to be healthier than ice cream. Maybe it’s an ironic commentary on President Reagan’s nutrition program. Reagan tried to label ketchup as a vegetable.”
Whether the activity is counting while having your eyes closed or coming up with reasons that a frozen yogurt machine would be located in a federal building or something equally as stimulating, simply asking participants to attempt to connect the activity to the topic at hand can lead to conversations that are fun and relevant.
You can download our list of 50 debriefing questions by training intent to help with all types of training debriefs.
When You Can’t Tape Things To The Wall
Some hotels and other meeting space venues don’t allow you to use tape on the walls, which generally rules out the ability to post flipcharts around the room. Several years ago I stumbled upon a solution to this.
Flipchart-sized plastic sheets that can serve as a cross between a white board and a flipchart have been a savior for me on several occasions. They stick to the wall using the power of static cling – no tape, no irritated conference facility staff.
As much as I love Mr. Sketch markers, they actually are one of the worst things you can use when you write on these plastic sheets. You’ll need to use either dry erase markers or something extremely permanent (like chisel-tipped Sharpies).
Bringing a package of these along takes a little extra space in the suitcase, but they’ve helped me look prepared on several occasions. I’ve used these sheets in training sessions and with team members and executives during last-minute strategy meetings while on the road.
Help Participants Focus
One of the times that I attended the Association for Talent Development Puget Sound (ATDps) chapter’s annual workplace learning conference I noticed something a little different when I walked into the general session.
On each table there was a container with colored pencils, and sprinkled across the tables were various postcard-sized coloring pages. Adult coloring books are kind of “in” these days, and I thought this was a novel alternative to table toys or other objects typically put on tables to give people something to do while listening to speakers.
Before the opening keynote took to the stage, Andrea Koehler of The Coloring Project offered several words of welcome, saying that these coloring cards offered people a way to calm their minds and allow them to focus.
I was a little skeptical of this claim – particularly around being better able to focus on the speaker – based on my own experiences. When I steal my children’s paper placemats and crayons at a restaurant in order to color while waiting for our food to come, I find myself paying less attention to what’s going on around me and more attention on whether I want to use orange or yellow or red (or maybe green, as if it’s a different planet!) to color the sun on the children’s place mat drawing.
I decided to check to see if there was any research on the idea that coloring can help calm our learners’ minds. I came across this study on art therapy published in 2012 entitled The Influence of Art Making on Anxiety: A Pilot Study. This research followed two groups of students a week prior to their final exams. The students who engaged in art-making activities were found to be less stressed than their control group counterparts.
Ok, so maybe there is something to the calming effect of art. After all, when stress goes down, the chance for learning (and retention) of information goes up.
I like the idea of providing cards for our learners to color, but I’ll place a caveat on this idea. This study followed students who engaged in art-making activities outside of the course of actually learning. They were allowed to focus their attention wholly on coloring or painting or sculpting clay. They weren’t trying to learn at the same time.
If placing coloring cards on the tables for your next training session is an idea that’s running through your mind right now, I’d recommend ordering custom cards so that they feature key words or concepts from your workshop. For example, if you’re training people on adult learning principles, perhaps you could have cards made up with words like “learn by doing” or “solve a problem” written on them.
The cards we were given at the ATDps conference were provided by The Coloring Project, which does indeed offer custom orders.
Avoiding an Awkward Silence
It’s early on in the training session and it’s time to get some thoughts from the audience. You pose a question and you wait for the answers to come streaming out. But nobody raises their hand. There’s silence.
Like an auctioneer, you scan the audience for any possible movement. And you continue to find nothing but lonely, uncomfortable silence. Your question simply plopped.
Should you call on someone? Should you just give the answer?
I don’t like either of those options. I like to ask people to turn to the person next to them and discuss their thoughts on the question. Once they do this and the ice is broken and there is some energy in the room and people have obviously come up with some thoughts and answers to my question, then I’ll bring it back to the large group and ask for someone to respond.
