SERIOUSLY FUN ACTIVITIES FOR TRAINERS, FACILITATORS,
PERFORMANCE CONSULTANTS, AND MANAGERS.
Mission
To increase and improve the use of interactive,
experiential strategies to improve human performance in an
effective, efficient, and enjoyable way.
Editorial Roster
Author and Editor
: Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagarajan
Assistant Editor
: Raja Thiagarajan
Associate Editors: Jean Reese and Tracy Tagliati
Contributing Editors: Brian Remer and Matthew Richter
Copyright Info
The materials in this newsletter are copyright 2014 by The
Thiagi Group. However, they may be freely reproduced for
educational/training activities. There is no need to obtain
special permission for such use as long as you do not
reproduce more than 100 copies per year. Please
include the following statement on all reproductions:
For any other use of the content, please contact us (
thiagi@thiagi.com ) for permission.
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Feedback Request
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!
This interactive lecture is based on my Each
Teach textra activity in which different people
learn different steps of a procedure. It uses the fact that
people usually focus only on small units of a lecture.
Purpose
To encourage participants to share their recollection and
ideas about a unit of the lecture they focused on.
Participants
Minimum: 9 Maximum: 50 Best: 15 to 30
Time
About 45 minutes (depending on the length and complexity of
the lecture content)
Supplies
Paper and pencil
Timer
Whistle
Use this Strategy When
The training content can benefit from repeated
reviews.
The training content can be conveniently divided into
units.
The participants know how to work with partners and in
teams.
Sample Topics
Increasing happiness
Becoming more trustworthy
Making effective use of feedback from others
Getting things done
Critical thinking
Keeping track of how you spend your time
Preparation
Decide on the number of groups. Estimate
the time you will need to present your training content.
Divide this by 3, 4, or 5 (which is the number of minutes
for each unit of your lecture). The answer you get is the
number of groups. Make sure that the groups have at least
three members. If not, decrease the unit time suitably.
Example: You estimate that your lecture will last for 15
minutes. You have 17 people and you are thinking of
3-minute units. When you divide 17 by 3 (and round off the
answer) you get 6. This is the number of groups you will
divide your participants into.
Flow
Brief the participants. Have the
participants count off by as many numbers as there are
groups. (Example: If you want to create five teams, ask
the participants to count of by fives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1,
2, …) Announce that you are going to give a
lecture presentation, and invite the participants to listen
to the entire lecture. Explain that from time to time you
will identify participants with a different number to pay
special attention to the next unit of the lecture. Everyone
with that number should concentrate on the content presented
in that unit and take useful notes.
Present the first unit. Before you begin
the lecture, ask the participant with number 1 to pay
special attention to the first unit. Explain that this unit
will last for 5 minutes (or whatever time you decided
upon).
Complete the first unit. Set the timer for
5 minutes. Make your lecture presentation as you would
normally do. Stop the presentation when the timer goes off.
If you want to be dramatic, stop in the middle of a
sentence. Announce that you have completed the first unit.
Tell the participants with number 1 that they can relax and
listen to the rest of the lecture without straining too
hard.
Continue with the second unit. Announce
that you will continue the lecture from where you left off
and present the second unit. Ask the participants with
number 2 to pay special attention to this unit. Set the time
for 5 minutes and give the second unit of your
presentation.
Continue with the other units. Conclude
the second unit and repeat the same procedure with each of
the ensuing units. Try to time last unit so you conclude the
presentation at the 5-minute mark.
Give instructions for individual
preparation. Announce the conclusion of the
entire lecture. Ask all participants to review their notes
for the unit they paid special attention to. Explain that
they should identify the key points individually. Announce a
3-minute time limit for this review. Set the timer for 3
minutes and remind the participants to work
individually.
Ask participants to team up and discuss their
common units. Ask the participants to find others
with the same number. Ask the members of each group to share
their notes and their ideas with each other.
