SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS, PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS.
Masthead
Our mission statement, copyright notice, and cast of
characters.
Construction Game
Team Performance by
Christopher Hunter
What's the purpose? What are the roles?
Jolt Principles
Control Group Jolts
Different strokes for different folks.
NASAGA 2008
NASAGA 2008 Conference Program Evolving Nicely
Pit stop for GAS (Games, Activities,
Simulations).
Learning Activities
Learning Activities Revisited - 5
Graphics game and application activity.
Brian's Words
Please Go Practice by
Brian Remer
Practice, practice, practice?
99 Words Tip
Teaching and Testing
Combining instruction with assessment.
Check It Out
Free Rice
Many reasons to play this game.
Single Item Survey
What's Your Principle?
How do you design faster, cheaper, and better
training?
SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS, PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS.
To increase and improve the use of interactive, experiential strategies to improve human performance in an effective, efficient, and enjoyable way.
Editor: Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagarajan
Assistant Editor: Raja Thiagarajan
Associate Editor: Jean Reese
Contributing Editors: Brian Remer and Les Lauber
Editorial Advisory Board: Bill Wake, Matthew Richter, Samuel van den Bergh, and <type your name here>
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Reprinted from THIAGI GAMELETTER. Copyright © 2008 by The Thiagi Group, Inc.
For any other use of the content, please contact us ( thiagi@thiagi.com ) for permission.
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Thiagi believes in practicing what he preaches. This is an interactive newsletter, so interact already! Send us your feedback, sarcastic remarks, and gratuitous advice through email to thiagi@thiagi.com . Thanks!
To demonstrate the significance of a clear team purpose, objectives, and well-defined roles and their impact on overall team performance.
Minimum: 20
Maximum: 32
Best: 20-30
Participants are divided into teams of 4 teams of 5 to 7 members each.
45-55 minutes
Four (4) Instruction Sheets, one for each of the teams:
Debriefing Questions for Discussion
Choose a client. Appoint any randomly selected participant to play the role of the client.
Form teams. Divide participants into 4 teams, each with 5 to 7 members. It does not matter if some teams have an extra member. Make sure groups have a large work surface and are spread far enough apart so that they cannot hear one another.
Explain the background. Use slides during this explanation.
Explain the ground rules. Project these ground rules on the screen and keep them visible the entire time:
Distribute instruction sheets. Give each team one Instruction Sheet. Ask team members to review the information and begin the activity. Start timer.
Stop the activity. After 20 minutes, ask teams to stop work. Ask teams to put all remaining materials into the canister.
Conduct team debrief. Distribute copies of the Debriefing Questions. Explain that you would like each team to take a few minutes and answer the questions. Have teams record answers on one flipchart page.
Conduct large group debrief. Ask each team to read out their flipchart page. Conduct this activity in order (team 1, then team 2, then team 3, and then team 4). Keep the discussion focused on the flipchart pages.
Explain the differences among teams. Have each team share the components of their information sheets (purpose, objectives, and roles).
Facilitate the discussion. Guide the discussion with the whole group. Record a list of necessary requirements for effective team performance.
Select the winning tower. Ask the client to read the list of criteria for the tower and identify the best tower.
The four project teams are being sponsored by the senior leaders of the company. The company builds traditional structures like bridges, tunnels, and towers. Recently, the CEO has decided to form these project teams to explore state-of-the-art building concepts. The CEO wants to lead the industry.
Each project team will be responsible for building a miniature prototype of a “state-of-the-art” tower which could ultimately be selected by the client to be built in the client's city.
The CEO will present four tower prototypes to the client and the client has agreed to select one to build in the city. The CEO has set the following performance objectives for the project:
The client will determine which tower is most state-of-the-art using these criteria:
The four project teams are being sponsored by the senior leaders of the company. The company builds traditional structures like bridges, tunnels, and towers. Recently, the CEO has decided to form these project teams to explore state-of-the-art building concepts. The CEO wants to lead the industry.
1 Project Manager — The project manager has overall authority for managing the execution and logistics of building the prototype. He or she tracks time for the exercise to ensure the project is completed on time. The project manager has authority to make final staffing decisions.
1 Architect — The architect is responsible for determining the overall creative vision of the structure design. The architect sketches a design on paper, meets with project lead and construction lead to explain the vision. He or she has overall decision rights about the height, color, and appearance of the final prototype. The architect is not involved in the actual construction of the prototype.
1 Structural Engineer — The structural engineer is responsible for ensuring that the prototype is structurally sound. That is, the engineer ensures that the prototype can stand alone with no outside support. The engineer periodically inspects the prototype. The engineer is not involved in the actual construction of the prototype.