The “plop” is never fun, but it happens. In a large room, it’s easy to not volunteer an answer, it’s easy to hide among the rest of the participants. When participants are asked to pair off, it’s much more difficult to remain silent. And once the silence is broken, it’s much easier to find answers when you come back to the large group.
Effective Role Play
What better way to make your audience squirm and moan than by announcing that your next activity will be a role play?
While role playing can be an essential element to skill building and providing meaningful feedback to training participants, too many role playing activities are poorly designed, ambiguous, and can go on forever and/or end too easily and too happily.
The biggest weakness I’ve observed in the design of role playing activities is that only one person is generally given instructions (because that is the person being observed) – everyone else is expected to simply go with the flow. My favorite way to design a role play is to provide everyone in the scenario with a specific set of instructions so that the scenario remains focused and isn’t too easy to resolve.
For example, if the purpose of a role playing scenario is to demonstrate effective feedback-giving skills, I might provide the person who is supposed to provide feedback with an observation form along with instructions to provide feedback to a person who isn’t quite ready to facilitate a lesson in front of a group.
At the same time, I’d provide a separate set of instructions to the person receiving feedback. These instructions could simply be a list of bulleted points, but at least this person would have a better feel for the role she should play and the type of resistance she should offer during the role play. Her instructions may look like this:
You are about to receive feedback about whether or not you will be deemed qualified and proficient in providing facilitation services to groups at your organization. Keep the following points in mind as you receive feedback:
- You may wish to ask your evaluator his/her qualifications to “deem” anyone qualified and proficient
- Pay close attention to what the evaluator is telling you – nodding at any feedback that is affirming and shaking your head in disagreement at any feedback that may seem critical, but do not say anything to the evaluator unless you are asked to speak.
- If you are deemed qualified and proficient, you will be in the position for a promotion and a raise
- If you are not deemed qualified and proficient, you may be stuck in your current role and routine, which you’ve been doing for the past 7 years… and you will do anything (within reason) to move away from your current role!
While role plays should not be scripted verbatim, providing additional structure and information for everyone involved can help make the situation more real, thus creating a more effective learning experience.
Keep Small Working Groups Focused
I had an opportunity to collaborate with another organization on a workshop in which we had participants develop an 80-item rubric designed to evaluate the competence of eye care professionals.
A big chunk of the time we set aside for this workshop was to have small groups work for 90-120 minute periods of time on rubric development. That’s a long time to request small groups to hunker down and focus on a repetitive, sometimes tedious task. As we designed the workshop, we kept asking ourselves: how can we keep people motivated to stay focused and productive during these long stretches?
This is one of my favorite classroom training tips of all time because of how well it worked and the collaborative nature of the solution. Our solution was a simple visual aid, a sort of progress thermometer. Every time a group completed a portion of their rubric, they could grab a marker and fill in a portion of their thermometer.
At first, participants were a bit hesitant to grab a marker and fill in a portion of the thermometer. Then they found it a useful way to track their progress. Eventually it turned into a bit of a competition over who could complete more rubric components more quickly (we designed several quality checkpoints into the lesson plan to ensure quality wasn’t sacrificed for speed).
In the end, these flipchart-based visual aids turned out to be a wildly successful way to track progress and keep participants motivated through long stretches of small group work.
Have you found other methods to keep individuals or small groups motivated when you’ve asked them to spend long chunks of time on repetitive or tedious tasks? Let’s hear your best ideas in the comment section!
I always run out of time
You put together an amazing design and your audience is completely engaged. They’ve been participating throughout the session. They’re loving it. You’re loving it. There’s only one problem.
You still have about 30 minutes of material left to present. And you only have 5 more minutes remaining in your session.
Getting through your complete lesson requires time management on two fronts:
- Time management for the facilitator(s)
- Time management for the participants
Facilitator Time Management
As the facilitator, there are two points in time that are essential to your time management: 1. the planning stage and 2. the delivery.