Ask participants to pair up and discuss different
units. Ask the participants to find a partner
with a different number and exchange their thoughts of their
respective units. Announce a 3-minute time limit for this
sharing of ideas. Set the timer.
Continue sharing different units. At the
end of the 3 minutes, ask the participants to switch their
partners and pair up with someone else with a different
number. Repeat the procedure for sharing of ideas for as
many rounds as time permits.
Conclude the activity. Announce the end of
the session. Thank the participants for sharing the
responsibility for spreading your training message
effectively.
As an interactive storytelling technique, you can encourage
your participants to write the Great American Novel, or an
epic, or a saga, and share it with each other. But I prefer
the microstory approach.
Microstories are pieces of flash fiction that are brief.
Below are examples of microstories in different sizes.
Here's a short-short story that is less than 400 words
long:
“The Three-Legged
Goat”
The young goat had only three legs. No one knew whether
it was born that way or lost its left rear leg in an
accident. However it happened, the goat had learned to
hobble on his three legs.
The three-legged goat always stayed in the middle of the
herd as the goats grazed in the meadow outside the
village. The villagers left the herd alone most of the
time except on the Nagore festival. On that day, they
caught the fattest goat. The village priest killed the
goat with a long ceremonial sword as a sacrifice to the
local deity. Later, the villagers feasted on mutton
biryani.
A young boy from the village was trying to catch a goat.
At first, the goats ignored him because they could easily
escape from his grasp. But for some reason, they suddenly
panicked and ran away helter-skelter. The boy chased them
until the herd disappeared into the mango grove, leaving
behind only the three-legged goat.
With one final spurt, the boy grabbed the goat by its
lame leg. The goat fell to the ground, struggled for a few
moments, and lay still, panting hard. The boy squatted
near the goat, also panting hard. After a while, he
changed the grip to his left hand and reached into the
pocket of the shirt. He pulled out a sharp shining
knife.
The boy sat on top of the goat because he needed both his
hands now. The goat tried to struggle free, but the boy
adjusted his weight to keep the goat pinned down to the
ground.
The boy lowered his face, disfigured by an ugly scar,
close to the goat's ears.
“I am not going to hurt you,” he whispered. “I
just want someone to talk to. The other boys don't want
to talk to me because I am ugly.”
The goat stared at the boy's face.
“If you don't run away, I will share this mango with
you,” the boy said. He reached once again into his
pocket and pulled out a ripe mango. He sliced a piece with
his sharp knife and fed it to the goat.
When the boy stood up, the goat also stood up. It did not
run away.
Here's a short story about the futility of mindlessly
listening to words and writing them down. It uses the 99-word
format that was popularized by my friend Brian Remer.
“Revolutions”
His father told him: You have to listen carefully to
your teacher and write down everything he says. The
teacher talked about the Russian revolution. Jim
faithfully wrote everything down.
During the next class, Jim's mind began wandering. The
science teacher was talking about engines. Jim daydreamed
about sitting inside a cylinder and being squeezed by the
piston. He giggled because it was funny.
Now 50 years later, Jim is the best mechanic in the
engine shop. The only thing he remembers about revolutions
has to do with the maximum rpm of the turbo engine he is
fixing.
Six-Word Stories
When asked to write a full story in six words, Ernest
Hemingway was supposed to have responded with For sale,
baby shoes, never worn.
The online magazine SMITH invites its readers
to submit their autobiographies in six words. Here's a
sample: Baby changed my life and body. There is a
book collecting many of these memoirs: Not Quite
What I Was Planning.
When I asked her to describe the concept of interactive
stories, here's what Nitya Wakhlu wrote as a six-word story:
Stopped talking. Started listening. Magic
happened.
Uses
Obviously, microstories can appear on printed pages or on
web pages. If you are planning to use 500-word or 99-word
stories, you may assign them as a pre-session exercise or as
homework. You may use six-word stories as an end-of-session
review activity in both face-to-face and virtual training
sessions.