1 Prototype Construction Lead — Provides management and leadership to the builders to ensure the operation is completed on time and according to specifications. The construction lead can assist in the actual building of the prototype. However, the construction lead does not make creative decisions or change the architect's design.
2 or 3 Builders — The building crew actually constructs the prototype according to specification. They do not make creative decisions or change the architect's design.
The four project teams are being sponsored by the senior leaders of the company. The company builds traditional structures like bridges, tunnels, and towers. Recently, the CEO has decided to form these project teams to explore state-of-the-art building concepts. The CEO wants to lead the industry.
Each project team will be responsible for building a miniature prototype of a “state-of-the-art” tower which could ultimately be selected by the client to be built in the client's city.
The CEO will present four tower prototypes to the client and the client has agreed to select one to build in the city. The CEO has set the following performance objectives for the project:
The client will determine which tower is most state-of-the-art using these criteria:
1 Project Manager — The project manager has overall authority for managing the execution and logistics of building the prototype. He or she tracks time for the exercise to ensure the project is completed on time. The project manager has authority to make final staffing decisions.
1 Architect — The architect is responsible for determining the overall creative vision of the structure design. The architect sketches a design on paper, meets with project lead and construction lead to explain the vision. He or she has overall decision rights about the height, color, and appearance of the final prototype. The architect is not involved in the actual construction of the prototype.
1 Structural Engineer — The structural engineer is responsible for ensuring that the prototype is structurally sound. That is, the engineer ensures that the prototype can stand alone with no outside support. The engineer periodically inspects the prototype. The engineer is not involved in the actual construction of the prototype.
1 Prototype Construction Lead — Provides management and leadership to the builders to ensure the operation is completed on time and according to specifications. The construction lead can assist in the actual building of the prototype. However, the construction lead does not make creative decisions or change the architect's design.
2 or 3 Builders — The building crew actually constructs the prototype according to specification. They do not make creative decisions or change the architect's design.
The four project teams are being sponsored by the senior leaders of the company. The company builds traditional structures like bridges, tunnels, and towers. Recently, the CEO has decided to form these project teams to explore state-of-the-art building concepts. The CEO wants to lead the industry.
The company's senior leaders say, “We are expecting the best from you. We've picked the best people to be on your team. Good luck!”
Agree on the answer to each question and record the answer on a flipchart page:
Jolts are interactive experiential activities that lull participants into behaving in a comfortable way and then suddenly delivering a powerful wake-up call. Jolts force participants to re-examine their assumptions and revise their habitual practices. A typical jolt lasts only a few minutes but provides enough insights for a lengthy debriefing. Not all jolts entrap the participants; some of them suggest thought experiments and activities to provide enlightening insights.
I am currently working on a book of jolts in collaboration with Tracy Tagliati. This book will contain a collection of jolts interspersed with short articles exploring different principles related to their design and delivery. Here's one of those articles:
Back in my graduate school days, I enjoyed designing convoluted research projects that involved all kinds of control-group studies. The principle behind this type of experiments is that different groups receive different “treatments”—and produce different outcomes. For example, if you invite one group of participants to come to the front of the room and sing to the audience for the payment of 10 cents and another group to perform the same task for the payment of $100, you would see a difference in the number of volunteers. You can then debrief the group to explore the impact of different levels of financial incentives.
The best way to conduct this jolt is to print equal numbers of instruction cards with two different treatments. The first paragraph in all these instruction cards invited participants to come to the front of the room and sing for 2 minutes at the top of their voice. The second paragraph in some of the cards offer $100 for performing this task. An equal number of cards contain a second paragraph that offers 10 cents for performing the same task. You shuffle the cards and randomly distribute a card to each participant. After a suitable pause, you can ask volunteers to raise their hands. You can then explain the two different levels of financial incentives and show that the higher incentives entice more volunteers.
My friend Matt adds a powerful twist to this jolt: He asks one of the $100 volunteers to come to the front of the room and sing. He pays $100 to this person (Matt can afford it). He then asks how many of the 10-cent volunteers are still willing to sing for the measly incentive offered to them. (Most 10-cent volunteers would refuse.) Matt then discusses the impact of unfair reward systems.
Don't miss NASAGA 2008 conference in Indianapolis (October 15-18). Visit the conference website for more information.