During the planning, it’s a good idea to use a lesson plan in which you can estimate the amount of time you should spend on any given activity. While some activities may take a little more (or a little less) time than you’ve estimated, you’ll know that if you want to get through your entire lesson, there shouldn’t be much variance from your initial plan. Sometimes it’s difficult to estimate the time it will take to complete an activity, which is why it’s also a good idea to do a rehearsal in order to refine your time estimates.
During the delivery, it’s helpful to have a clock someplace in the room. If there’s not a clock, then your watch or your mobile phone will do. You’ll want to take your watch off or take your mobile phone out of your pocket and put it someplace where you’ll be able to check it discreetly. If you get caught looking at your watch or pulling your mobile phone out of your pocket to check the time too often, your audience may feel you’re not very interested in them.
Participant Time Management
Breaking participants up for small group discussions, role plays, skills practice or other small group work is the best way to engage your audience and ensure they’re “getting it.” However, this requires giving up some control. It also requires active monitoring on the part of a facilitator to ensure the group is on task. Giving clear instructions and a clear time limit are key pieces to successful small group work.
If the participants are not clear on how much time they’ve been given to complete the task or if they’re unclear on how much time remains to complete the task, small group activities can last much longer than you’ve budgeted in your lesson design.
When I break the audience up into small groups, I always show the audience exactly how much time they have for their work by using a Mega Timer placed conspicuously at the front of the classroom or by using an online countdown timer that can be displayed on the projection screen.
Just Use The Mic
“Can everyone hear me? Good. I’m not going to use the mic, then.” This is how a recent presentation that I attended began. It was a mistake.
The larger the training room, the worse are the acoustics and the ability to hear a person speak, regardless of how loud of a “presentation voice” a presenter may think he has. Using a microphone isn’t about the presenter’s comfort level or personal preferences, it’s about improving the learner experience. This is the classroom training tip that I find most facilitators struggle with.
Even if the audience can hear a presenter speaking at the top of his lungs, it doesn’t mean they can hear the presenter well. Straining to hear a presenter can distract from the audience’s ability to easily process the information that’s being presented.
The next time you find yourself in a large room and someone offers a mic for you to use, go ahead and take it regardless of how loud you feel your natural voice can project.
About Brian Washburn
Brian Washburn is an author, speaker, and the co-founder and CEO of Endurance Learning, an instructional design firm dedicated to creating engaging and impactful learning experiences. With over two decades of experience in learning and development, Brian has established himself as a thought leader and innovator in instructional design.
His journey began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay from 1998 to 2000, where he trained farmers in basic business principles. This experience ignited his passion for education and training, steering him toward nonprofit roles where he led training teams with missions ranging from ensuring safe, permanent homes for children in foster care to eradicating corneal blindness worldwide.
Under his leadership, Endurance Learning has developed creative and unique instructor-led and elearning programs for a diverse clientele, including international NGOs, nonprofit organizations, and Fortune 500 companies. Brian has facilitated workshops on presentation skills and instructional design across North America, South America, Asia, and Africa. These experiences have helped him identify and refine certain training and facilitation principles that have proven effective across geographic borders, cultures, types of organizations, age groups, and languages.
Brian regularly delivers train the trainer workshops in person and virtually. His sessions provide even more classroom training tips to help his trainers become better at training.
In addition to his practical experience, Brian is the author of two books. “What’s Your Formula? Combine Learning Elements for Impactful Training” (2021) and “Instructional Design on a Shoestring” (2024). He has also contributed chapters to several publications by the Association for Talent Development (ATD), including “ATD’s Handbook for Consultants” and “ATD’s Handbook for Training and Talent Development.”
Brian holds an MA in Organizational Psychology, is a past President of ATD Puget Sound, and serves as a Commissioner for the International Accreditors for Continuing Education & Training (IACET).
