Do Cows Really Drink Milk and Other Musings from Brad Barton and Thiagi Thiagarajan

This past week I attended the ASTD Cascadia Chapter’s Regional Conference in Salem, Oregon. If you didn’t make it, you should have! With two great keynote speakers (Brad Barton and Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan) and numerous breakout sessions, opportunities were plentiful to expand your comfort zone.

I thought I would share a quick summary of what the two speakers covered. I would also encourage you to visit their websites to learn more.

Brad Barton | http://www.bradbartonspeaks.com/

Got Magic?!

 

• Consider making a “To Do List” of the things you want to stop doing. So many of us create a “To Do” list to track things we need to get done but, few of us use it to remind us to stop doing things that are not beneficial to our career and/or well-being.
• Misdirection, a tried and true magician’s trick, can also help learning professionals. Instead of just delivering data, think of more subtle ways of getting your message across. Focus on putting fun into your training. If participants are having fun during your training session, they don’t realize they are learning in the process. Yes, it is possible to have fun and learn at the same time!
• Mental conditioning- What are you saying about people around you?  What are you saying to yourself? “Our life follows our language.” If you focus on what is going wrong and start to create your own pity party, you are in store for more of the same!  Remember, when you are having problems or things aren’t going so well, look first inside yourself. You are most likely the source!

Brad also discussed the Hedgehog Principle from Jim Collins’ book “Good to Great”.  The Principle revolves around the answers to three questions. What are you passionate about? What can you be the best at? What can actually make you a living? The answer you come up with must meet all three of these criteria. In other words, it is about doing one thing and doing it well.

 

Thiagi “Designing Interactive Strategies” | http://www.thiagi.com

During Thiagi’s presentation, he focused on topics such as structured sharing, split-half format, textra games, simulation games, and sequential jolt activities. If you are a trainer, I would strongly recommend you visit his site to see how you can improve interactivity in your classroom.

 

• Structured sharing represents a special type of frame game that facilitates mutual learning and teaching among participants. Typical structured sharing activities create a context for a dialogue among participants based on their experiences, knowledge, and opinions.
• Split-half format is a technique used to create an interactive lecture. The key idea is that participants receive two different tests. Its purpose is to understand and recall key facts, concepts, and ideas from a presentation by having your participants pair up and help each other score their answers and discuss any discrepancies between their answers and the “official” answer. In our session, Thiagi, had one person learn to say his first name and the other person his last name. Then, the two people paired up to work together to learn his entire name. What a great way to get your name out there! All joking aside, it demonstrated an excellent way to get your participants involved in absorbing and learning the key concepts you present in the classroom.
• Textra Games are activities where you create dynamic activities from existing documents. In the example taught at the session, the focus was on reading a specific breakout session overview and distilling it down to something that could fit onto a bumper sticker. Basically, the learning outcome involves identify key points and being able to summarize them. To learn more, visit Thiagi’s Website.
• Thiagi also discussed simulation games which are designed to allow participants to experience “real events” without the expense, difficulty, or danger of the real event. He indicated this type of activity works well in conflict management training sessions.
• Jolt is another activity that delivers a powerful wake-up call to your participants. The training objective for a serial jolt is to increase participants’ awareness of the assumptions they are making. To learn more go to http://www.thiagi.com/article-serial-jolts.html

Before you go, I thought I would share this brain exercise game we learned. Try this the next time you think your participants are not as alert as they should be. Ask them to say the word “white” eight times in a row then ask them the following question, “What do cows drink?” I bet they say milk!

That’s about it for now, I’ll post more about another breakout session I attended on moving your e-learning to the global arena. Don’t miss it if you are considering expanding your e-learning to the international level!

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