Create Your Own Templates

You can use different types of content-based templates and activities-based templates to speed up your ID process. You can also create your own templates from instructional materials and activities that you like. Here are some examples:

You enjoyed playing a training game. You can treat the game as a sample application of a template. By ignoring the content of the game and analyzing its structure, you can tease out a template. You can then load your own content and adjust the template to make it more generalizable.

You attended an inspiring presentation on re-engineering. You can go through your notes and recall the stages in the presentation. You prepare a template for presenting other controversial issues.

You read a book on creativity. You liked the way the author interspersed quotes in the margin, exercises in sidebars, and examples in italics. You create a similar template for a your training manual on strategic planning.

You are intrigued by the book, 75 Cage-Rattling Questions to Change the Way You Work (by Dick Whitney and Melissa Giovagnoli, McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-070019-2. $14.95). You like the way the authors begin use a shocking question to unleash a frenzy of fresh thinking. You borrow this template to create some disturbing questions to kick off your workshop on empowerment.

You were impressed by a videotape. You like the way it showed a critical incident, asked the participant groups to discuss it, and provided feedback in the form of a discussion among the members of an expert panel. You decided to use the critical incident - group discussion - expert feedback formula for your print-based team learning activity on sexual harassment.

Instead of calling this activity creating your own templates, maybe I should called it benchmarking.

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