Quels sont les avantages et les défis de l’utilisation d’activités interactives dans vos sessions de formation?

Using interactive activities in training sessions fosters engagement, participation, and knowledge retention among learners. It creates a dynamic learning environment, encourages collaboration, and caters to various learning styles. However, challenges may arise in designing and facilitating such activities effectively, ensuring relevance to learning objectives, managing time constraints, and addressing diverse participant needs. Additionally, technological issues or resistance from some participants might hinder the seamless execution of interactive elements. Nonetheless, overcoming these challenges can lead to richer learning experiences and better outcomes for participants.

As new interactive technologies become available, such as AI-powered 360-degree interviews or trainings, implementation has many new advantages. They offer a more immersive and realistic experience for learners, allowing them to showcase their skills and personalities in a more comprehensive way. This technology enables companies to assess employees more accurately, thus helping them understand where they need further training for career advancement. Companies can create customized interview simulations that mimic real-world scenarios, providing a more engaging and effective way to evaluate and upskill employees.

Interactive activities are pivotal in experiential education, enriching training sessions by boosting learners' engagement and retention. They make content more relevant and enjoyable, while fostering collaboration and communication between learners and facilitators. These activities stimulate higher-order thinking skills like problem-solving and creativity by challenging learners to apply and create new knowledge. Additionally, they support learning transfer by providing practice, reinforcement, and constructive feedback on performance, ensuring that skills and knowledge are effectively applied in real-world contexts.

Interaktive Aktivitäten fördern den aktiven Lernprozess und erhöhen die Teilnahmebereitschaft. Sie ermöglichen es den Teilnehmern, Theorie direkt in die Praxis umzusetzen und komplexe Inhalte besser zu verinnerlichen. Zudem stärken sie den Austausch zwischen den Teilnehmern, was oft zu tieferem Verständnis führt. Die Herausforderung liegt jedoch in der sorgfältigen Planung: Aktivitäten müssen klar strukturiert und zielgerichtet sein, um Verwirrung zu vermeiden. Außerdem erfordert die Moderation ein hohes Maß an Flexibilität, um auf unvorhersehbare Reaktionen der Teilnehmer eingehen zu können, ohne den roten Faden zu verlieren.

Especially in environments where the role being trained requires practical skills, theory alone cannot meet the training needs of the workforce. This doesn't mean that theory based learning isn't needed in this setting, but it needs to be woven into the practical elements to instil a deeper understanding of the work the delegates will be carrying out. Understanding how to do something is critical, but understanding why we do it will embolden people with the confidence to carry out their tasks, knowing the difference they make to the end product.

While planning interactive activities demands more time, resources, and preparation, a potentially bigger hurdle lies in participant engagement, especially online. Many sessions have a disturbing trend: participants joining without actively listening or even enabling cameras. To address this, clearly set expectations beforehand – both before the session starts and when introducing the interactive activity itself – so participants are well-prepared to actively participate.

There are always introverts and extroverts in the classroom, hence, the audience may or may not have a biased approach. It is important to make a positive impact on learners by creating a platform that is exciting and engaging to all.

I will say, from experience though, many of the participants might be shy away from interactive activities because of their level of education or ability to communicate fluently and this caused by inferiority complex. Some, on the other hand, might not want to mingle with other participants due to age brackets and cultural or religious beliefs

When planning interactive activities, it’s crucial to understand your audience’s background, including their culture and beliefs, as these factors can affect the effectiveness of the activities. Misalignment with participants' expectations or sensitivities can hinder engagement and learning outcomes. Additionally, designing effective interactive activities requires significant time and effort, from planning to execution. Balancing the time spent on these activities with the overall training schedule is essential to ensure they enhance, rather than detract from, the learning experience.

Interactive activities are a great way to facilitate and create an interest and have fun learning any lesson within or outside a classroom environment. They could be used for formative or summative assessments for all to assess learning achievements. However, interactive activities should be tailored to the learning levels of the students and differentiated learning could be done to address the problems then to cater to the whole class. Interactive activities should always have a purpose and a learning point so students should be made aware of the rules, the steps to take, the expected results and the learning points to achieve. A post-mortem of the activities to clarify doubts or improve the way they were carried out would be good too.

One of the biggest challenge of interactive activities is the possibility to get carried away and lose the track of time. Here, as a facilitator, you need to judge the value: if prolonged activity fosters productive discussion and helps to achieve learning objectives, let it happen. However, if it starts taking over entire session and there is a chance to run out of time for other important points, you have the authority to stop the activity.

To overcome challenges with interactive activities, start by knowing your audience’s background and beliefs through research or surveys, ensuring activities are culturally sensitive. Invest time in planning and testing activities to align with learning goals and avoid issues. Manage time effectively by scheduling activities within the overall training plan and adjusting durations as needed. Be flexible and ready to adapt based on participant feedback and engagement. Continuously gather feedback to refine activities and maintain their relevance and impact.

I will speak from my experience as an experienced trainer and facilitator, I once had someone like that, but what I did to help the lady come out of the challenge of not interacting with other participants was to introduce role play and songs. Found out she loves songs and she got into the role that was assigned to her, and boom she sang mimicking a popular R&B star. That was how I was able to overcome the challenges of interacting activities. And one more before I forget, we, trainer and facilitator, should always have inclusion in our training curriculum. This helps to accommodate different people from diverse backgrounds to be able to flow with others irrespective of their background.

Have a SMART goal for each activity. Clear understanding why you are doing it and how you measure success, helps to evaluate if this activity was in line with learning objectives and avoid doing something just for the sake of doing.

Wow, this was what I just did few days ago in my training. I love using break out sessions and role play as a way of measuring the impact of the training on the participants. The break out sessions where all participants will be grouped and they are to make short presentations about the whole discussions. And a role play for them to play out the entire training in a short drama. I discovered when these participants engage themselves in these activities it makes them have more understanding and application of the lessons learnt in class. They tend to remember more from what they have presented than what we taught them. Through this, we can quickly see the direct impact of the interactive activities in their personal lives.

While engagement and discussion are positive signs, evaluating interactive activities requires a more comprehensive approach. Pre- and post-training surveys can assess skill development, knowledge retention, and any behavioral changes in applying the learned skills. Additionally, these surveys can gauge the creation of a supportive learning environment fostered by the activities, providing valuable insights into their overall effectiveness.

What I do before any of my training session is to first update myself with the latest training and Facilitation trends, interactive activities and other participants' engaging activities. Also, I do take feedbacks from my participants. I design an assessment form to assess their level of understanding and participation in the interactive activities and request for possible recommendations or contributions. They (the participants) will be able to tell us if the interactive activities were impactful or not. Then you can draw up your reference and conclusions from their feedbacks.

The benefits are huge - generally I like to not let more than five minutes elapse on online session without giving people something to do. It might be a quiz or a poll. Maybe throwing stuff into a word cloud. Carefully chosen (or maybe seeded!) questions are good as well. Anything to stop people deciding they can head off to a separate digital space like email or catch up on that powerpoint! In terms of challenges there aren't many BUT making sure the tech is sorted is key. There is nothing more excruciating than unveiling a drum role moment and then having the tech fail and having to stumble through a 'switch to manual' moment...

While smartphones and other devices can be distractions, incorporating interactive activities into your facilitation can turn this challenge into an advantage. By fostering anticipation and interest, these activities can effectively shift participants' focus away from distractions for a time. This increased engagement benefits any learning environment, regardless of the objective – individual learning, group collaboration, or targeted skill development.