Where Is the Interactivity?
I am supposed to talking about interactive storytelling and
so far I have merely given you examples of microstories. You
may be wondering, where is the interactivity?
The secret is to embed these microstories in interactive
storytelling activities. Here's a list of suggestions:
Co-created stories. Instead of asking
individuals to write a microstory, ask the participants
to work with partners or in teams.
Shared stories. Ask the
participants to write individual microstories on the
same topic or theme. Ask them to share their stories
with each other. Eventually ask teams of participants to
identify common elements in the stories they
shared.
Debriefed stories. Ask the
participants to take turns to read their stories to a
group. Ask the group members to debrief themselves and
discuss their emotional reactions, the learning point in
the story, and its implications for personal
action.
Futuristic stories. Ask the
participants to write autobiographical microstories
located in an imaginary future. To increase the
effectiveness of future fiction, ask your participants
to write microstories of what happened 30 years, 30
months, and 30 days hence.
Prompted Stories. Provide a
picture or a title or the first sentence as a prompt.
Ask the participants to write their microstories, share
them with each other, and compare and contrast
them.
Unfinished stories. Ask the
participants to create microstories on a common topic.
Then ask them to black out the last sentence, exchange
it with another participant, and come up with
alternative endings.
Alternative POV. Ask the
participants to exchange their microstories and rewrite
the story they received from the point of view of a
different narrator.
Zooming in and out. Ask the
participants to exchange their 99-word stories. Then ask
them to shrink the story they received into a six-word
story or to expand it into a 500-word
version.
Here's Your Homework
Write a 99-word story on the use of microstories. Set it in
your future life after the next 12 months. You can either
paste it into the comments section below or email it to me
(thiagi@thiagi.com) and I will share it with
other readers.
Mark Isabella has created a card deck called
Engagement Emergency that contains
54 activities for instant interaction. The activities take
2-10 minutes to run and require little setup or preparation.
These a la carte activities come in a variety of formats
including action planning, feedback, group formation,
openers, pair work, and reflection. If you are in the midst
of rapid instructional design and need an opener, you can
consult the deck and find one quickly. If you are in the
middle of a presentation and need a shot of engagement and
interaction, you can thumb through the deck right before you
begin your session or during a break.
Let's Go To the Movies! (Opener /
Assessment) by Mark Isabella
Divide the large group into subgroups of 4-5. Display the
following movie titles on a flip chart page or slide.
The Wild Bunch
Misery
The Best Years of Our
Lives
The Bad News Bears
Fight Club
Titanic
It's a Wonderful Life
True Grit
Mission Impossible
Dazed and Confused
The Greatest Show on Earth
Take the Money and Run
Give participants 3-4 minutes to identify the movie title
that best describes the nature of their workplaces and why.
Have 3-4 volunteers share their choices with the larger
group.
A Special Offer
Engagement Emergency decks usually
sell for $59.95 (plus $10.95 for shipping within the USA).
If you order now, you will receive a $10
discount. You can purchase each
Engagement Emergency deck in our online store for $49.95. No need to enter a
coupon code—as long as you order before November 30,
you'll get the discount automatically.
I am the solo trainer in my large company with nine field
offices.
Top managers (and their accountants) had figured out that the
travel cost for training was a major expense. They decided to
save money by asking me to use the company's webinar platform.
They figured out that I should have no problem shifting to
this new virtual training.
I started offering my classes as webinars. I had no
difficulty exporting my PowerPoint slides and sending out my
handouts as PDF documents.
All the training content was there, but the classes did not
click. Something was missing.
A couple of weeks later, I attended a workshop about virtual
classrooms. I discovered the secret. Stories are the operating
system of the human brain. I decided to become a
storyteller.
My trainees were engaged throughout my story-based sessions.
They frequently clicked on the icons of clapping hands and
smiling faces to cheer me on.