On October 15, 2008 you will have a choice of three pre-conference workshops:
Each day of the regular conference (October 16-18) will begin with an important, inspiring, and intriguing keynote presentation from a thought leader in our field:
The conference will feature more than 30 concurrent sessions conducted by knowledgeable practitioners. You can read up-to-date descriptions of these sessions on the Program Preview section of NASAGA 2008 website. In the meantime, here's a peek at a few selected sessions:
Judee Blohm and Chuck Needlman: Readers' Theater: Bringing Unheard Voices to Courageous Conversations
Debi Bridle: Brilliant Ideas to Fuel the Imagination
Michelle Cummings: A Teachable Moment: Processing the Experience
Matt DeMarco: The Gift of Teamwork
Tim Gustafson: Why Won't They Let Me Use Techniques That Work?
Greg Koeser: Twist and Bond - Using twisting balloons for various games and modeling
Chuck Needlman and Judee Blohm: Nested Boxes Simulation
David Piltz: TOOLS: Tactile, Overt, Operational Learning Strategies
David Piltz: Facilitating Meaningful Insights
David Piltz: Controversy: Facilitating with EASE
Brian Remer: Briefly Stated: 99 Words that Teach
Brian Remer: The Board Game Body Shop
Nick Smith: Money for Old Rope?
John Steiner: Quick and It'll-Stick Instructional Design (On The Fly)!
Tracy Tagliati: Facilitating Large Groups
Sivasailam Thiagarajan: Integrating Training Activities with Content
Stella Ting-Toomey and Leeva Chung: Culture Shock: How Much Shock Can You Take?
Marian H. Williams: Physical Webbing - Building Knowledge and Creating Understanding Through Mindmapping Structures
Don't miss NASAGA 2008 conference in Indianapolis (October 15-18). Visit the conference website for more information.
Content and activity are the yin and yang of training. You need both of them to produce effective and engaging learning. Content without activity produces sterile knowledge. Activity without content results in wasted effort.
It is not enough if you have both content and activity. These two elements have to be carefully aligned and integrated.
We have access to different sources of training content. Some of them are in a stable and recorded form as in the case of books and video recordings. Other sources of content are in a live and spontaneous form as in the case of lectures from subject-matter experts and discussions with fellow participants.
Over the past several years, we have been exploring 18 different types of training activities that can be used with different sources of existing content.
I discussed two or three learning activities in greater detail during each of the past four months. This month, I explore learning activities associated with graphics content and job aids.
(Content Source: Illustrations or photographs)
Graphics games involve photographs, paintings, drawings, or cartoons as essential elements. Some graphic games require participants to create these graphics. In others, participants review the graphic, analyze its elements, discover relationships, and discuss their findings. Training objectives for these games are not limited to graphics; they can relate to other types of skills and concepts.
The training objective for this graphics game is to explore how being judgmental affects what we observe.
(Content Source: Job aids)
This activity involves supplying participants with copies of a job aid for performing a specific procedure. In a typical application activity, different participants learn different procedure steps and organize themselves into teams to share their step and learn the other steps.
The training objective for this application activity is to compute the return on investment for a performance-improvement project.
In the next issue of TGL, we will explore two other types of learning activities that incorporate information tables and test instruments.
Brian Remer will be facilitating a NASAGA 2008 conference session, Briefly Stated: 99 Words That Teach at the NASAGA 2008. In addition to being a master of the 99-words format, Brian invents games and interactive strategies to expand learning and deepen insights. To find out more about him, read his Guest Gamer interview.
When we tell our daughter it's time to practice the clarinet, she reluctantly makes several trips to bring her music, instrument, music stand, and chair all the way down from her room to the living room where her mother and I are sitting. I couldn't figure out this behavior. Why not practice in her room?
When I read the work of psychologist Edward Deci I finally got it. Who wants to be all alone while doing something they didn't choose and can't do well? The three keys to intrinsic motivation had been missing: relationships, autonomy, competence!
We continue exploring the broad concept of blended learning with another how-to suggestion presented in exactly 99 words.
An effective training session blends teaching and testing. Usually a training session ends with a final test. Why not begin the session by giving this test first, find out what participants have already mastered, and teach what they don't know? If pre-testing reveals that different groups of participants know different things, why not task them to teach what they know and learn what they don't know? How about an interactive lecture approach in which you stop the lecture presentation once every 10 minutes and test the participants' mastery of the current segment and the previous segments?
I strongly suggest that you play the Internet vocabulary game, Free Rice. Simply go to http://www.freerice.com/ .
Here are the reasons for my recommendation:
You can get more information about this charity website from the Wikipedia (of course!).
In last month's issue of TGL, we listed the latest set of principles that enable us to produce faster, cheaper, and better training.
Here are a few examples:
What is a principle (or technique) that you use for rapidly, inexpensively, and effectively producing training products and procedures?
Please let us know about your favorite rapid instructional design principle.
To contribute your response, visit this survey page (opens in a new window). You may include your name along with your suggestion or keep it anonymous. You may send more than one response.