Survival Guide For Trainers

Remember sitting in school or college while the lecturer droned on about such and such a topic; no matter how interesting the subject or how hard you tried you found it difficult to stay concentrated for more than a half hour or so? Doodling pics and drifting into dream world is not uncommon, with the average adult only having between a 10 and 20 minute attention span.

Say you’re on the other side now, giving the lecture, and you have a group to keep alert and interested for a few days in a training room. Here are some helpful tips to break the ice and get everyone involved and interested.

• Ice Breaker- We all know this one; say your name, what company you’re from and your position. Embarrassing as you may remember it, it‘s a good ice breaker, gets everyone talking and familiar. It’s fun to sometimes ask for a random fact about the person too. Don’t go too far with this though; you don’t want to make people uncomfortable.

• Stump the Trainer- Separate the group into small groups and have each come up with three questions for you. This gets people talking and also gives you an idea of the level of difficulty they can handle.

• Quick quiz- To break up the day and keep everyone interested you can introduce a quick quiz at the end of each section. People tend to be more attentive when they know there are questions to follow at the end; it also offers a break from the lecture.

• Games- Choose favorites like Bingo, Jeopardy and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire to add some fun to the quizzes.

• Best Summary- At the end of each day break the group into groups and have each summarise what was covered. Collect at the end and put the best points from each group on the flip chart for the group to take down.

These are just a few guidelines to prompt a group to interact, for more in depth details check out our FETAC accredited Train the Trainer course, which is available four days full time, or eight weeks part time. www.PDLcourses.ie

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