So I sent out a feedback questionnaire. Almost everyone gave
me 5s for interest and inspiration. I had included an
open-ended question about what was memorable about my training
sessions. The stories, of course.
I should not have pushed my luck, but Ramon, a student from
the local university wanted to do an evaluation project for an
instructional technology course he was taking. I invited him
to evaluate my training webinars. He interviewed several
participants over the telephone.
A month later, Ramon prepared a report for his professor. He
gave me a copy.
The report had good news and bad news. The good news
confirmed the positive feedback I received. The bad news? The
trainees remembered the stories but not the learning points.
They told the stories to their colleagues but did not apply
the new skills they were supposed to have learned.
Bottom line: My stories put the trainees in a blissful trance
but did not teach them anything useful or usable.
The data from the report did not shake my belief in the power
of stories. Fortunately I read some stuff on interactive
storytelling. I changed my strategy.
In my webinars now, I invite the trainees to make up their
own stories. The setting in the stories is their job
situation; the time span is the near future.
I encourage the trainees to make the stories authentic. I
tell them to share the stories with each other.
In my webinars, the trainees type feverishly in their chat
boxes creating, completing, analyzing, and modifying the
stories. I keep my mouth shut most of the time.
Here's what one of my participants, Nitya Wahklu, typed as
her six-word story:
Stopped talking. Started listening. Magic happened.
Recently my friend Stanis Benjamin shared the secret for
handling sales objections. It made a lot of sense and I would
like to share it with you. But to prevent other people from
stealing it, I have encrypted this piece of advice.
Cryptograms are highly engaging language puzzles. If you are
unfamiliar with cryptograms, we recommend our explanation from
our October
2006 issue of TGL.
The puzzle is presented in our interactive cryptogram solver.
It requires JavaScript to run, and is specifically designed to
work on mobile devices (i.e., iPhones and other smartphones,
iPads and other tablets). It also works with modern desktop
browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and up-to-date
versions of Internet Explorer.
Thiagi is conducting public workshops outside the USA. Check
our online calendar at http://thiagi.com/calendar/ for details.
Singapore: January 8-10, 2015.
Interactive Training Strategies: A
3-day workshop. Organized by Centre
for Communication and Sales Training. Download our brochure (1.1M PDF) for additional details.
Hong Kong: January 12, 2015.
More Interactive Training
Strategies. Organized by Yzer
Solutions Pte. Ltd and The Hong Kong Management Association.
Download our brochure (189K PDF) for additional details.
If you would like to organize a Thiagi workshop in your part
of the world, send him a note at thiagi@thiagi.com .
Coaching for
Performance: A Facilitated Online
Experience by Matt Richter
Coaching for
Performance (CFP) is a Thiagi Group
online workshop adapting our flexible 4-Door™ ELearning
approach. CFP is a completely facilitated program that occurs
virtually and asynchronously—meaning participants can
engage any time they want. The course is the equivalent of
approximately three days of classroom time, but you have 30
days to complete it on your own schedule.
One of our participants, Marzia Edwards from the UK, gave a
video
testimonial.
Every day, Thiagi tweets ready-to-use pieces of practical
advice on HR topics such as coaching, creativity, customer
service, feedback, leadership, listening skills, and
management.
Here are some recent pieces of advice that were retweeted
frequently:
Make sure your training is relevant to the participant's
job. Brandish this relevance throughout the session.
Avoid animation and special effects in your slides. From a
training point of view, they distract the participants
rather than help.
Don't present any content that is not used in a learning
activity. Don't conduct an activity that does not
incorporate the content.
If your slides contain complete sentences, participants
will read for themselves. Limit your slides to key words and
phrases.
Behavioral objectives don't give the big picture to the
participants. Present a content outline in plain language
instead.
All training involves changing your participants'
behaviors. So learn and apply the skills of a change
manager.
Join the thousands of people who follow @thiagi on
Twitter. If you don't have a Twitter account, it is easy to
sign up for a free one at twitter.com.
A couple of months ago, we launched a webinar series (on
interactive webinars) for TGL readers. The
October webinar was on interactive storytelling.
We conducted a poll at the end of the October webinar to
select the topic for the November webinar. From the menu of
LOLAs (Live Online Learning Activities), the participants
selected instructional magic.
Thiagi and his team will conduct an interactive webinar on
instructional magic on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 12 noon
US Eastern Time.
In this webinar, you will participate in several
instructional magic episodes. You will learn how to use magic
to provide relevant exercises on the topics of critical
thinking and lateral thinking. You will also learn about other
uses of magic in webinars. Don’t worry: This will not be a
flaky session. Thiagi will focus on ensuring relevance of the
magical activities and explain how to link them to your
content.
Most of us know the benefits of physical exercise. But we
don't necessarily understand the benefits to our brain for
learning and memory. New neurons and new memories are just two
effects that come with increased oxygen to the brain. Learn
more in this issue.
Power Tip: Add a movement break to your day
of at least 30 minutes to maximize brain benefits.
In the October 2014 issue of TGL we asked our
trainer-readers how they get their training sessions
started.
As of October 24, 2014, 34 readers responded. Three of them
(9%) said that they ask the participants to introduce
themselves. One of them (3%) said that they provide logistic
information such as the schedule. Fourteen (41%) said that
they conduct an opener or an icebreaker. Eleven (32%) said
that they conduct a jolt or a brief surprising activity to
get the participants' attention. The last five (15%) said
that they do something else.
Open Question
As a follow up to the poll, we asked the readers to briefly
describe their favorite opening activity.
Here are some of your responses, as of October 24,
2014:
Try to have a chat with some of the people before the
session. Introduce myself with a joke about my language
and country.
The activity I most frequently use is one I first saw
in a Pitman Secretarial Studies magazine in
the 70's! It's called Body Parts,
consists of drawing an outline of a body and asking
participants to identify 10 body parts named in 3 letters
only. Three rules: NO rude bits; NO medical terms; NO
swearing. Sixty seconds in pairs/trios. Debrief —
the one part the majority miss is “jaw”. Great
learning point which relates to pretty much any topic!
—Mike Sherry
In a circle introduce yourself to people on your left
and right and ask them about memorable situation in their
work. Rearrange them by the time spent to reach the
training room and introduce yourself. Ask the people on
your left and right about something they like on their
job. Rearrange them by the years of experience and
introduce yourself to your neighbors and ask them about
their expectation from the course.
Varies according to topic, but in general an activity
that connects the participants to one another and to the
purpose of the session.
A series of quick games to explore some basics
(principles, description of a professional role, etc.)
that participants need to go through the session itself.
It could be an association game, jolt, puzzles, or
quiz.
Thanks to everyone who responded.
You Can Still Participate
This survey is still open.
Feel free to add your comments by visiting the survey page.
Please take this brief survey. It will help us better
understand what features and criteria you have for elearning.
We will post the results in our next issue of
TGL.
I came across this web site recently while searching for some
rational discussion of the Ebola scare.
Two Guys on Your Head ( http://kut.org/topic/two-guys-your-head ) is a radio
program from Austin, Texas, a college town that also happens
to be the state capital. The show features Dr. Art Markman and
Dr. Bob Duke, who explore different aspects of human brain.
The conversation is hosted by Rebecca McInroy.
The web site archives a series of interesting conversations
from the program. The one that attracted me was Why Do
We Freak Out About Existential Threats Like Ebola? (
http://kut.org/post/why-do-we-freak-out-about-existential-threats-ebola
) It is definitely worth listening to: It gives useful
insights into critical thinking—or lack thereof.
Other archived conversations deal with how to make yourself
happy, what makes cat videos so clickable, can on-line brain
trainers really make you smarter, how your brain can help you
put off procrastination, and other such intriguing
questions.
Author and Editor
: Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagarajan
Assistant Editor
: Raja Thiagarajan
